Court Opinion

ID: 9849672
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:44:03.478004+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:23.099147
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Kelley
specially concurring.
I concur in the opinion of Mr. Justice Pringle. However, in view of the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Groves, I feel compelled to add my personal views.
I might agree with the dissent but for Article XXV of the Colorado Constitution, which I cannot ignore. We are not here concerned with the impairment of a contract. We are concerned with delegated constitutional power: the “power to regulate the facilities, service and rates” of public utilities, “wheresoever situate or operating within the State of Colorado, whether within or without a home rule city * *
The contract interjected here is a franchise granted to the gas company permitting its use of the City’s streets, which also fixed the rates to be charged at the outset and provided that such rates should remain in force “unless and until changed in accordance with law.”
The “in accordance with law” provision recognizes the ultimate power of the People to change the procedure and the forum for rate regulation. The clause, “Any and all jurisdiction which the City may now or hereafter *560possess with respect to the Company in local or municipal matters,” is further recognition of the fact that the City could lose its jurisdiction as to rate regulation.
Regardless of whether they knowingly acknowledged it or not, the power the City had in 1949 was delegated to it by the People by virtue of Article XX. The parties contracted with the full knowledge that the People, the sovereign, could withdraw the power. They are deemed to have entered into the franchise agreement subject to the reserved police power of the state. Zelinger v. Public Service Co., 164 Colo. 424, 435 P.2d 412. A change was made by Article XXV which is binding on the City.
When the People spoke, they ended all debate as to a “local and municipal” matter vis-a-vis “state-wide concern.” The regulation of services and rates of public utilities were specifically made a matter of state-wide concern. See People ex rel. v. Denver, 125 Colo. 167, 243 P.2d 397.
The franchise, so far as it granted rights of user to the utility, is still in force. So far as the regulation of service and rates is concerned, the sovereign has transferred that power to the Public Utilities Commission.