Court Opinion

ID: 9855498
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:26:24.200263+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:36:06.037347
License: Public Domain

COMPTON, Justice,
with whom RABINOWITZ, Justice, joins, dissenting.
The legislature delegated to the Department the authority to interpret AS 23.10.-375. See AS 23.10.395 (“The department may issue orders and adopt regulations necessary to carry out AS 23.10.375-23.10.-400.”). The Department exercised this authority by adopting 8 AAC 20.030(1), which defines the term “return transportation.”
Concededly the regulation does not address fundamental policy matters or matters within the scope of agency expertise; it is an “interpretive regulation,” not a “legislative regulation.” Kelly v. Zamarello, 486 P.2d 906, 909-11 (Alaska 1971). Thus, this court is not required to apply the “reasonable basis” test in reviewing the regulation. Id.; Nat’l Bank of Alaska v. State, Dep’t of Revenue, 642 P.2d 811, 815 (Alaska 1982). But although the court here has the power to substitute its judgment for that of the agency, precedent counsels restraint in exercising this power. Kelly, 486 P.2d at 910. Especially where an agency interpretation is longstanding, this court should defer to the agency in the absence of “weighty reasons” for doing otherwise. Id. at 910-11; Nat’l Bank of Alaska, 642 P.2d at 815. See generally 2 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 7.9 (2nd ed. 1979). Such “weighty reasons” are lacking in this case.
The term “return transportation” is broad enough to require interpretation by the Department. It is not obviously the intent of the legislature that the cost of a person’s transportation should include only the cost of moving that person’s body from one location to another by the cheapest possible means.
*215The Department appears to have chosen an interpretation that is consistent with the legislature’s intent.
The statute provides that if an employer furnishes transportation from the place of hire, then the employer must furnish return transportation as well. AS 23.10.380. Thus the legislature conditioned the employer’s obligation to furnish return transportation upon an initial decision to furnish transportation from the place of hire.
The regulation uses this approach ⅛ defining the term “return transportation”: the extent of the employer’s obligation to furnish return transportation is made dependent upon the extent to which the employer furnished transportation from the place of hire. 8 AAC 20.030(1). Like the statute, the regulation is based upon a reasonable policy: the lengths to which the employer is willing to go to lure an employee to Alaska are a fair measure of the employee’s expectations of return upon termination.
The court’s interpretation of the term “return transportation” seems not so much concerned with advancing the purpose of the legislature as with minimizing the obligations of employers. The court imposes a “minimal obligation,” which “serves the statutory purpose without subjecting employers to onerous and unbargained-for obligations to their former employees.”
Leaving aside the question whether this court should strictly construe in favor of employers remedial statutes intended to protect the public treasury, the court’s interpretation fails even to effect its stated purpose of minimally satisfying the statutory purpose.1 An employee who, together with spouse, children and belongings, has been transported to Alaska at an employer’s expense, and whose employment is thereafter terminated, will find little comfort in a one-way ticket back to his or her place of hire. If the employee uses the ticket, the spouse and children will be left to become “a burden on the economic resources of the state.”
The Department’s definition of “return transportation” is consistent with the legislature’s purpose. Because the definition has stood for 15 years, it should not be overruled in the absence of weighty reasons. I would uphold the regulation and reverse the decision of the trial court.

. No doubt the court is correct in suggesting that the statute was intended to protect the public treasury from the burden of stranded employees. However, its suggestion that the statute was directed only to seasonal employees is obviously inconsistent with the broad language of the statute.