By Gemma Q. Casas
Variety News Staff

MORE than 400 families who joined Rep. Stanley T. Torres’s complaint questioning the legality of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.’s new higher power rates may face disconnection if they don’t pay their disputed bills now that CUC’s administrative hearing office has ruled that the rates were legally implemented.
Torres and his legislative consultant, Jack Angello, said they will appeal CUC’s decision to the yet to be formed board of the Public Utilities Commission.
The complaining customers don’t have to pay their disputed bills until PUC reaches its own conclusion on the issue, according to Angello.
If PUC rules unfavorably again, Angello said they may take the matter to Superior Court.
In his 12-page administrative order, CUC hearing officer Linn Asper said any party aggrieved by his decision “has the right to request judicial review.”
Torres and Angello said they and the more than 400 families they represent in the case will only pay their disputed CUC bills when the court tells them to do so.
“If ultimately the court rules that we owe this money, we will respect that,” said Angello in an interview yesterday.
“Strike one, two more to go,” said Torres, Ind.-Saipan. “It’s difficult to deal with an agency that decides on its own disputes and I hope to further explore my administrative remedies in a more public-oriented agency such as the Public Utilities Commission.”
Angello said other residents have also filed separate complaints with CUC.
The complaining customers haven’t paid their disputed bills since Oct. 2006 while others have not been paying since November.
In his order, Asper said: “Customers shall pay withheld electrical charges to CUC within 30 days after the date of this order (Feb. 26, 2007), or make arrangements with CUC for a repayment schedule within that time period.”
At issue is whether the governor’s decision to implement the new CUC electric rates in July 2006 was an abuse of his constitutional and statutory emergency powers.
CUC residential customers used to pay only 11 cents per kilowatt hour and an additional 3.5-cent fuel surcharge prior to the adoption of CUC’s new power rates. The commercial and government sectors used to pay 16 cents per kwh, plus the 3.5-cent fuel surcharge.
Torres argued that the governor exceeded the constitutional authority granted to him to reorganize executive branch offices, agencies and instrumentalities by making substantial amendments to CUC’s enabling statutes.
But according to Asper, “The Legislature has affirmatively enacted interim provisions of law that will maintain the current CUC electric rate structure as adopted in the July 2006 CUC regulations, until such time as it is changed by CUC or superceded by PUC rate-making. Given the extensive affirmative involvement of the CNMI Legislature in the CUC electric rate-making process, the constitutional objections to Executive Order 2006-04 no longer apply….As a result, customers are not entitled to summary adjudication on the dispositive issue of law that they raised in their motion….”