Torres and Angello were customers of CUC and filed a petition in August 2006 with CUC, arguing that their utility rates had been illegally raised.
CUC had raised the rates the previous month under the authority of an executive order issued by Gov. Benigno Fitial, which abolished the former rate caps set by the Legislature in 8 CMC § 8123(m) and also reduced CUC’s board of directors to an advisory role with no actual authority to govern the agency.
In October 2006, CUC denied the plaintiffs’ request to reduce their bills to conform with the rate schedules that were in effect prior to the increase.
The plaintiffs paid their bill under protest, but appealed to the Superior Court for relief from the rate increase.
In April 2007, the Superior Court upheld the ultimate decision of CUC’s administrative hearing officer and since it had found that the governor had not overstepped his boundaries in making the changes, it stated that the increased rates were never actually illegal.
Upon review, the Supreme Court reversed and found that the governor’s wholesale restructuring of the legislation that created and governed CUC was indeed unconstitutional.
Citing Sonoda v. Cabrera, 1997 MP 5, the Supreme Court held that “a governor does not have the authority to take on functions which are delegated to the Legislature by the Constitution. It is true that Article III, Section 15 allows a governor to reorganize the executive branch in ways that ‘affect existing law,’ but the Constitution does not sanction a governor’s complete abolition and overhaul of existing statutes that are the foundation of executive branch entities.”
Since Article II of the Constitution reserves that power solely for the Legislature, the executive order and resulting rate increases were unconstitutional.
Accordingly, the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Superior Court, and remanded the case to CUC for recalculation of Torres’ and Angello’s bills.
The full text of the Court’s decision will be available on the CNMI Judiciary Web page http://www.justice.gov.mp/.
