Court Opinion

ID: 9547647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:50:01.868556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:17:55.682696
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring specially:
I concur in the result reached by the majority, but not without some strong reservations. Today’s opinion will seem to some to be inconsistent with our decision in *422Grindstone Butte Mutual Canal Co. v. Idaho Public Utilities Commission, 102 Idaho 175, 627 P.2d 804 (1981), decided just one short year ago. We held in Grindstone, with only the author of today’s majority opinion dissenting, that “it [is] within the Commission’s jurisdictional province to consider in its rate-making capacity all relevant criteria including energy conservation and concomitant concepts of optimum use and resource allocations.” 102 Idaho at 181, 627 P.2d at 810. While today’s opinion does not expressly overrule this holding, it certainly runs contrary to it. The majority states that “[a]ny such difference (discrimination) in a utility’s rates and charges must be justified by a corresponding classification of customers that is based upon factors such as cost of service, quantity of electricity used, difference in conditions of service, or the time, nature and pattern of the use.” The difference in charges here, however, was clearly based on both future cost of service and an attempt to achieve “optimum use and resource allocation.” The record supports the Commission’s findings as to these two points, and the majority does not dispute this.
The majority’s reason for reversing, with which I am not unsympathetic, is that imposing the hookup charge on new customers discriminates against those customers in favor of old customers. At first blush, this appears to be true. Dr. Power’s comments on the utility of tracking causal responsibility in the field of economics is correct to a point; it is difficult to say whether the old customers or the new customers “cause” the need for new capital outlays in an economic sense.1 Upon closer examination, however, it is apparent that new customers “causing” additional capital outlays was not the sole basis for the Commission’s decision. The Commission, as admitted by the majority, also found that the one-time hookup fees were necessary as a pricing signal to alert new customers that (1) the cost of electricity was going to increase dramatically in the near future if growth in electrical demand continued, and (2) that alternatives that were potentially less expensive were available. The distinction between old and new customers for this reason is entirely rational. The cost to old customers of switching heat sources would be greater than the costs of initially installing alternative heat sources for new customers. Additionally, the information available to new customers, as well as to the PUC and the utilities, concerning the real costs of electrical energy is much greater than the information available at the time that old customers first began using electrical energy. New customers are therefore capable of making more informed choices as to energy sources and costs. Thus, there appears to be a rational basis for the distinction drawn by the Commission in furtherance of its jurisdiction to “consider ... all relevant criteria including energy conservation and concomitant concepts of optimum use and resource allocation.” Grindstone, 102 Idaho at 175, 627 P.2d 804.
I concur because I am not convinced that the hookup fee imposed is a “rate” which the Commission is statutorily authorized to impose and because I am concerned that new Washington Water Power customers who live on the Washington side of the state line may not be paying the same fee as Idaho customers, although they may contribute equally to new capital costs and may have the same resource choices available to them.2 Due to the fact that the Court has decided to give this case priority, I will reserve elaboration and further *423thought on these issues until a petition for rehearing, if any, is filed.

. I note that this argument could also be applied to virtually every new cost imposed on an electrical system, but that this does not necessarily preclude the Commission from fixing responsibility for costs in its rates. Obviously, the Commission is not required to adhere to any particular economic theory in fixing rates; since choosing one particular economic theory may itself determine the outcome. See Baker, The Ideology of the Economic Analysis of Law, 5 Philosophy & Public Affairs 3 (1975). As the majority concedes, other" factors enter into the decision-making process.

. Nothing in the record indicates whether the Commission’s Washington counterpart has imposed a similar fee.