Court Opinion

ID: 9550942
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:45:32.888574+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:47.551105
License: Public Domain

RABINOWITZ, Justice,
concurring.
Although I agree with the court’s decision, I am persuaded that the reasonable basis test should not have been utilized in the present case and that, in fact, it is duplicating the function of the substantial evidence test in a confusing manner.
In Jager v. State, 537 P.2d 1100, 1107 n.23 (Alaska 1975), we noted the development of four principal standards of review of administrative decisions.
These are the ‘substantial evidence test’ for questions of fact; the ‘reasonable basis test’ for questions of law involving agency expertise; the ‘substitution of judgment test’ for questions of law where no expertise is involved; and the ‘reasonable and not arbitrary test’ for review of administrative regulations. [citations omitted]
The substantial evidence test thus clearly is intended to be “employed to review factual determinations made by an agency in the course of its proceedings.” Id. In contrast, the reasonable basis test, though characterized in Jager as applicable to questions of law involving agency expertise, has been applied in practice to review complex questions of mixed law and fact incident to the formulation of policy that is within the agency’s particular expertise.1
The reasonable basis test is utilized by this court whenever the agency is, in effect, *966making law by creating standards or setting criteria which will be used to evaluate future situations in addition to the individual case before it. An example of this type of agency decision is Weaver Bros., Inc. v. Alaska Transportation Comm’n (Alaska 1978), in which the agency’s interpretation of the meaning of the term “dormancy” as a criterion in the transfer of a motor carrier permit was judged by the reasonable basis standard of review. A second application of the reasonable basis test is to the merits of an individual petition or cause where the particular rationale may not be broadly applicable to future matters coming before the agency, but the nature of the individual case is such that policy questions involving the agency’s area of expertise are paramount to and inseparable from the facts underlying the administrative decision. See State, Dep’t. of Natural Resources v. Universal Education Society, Inc., 583 P.2d 806 (Alaska 1978). There we held that the agency’s refusal to convert an offshore prospecting permit to a mining lease was properly reviewed under the reasonable basis test because:
It is clear to us that the decision to grant or deny offshore mining leases is within the expertise of the Division of Lands. The decision involves both fundamental policy formulations and complex subject matter. The Division has been entrusted by the legislature with the allocation of lands for offshore mining leases. In making this allocation the Division must make, among others, determinations as to what is the best use of the land, where precisely the land is located, and what method of mining will most efficiently recover the valuable minerals.
Id. at 811-12. These two distinct functions of the reasonable basis test are complemented by utilization of the substantial evidence test to review the evidentiary basis for an agency’s decision on the merits of an individual case. Though the primary focus of this type of review is on the facts of the particular case before the agency at the time, I recognize that to the extent the agency decides that the facts of a specific case warrant one of a number of possible outcomes, the agency action could be interpreted as making law in the individual matter.2
Although our past decisions are not entirely unambiguous, we ordinarily have applied both the substantial evidence and the reasonable basis tests to administrative decisions only where the policy-making or criteria-establishing portions of the administrative decision are clearly separable from the decision on the merits of the individual application.3 Thus, in Weaver Bros., Inc. v. Alaska Transportation Comm’n (Alaska 1978), we found that the agency’s interpretation of the term “dormancy” was a matter of policy subject to the reasonable basis standard of review, and further held that there was substantial evidence to support the agency’s determination that the individual motor carrier in question met the criteria for non-dormant status. To the contrary, in those cases where the questions of policy have been so intertwined with the facts of the individual application that a distinct policy determination is impracticable, this court has applied only the more deferential reasonable basis standard of review to the overall administrative determination.4
*967Though I agree with the application of both the reasonable basis and the substantial evidence tests in the Weaver Bros, case, I disagree with the application of both in the present opinion. In my view, the test which was improperly applied here is the reasonable basis test. My difficulty with the reasonable basis test in the present case is simply that I am unable to separate out any law or policy-making function of the agency’s decision which is distinct from the specific facts of the case. Thus, when an attempt is made to apply the reasonable basis test to the selection of the particular alternative plan for access to the appellee Stanton’s P.U.D. in this case, I conclude that I am applying it to exactly the same facts that the majority evaluates under the substantial evidence test (/. e., whether the decision to provide one-way access is supportable).
Concededly, the determination of whether to apply the substantial evidence as opposed to the reasonable basis test (when one or the other but not both of these standards of review is appropriate) is not free of difficulty. This case is particularly misleading because the board of adjustment was presented several alternative “engineering” solutions to the access problem by its staff. Normally, such a discretionary decision by an administrative agency within its area of expertise triggers a reasonable basis standard of review. However, application of the reasonable basis test to the board’s choice in this case carries with it the implication that the agency has “made law” on a question that is unique to the circumstances of the instant case. And when the case at bar is compared to the holdings in other cases where only the substantial evidence test was applied,5 it becomes clearer that what distinguishes this case from the Weaver Bros, and Universal Education Society opinions is that, in this case, review of whether the agency has applied appropriate standards or criteria against which to judge the claim of an individual applicant has collapsed into the review of the determination of the facts of the individual case.
Appendix A to follow.
*968APPENDIX A

. See Alaska Pub. Util. Comm'n v. Chugach Elec. Ass’n, 580 P.2d 687, 693-94 (Alaska 1978); Jager v. State, 537 P.2d 1100, 1107 (Alaska 1975). See also 4 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 30.04, at 213 (1958), which concludes: “[I]t is for us today simply a question of policy as to what matters shall be ‘matters of law.’ ” [quoting from Dickerson, Administrative Justice and the Supremacy of Law 126-27 (1927). Davis also notes;
Every determination which defines the meaning of a legal concept is to that extent analytically a determination of law, even though the facts to which the concept is applied are unique and may never again occur.
Id. § 30.02, at 195.

. See note 1, supra.

. See Kelly v. Zamarello, 486 P.2d 906 (Alaska 1971) (reviewing Commissioner of Natural Resources’ determination as to bids on oil and gas leases on reasonable basis grounds and applying the substantial evidence test to the factual aspects of the administrator’s findings that the applicants intended that the offer of an added royalty be considered part of the bid itself); Pan American Petroleum Corp. v. Shell Oil Co., 455 P.2d 12 (Alaska 1969) (reviewing the administrative decision on oil lease royalties based on the director’s construction of the term “commercial quantities” on reasonable basis grounds, and ruling that the findings of fact were supported by substantial evidence).

.See State, Dep’t. of Natural Resources v. Universal Educ. Soc’y, Inc., 583 P.2d 806 (Alaska 1978). Other cases in which the reasonable basis test has been found to be appropriate in evaluating an agency decision in an individual case which was based mainly on policy grounds include: North Slope Bor. v. LeResche, 581 P.2d 1112 (Alaska 1978) (reviewing the *967Commissioner of Natural Resources’ rejection of the Borough’s application to select state lands); Alaska Pub. Util. Comm’n v. Chugach Elec. Ass’n, 580 P.2d 687 (Alaska 1978) (review of agency’s delineation of electrical service areas for competing utilities); Jager v. State, 537 P.2d 1100 (Alaska 1975) (reviewing the Public Utilities Commission’s decision not to conduct a rate investigation); Mobile Oil Corp. v. Local Boundary Comm’n, 518 P.2d 92 (Alaska 1974) (reviewing agency’s decision to incorporate a local self-government unit); King v. Alaska State Hous. Auth., 512 P.2d 887 (Alaska 1973) (reviewing agency’s selection of redevelopment proposals); Swindel v. Kelly, 499 P.2d 291 (Alaska 1972) (reviewing cancellation of a permit to lease public land).

. So far, the cases which apply the substantial evidence test seem to come mainly from the areas of zoning law and workers’ compensation decisions. See Kelly Supply Co., Inc. v. City of Anchorage, 516 P.2d 1206 (Alaska. 1973) (review of board of adjustment’s refusal to permit a nonconforming use of a building); Brown v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., 444 P.2d 529 (Alaska 1968) (reviewing Workmen’s Compensation Board’s finding of no residual disability); Keiner v. City of Anchorage, 378 P.2d 406 (Alaska 1963) (review of Board of Health’s decision that a particular building should be removed as a health and safety hazard). See also Application of Peterson, 499 P.2d 304 (Alaska 1972) (review of denial of admission to the state bar).