Court Opinion

ID: 9577813
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:38:26.020393+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:21:17.963907
License: Public Domain

HUNTLEY, Justice,
concurring specially.
I concur in the analysis of the majority demonstrating why this case must have its order set aside and be referred back for further proceedings. However, I would invite the parties’ attention to another possible basis for resolving the issue of the effect of Order No. 15996 of 1980.
I particularly invite the attention of the parties and of the commission to page 6 of that order, which sets forth a figure of $74,608 for total water revenues and a figure of $316,217 for a rate base.
Both attorneys admitted at oral argument that they did not know what was included in each of those numbers. More particularly, they did not know whether the revenue figure included hook up or connection fees or not. It appears to me from a view of the entire record that that figure approximates annual revenues exclusive of such fees, and if that is the fact, and if it is the further fact that the rate base figure did not include capital items supplied by the customers, then, in that event, it is perfectly clear that the 1980 order presents no problems and this appeal should not even be before us:
In other words, it would seem to me to be totally inconsistent that the commission in entering the order would have done anything other than exclude the fees from the revenue figure and the customer supplied assets from the rate base — to have done otherwise would have made the order internally inconsistent.
Accordingly, it is my suspicion that if the commission and the parties would simply reexamine the evidence of the 1980 case which supports those two numbers, the case could be settled because there would be no controversy to support either this appeal in the first instance or further proceedings at the present juncture.
This Court’s majority opinion states at 337, 723 P.2d at page 881.
Hayden Pines asserts without dispute that it cannot at this point request higher rates for the period of 1981-84 to compensate for the lower revenue and rate base resulting from the accounting which the Commission’s present order mandates.
Such would not be true if the above analysis which I have presented proves to be correct.
At page 339,723 at page 883 of the opinion, the majority states:
Hayden Pines responds and there seems no dispute that by booking the fees as income, the utility reduced its revenue requirement and concomitantly the rates charged to the ratepayers. Further, Hayden Pines asserts and there seems no dispute that had it been required to book these fees as contributions rather than income, it justifiably could have requested higher rates to compensate for the loss of revenues. Thus, as best we can determine, Hayden Pines would be prejudiced by the Commission now reducing its rate base by the amount of the fees collected, since it cannot recoup the accompanying loss in future rates from rates charged during the 1981-84 period.
Again, that assertion of Hayden Pines would not necessarily be true if the genesis of the revenue figure and the rate base figure is as I suspect.