Court Opinion

ID: 9673356
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:10:37.038119+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:21.736641
License: Public Domain

JONES, Justice,
concurring.
This is an administrative appeal originating from an order of the Public Utility Commission of Texas that granted rate-base treatment for certain construction work in progress (“CWIP”) requested by Houston Lighting & Power Company (HL & P). I agree with the result reached by the majority. I also agree with the holdings in the majority opinion, with one exception. I cannot agree that section 41(a) of the Public Utility Regulatory Act (PURA), Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 1446c (West Supp.1993), may be construed to create — or permit — an independent threshold test of “exceptional circumstances” before the Commission is authorized to grant CWIP.
The relevant portion of section 41(a) provides:
*871The inclusion of construction work in progress is an exceptional form of rate relief to be granted only upon the demonstration by the utility that such inclusion is necessary to the financial integrity of the utility. Construction work in progress shall not be included in the rate base for major projects under construction to the extent that such projects have been inefficiently or imprudently planned or managed.
PURA § 41(a). In my opinion, the phrase “exceptional form of rate relief” was intended merely to underscore the seriousness of the requirement that such inclusion be “necessary to the financial integrity of the utility”; in other words, the purpose of the phrase was to stress that, in Senator Caperton’s words, “[CWIP] is not to be parcelled out as a matter of course.”
When CWIP is truly necessary to the financial integrity of a utility as a result of a project that has been efficiently and prudently planned and managed, surely that condition is, almost by definition, an exceptional circumstance. The addition, therefore, of a threshold test of “exceptional circumstances” can do nothing but add further complexity to a process that is already complex enough.