Brown: Surcharge still likely

Despite the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. board’s change of mind, the imposition of a fuel surcharge fee this month is most likely as the government rushes to make into an emergency rule.

Attorney general Pamela Brown said in a press conference yesterday that implementation of the fuel surcharge fee is just “a matter of time.”

She said that chances of applying it for the Dec. 7 billing remain high, noting that various groups—the Commonwealth Utilities Corp., AGO, and the CNMI Superior Court—have been meeting to determine the best approach.

An emergency regulation takes effect immediately after the signing of the governor.

Brown said that right now, CUC has three options: adopt the published regulation on the fuel surcharge fee; adopt the new amended regulation; or go down the emergency regulation route.

“I think we’re leaning toward the third option,” said Brown.

She noted, though, that the CUC has to present hard data and enough information to justify the situation as an emergency. As it is, she said, CUC will most likely justify the situation, given the huge financial difficulty it is facing.

As far as the AGO is concerned, she said it objected to the CUC’s adoption of the amended regulation because it is not consistent with the original published proposal. Further, CUC had voted to impose different rates on costumers, which is seen as discriminatory and unacceptable.

All the same, she said that the AGO recognizes the CUC’s need to impose the surcharge fee.

“We were looking at the procedure, whether they followed the process. What they adopted was totally different from the original proposal,” she said.

She said the AGO wants to ensure that the regulation is in a “legally defensible position.”

The CUC board, which voted to impose the fuel surcharge fee last Friday, decided during a special session Tuesday to junk the imposition of the surcharge upon receiving the AGO’s opinion that the regulation the board had adopted was unlawful.

Assistant attorney general Alan Barak, in a Nov. 29 letter, had said the regulation was unlawful because it was different from the proposed regulation that was earlier presented to the public and because it discriminates against one class of customers.

CUC initially wanted to implement a 3.5-cent across-the-board fuel surcharge but the board voted Friday to impose such rate only on the government. They voted to impose 1.5 cent per kwh on residential and commercial users.

Barak said there should be only one fuel surcharge fee, as CUC’s general powers do not allow for differential fees.

Brown maintained this position yesterday.

“That’s a legal question. That’s under analysis but the statute does not allow multiple rates. The rate should be the same because it is tied to what CUC is paying for fuel,” she said.

CUC has warned that not imposing the fuel surcharge fee would result in people experiencing more power outages as the utility firm continues to run out of money to buy fuel for power generation.

Brown said the AGO has been working closely with CUC on the plan since the last six months.

By law, she said that CUC needs to adopt two kinds of regulations in relation to the surcharge fee: a regulation allowing it and a regulation setting a ceiling for the fee.

Ultimately, she said that CUC would decide what rate to pass on to the consumers.