Court Opinion

ID: 9673020
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:04:38.099674+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:19.742501
License: Public Domain

POWERS, Justice,
dissenting.
The legislature explicitly declared that the kind of agency proceeding now before us “is not a rate case.” PURA § 3.211(i) (emphasis added). The majority conclude nevertheless that such a proceeding is a rate case. Believing this to be an unjustified negation of the plainly stated legislative will, I respectfully dissent.1
Since 1976, PURA has provided that “[a] utility may not make changes in its rates except” by fihng in the Commission a statement of intent to change its rates, initiating thereby a rate case. Id. § 3.211(a) (emphasis added). A utility may not under PURA increase its “rates” in any other way. Since *1671991, PURA Section 3.211 has provided, however, that a utility may obtain “adjustments” in its customers’ bills — to account for increases or decreases in the utility’s franchise-tax expense — without the necessity of the utility’s changing its “rates” through a rate case.2 PURA § 3.211(i). Section 3.211(i) explicitly declares that an adjustment proceeding thereunder “is not a rate case under” PURA section 3.211(a). The purpose of this provision is to avoid the expense of a rate case when it is not necessary; the “adjustments” lie entirely outside the Commission’s ratemaking function.3 PURA § 3.211(i).
The legislature in 1995 enacted PURA section 3.351. This statute is intended to facilitate an orderly transition from a regulated utility market to a more competitive market. See PURA § 3.351. Under the statute, a local exchange company may elect to come under the new regime by so notifying the Commission in wilting. By making its election, the company commits itself “to limit any increase in the rates charged” for certain services and “increases in rates for basic network services are permitted only with commission approval.”4 PURA § 3.353(a), (b) (emphasis added).
PURA section 3.211(i) gives GTE a statutory right to the annual adjustments to its customers’ bills; the company exercised the right for several years and the Commission made the necessary annual adjustment in amounts before GTE elected to be governed by PURA section 3.353(a) and (b).
No statute expressly declares that a local exchange company, such as GTE, surrenders its statutory right to the annual adjustments by electing to be governed by the provisions of PURA section 3.351 enacted in 1995. The majority decision therefore requires an implication — a conclusion that PURA section 3.353(a) and (b) impliedly amended PURA section 3.211(i) by engrafting thereon an unstated exception: the annual billing adjustments would not be available to a local exchange company if the company elected to be governed by the new 1995 provisions of PURA section 3.353(a) and (b). I believe the implied-amendment theory is unquestionably foreclosed by the applicable rules of statutory construction.
It appears in the first place that there is no repugnance between the texts of PURA section 3.353(a) and (b), on the one hand, and PURA section 3.211(i) on the other. PURA sections 3.353(a) and (b) basically forbid “rate increases” without Commission approval. By expressly taking the annual billing adjustments out of the Commission’s rate-making authority and procedures altogether, the legislature removed any possible repugnance. The legislature rather plainly intended both statutes to operate independently: a local exchange company making the election might not, without Commission approval, file *168a statement of intent to change its rates, initiating thereby a rate proceeding under PURA 8.211(a), but a utility may continue to obtain an annual billing adjustment because it “is not a rate case.” PURA § 3.211(i). This is the obvious and natural construction to be placed upon the words of the two statutes under the familiar rules of statutory construction.5
Implications from statutory language are forbidden if the legislative intention may be gathered from a reasonable interpretation of the statute as written; implications are permissible only after one has first concluded a particular intention of the legislature is obvious, but not expressly stated; implications are never permitted to contradict or add to a statute.6 Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. United N. & S. Dev. Co., 140 Tex. 417, 168 S.W.2d 226, 229 (1942). Courts may not create by implication a repugnance in statutory provisions; any repugnance thought to exist must be positive as well as clear from the text of the statute itself. Even if such a repugnance exists in the statutory language, we are required to harmonize and give effect to both if at all possible by assigning each a meaning that will achieve that result. Acker v. Texas Water Comm’n, 790 S.W.2d 299, 301 (Tex.1990); Duval Corp. v. Sadler, 407 S.W.2d 493, 498 (Tex.1966); Standard v. Sadler, 383 S.W.2d 391, 396-97 (Tex.1964); see also United States v. Federal Dep. Ins. Corp., 560 S.W.2d 119, 121 (Tex.Civ.App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1977, writ ref'd n.r.e.); 1A Sutherland Statutory Construction § 22.13 (1992,1993) (amendments by implication require affirmative showing legislature intended amendment implied, coupled with irreconcilable provisions in earlier and later statutes).
I should address this Court’s contrary rationale in Southwestern Public Service Co. v. Public Utility Commission, 962 S.W.2d 207 (Tex.App.—Austin 1998, pet. requested). There the court gave iron-clad and almost exclusive legal effect to the definition of a “rate” in PURA section 1.003(14), which defines the word to include “every compensation ... charged, or collected ... directly or indirectly by any public utility.” PURA § 1.003(14). The court noted that the legislature did not amend this definition of “rate;” the court recognized, however, that the legislature must have meant something in its declaration that a fuel-reconciliation proceeding “may not be considered a rate case.” PURA § 2.212(g)(2)(C). The court confessed that it was “not entirely clear to us” what implications PURA section 2.212(g)(2)(C) might have, but concluded that they amounted only to a legislative intention “that fuel-related proceedings may be conducted separately from others that involve rate-changes.” Southwestern Pub. Serv. Co., 962 S.W.2d at 218. This begs the question; obviously a fuel-reconciliation proceeding must be conducted separately from a rate case because the two are antithetical.7 While fuel costs form only a component of total operating expenses in a rate case, a fuel-reconciliation proceeding aims at adjusting only the anomalies resulting from actual, fluctuating fuel prices since the end of the last rate ease and the beginning of a future rate case. The obvious intention of the legislature was to avoid the time and expense of a full-scale rate case, both to the public and to the utility, when the issue involves only a single *169item of what are indisputably operating expenses — fuel costs in Southwestern Public Service Co., franchise taxes in the present appeal.
In Southwestern Public Service Co. the court at least suggested a minimal legal effect that might survive in the legislative mandate that a fuel-reconciliation proceeding “may not be considered a rate case.” Here the majority decline to suggest any legal effect and meaning that might be attributed to the legislative mandate that a proceeding under PURA section 3.211(i) “is not a rate case.” What meaning and effect does that statutory provision now have? The majority opinion necessarily concludes this statute is entirely neutered and without meaning or legal effect.
Because I believe the majority’s decision plainly contravenes the venerable rules of statutory construction set out above, I cannot agree.

. My dissenting views were also expressed in Southwestern Bell v. Public Utility Commission, 863 S.W.2d 754, 759 (Tex.App.—Austin 1993, writ denied).

. PURA section 3.21 l(i) provides that "[t]he commission on its own motion or on the petition of a utility shall provide for the adjustment of a utility's billing to reflect any increase or decrease of tax liability ... resulting from" tax legislation enacted by the legislature in 1991. Subsequent provisions in PURA section 3.211 (i) provide for annual adjustments in the amount of the increase or decrease. The 1991 tax legislation is found at Act of August 12, 1991, 72d Leg., 1st C.S., ch. 5, 1991 Tex. Gen. Laws 134-97. The legislature's choice of the words "billing” and "petition” was not accidental.

. Sums paid by a utilily for franchise-tax expense are ordinarily treated as operating expenses for the purpose of calculating rates in a rate proceeding conducted in the Commission. See generally, Ron Moss, Ratemaking in the Public Utility Commission, 44 Baylor L.Rev. 825, 827-43 (1992). Insofar as rates and tariffs are concerned, the Commission "may not authorize a utility to automatically adjust and pass through to its customers changes in costs of the utility” save for an exception not material here. PURA § 3.211(g) (emphasis added). That is why PURA section 3.21 l(i) does not refer to a utility's "rates” or "tariffs”; it requires instead adjustments in the utility's "billing.” Similarly, the legislature chose to direct that adjustments be made pursuant to a utility's "petition” and not the "statement of intent” necessary to initiate a change in a utility's rates and tariff. See PURA § 3.211(a). That is why a proceeding initiated by the utility’s petition under PURA section 3.211 (i) “is not a rate case under this section.” PURA § 3.211 (i).

.Under PURA section 3.211(a) a utility may change its rates only by filing with the Commission a statement of its intent to do so. The filing of the statement ordinarily initiates a rate case in which the Commission fixes the utility’s rates under calculations dictated by other provisions of PURA. Approval of the Commission is not required before filing the statement of intent. See supra note 2.

. Courts shall construe any question regarding statutes so as to give effect to the purpose of the legislature, deriving the legislative intention from a general view of the whole enactment. Citizens Bank of Bryan v. First State Bank, 580 S.W.2d 344, 348 (Tex.1979). The words of a statute are not to be forced beyond what their meaning in ordinary usage will bear. Railroad Comm'n of Tex. v. Miller, 434 S.W.2d 670, 672 (Tex.1968). See supra note 2.

. PURA provides no method for changing a utility's rates save by a rate case initiated by the Commission on its own motion or by a utility's filing a statement of intent to change its rates. PURA section 3.21 l(i) declares that an annual billing adjustment thereunder "is not a rate case.” The majority declare that the adjustment results in an "increase in rates” forbidden by PURA section 3.351(a), (b). Because a utility's rates may not be increased save through an order resolving a rate case, the majority necessarily conclude an annual billing adjustment is a rate case. This construction contradicts PURA section 3.21 l(i) (declaring an annual adjustment is not a rate case) and adds to PURA section 3.21 l(i) a proviso not expressed in the words of that section.

.See supra note 2, 4, 6.