DENVER – Customers upset with electricity price increases in the Four Corners had their day in court Monday, but it will be weeks or longer before they get an answer.
La Plata Electric Association, Empire Electric Association, White River Electric Association and some of their biggest customers say the new rate for wholesale electricity by their power supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission, is unfair.
They want the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to overturn the rate – something it has never done to Tri-State.
Tri-State maintains that the PUC has no jurisdiction over its rates, which are set by a company board that includes representatives from LPEA and the other protesting co-ops.
After arguing all year through legal briefs, the dispute made it to the courtroom Monday, the first day of a hearing that could last through Wednesday or longer.
Paul Gomez, an administrative law judge for the PUC, first must decide whether the PUC has authority to review Tri-State’s rates. If he decides in favor of LPEA and Empire, then later this year, the co-ops can challenge Tri-State’s rate.
If the PUC asserts authority over Tri-State, it could change the balance of power between Tri-State and its critics, which include environmentalists who hate Tri-State’s heavy reliance on coal, as well as its smaller customers, who are upset with the way Tri-State uses long-term contracts to get its way.
“I certainly understand the enormity of this hearing,” Gomez said.
In January, Tri-State started charging new rates that greatly raised prices for customers who had agreed to shift their power use to off-peak times. That includes thousands of households plus large industrial customers in Southwest Colorado such as Kinder Morgan, BP and ExxonMobil. The three companies joined the legal complaint against Tri-State.
Tri-State is owned by the 44 rural electric cooperatives in four states to which it supplies power, and the company’s board sets its rates. Tri-State lawyers argued that their company is answerable to its customers and owners, not to the PUC. They said if the PUC gets involved, it would go against 60 years of precedent on the way the U.S. Constitution is applied to rural electric cooperatives.
In any case, the co-ops shouldn’t be complaining, said Robert Youle, a lawyer for Tri-State.
“The evidence in this case is going to show that they have been treated extremely well,” Youle said. “These customers and these members have paid among the lowest rates that any Tri-State customers or members have ever paid.”
But Thorvald Nelson, a lawyer for the group challenging Tri-State, said Colorado law always has allowed utility customers to complain about the fairness of a rate to the PUC, even though it doesn’t happen often.
“This commission is the only entity to whom we can turn,” Nelson said. “Otherwise, there will be thousands of Colorado citizens who find themselves in the minority within Tri-State’s board room with no redress, and that’s just not right.”
Gomez said he wants to issue a decision within two weeks of the end of the hearing.
jhanel@durangoherald.com
