A California court of appeals recently held that utility companies operating in rural areas of the state do not collect a higher cost of capital, also referred to as a rate of return, than other utility companies. In Ponderosa Telephone Co. v. California Public Utilities Commission, several small, rural, privately-owned…
On June 27, 2019, the Indiana Supreme Court concluded that Indiana utility companies may be estopped from challenging the use of customer class revenue allocation factors under Indiana’s Transmission, Distribution, and Storage System Improvement Charge statute (the “TDSIC Statute”)[1] if such companies demonstrate uncontested support of the factors’ use in…
In July 2018, the town of Brownsburg passed an ordinance introducing a new fee to certain water customers outside the town limits. The fee, pursuant to I.C. § 8-1-2-103(d), helped fund the town’s fire hydrants and had been imposed on all Brownsburg residents since 2010. Shortly after the ordinance’s enactment,…
The United States Supreme Court recently issued its decision in a case that, on the surface, appears to impact the wine and liquor industry. However, the ruling is promising for out-of-state companies wishing to operate as public utilities in Indiana, as such entities currently face a comparable citizenship hurdle…
Great River Energy (“GRE”) is a G&T cooperative that services 28 members. Crow Wing Coop. Power & Light (“Crow Wing”) is one of GRE’s 28 members. In 2004, Crow Wing entered into a power purchase contract with GRE. The pertinent parts of power purchase contract are (i) the section which…
Alcorn County Electric Power Association (“ACE”) began supplying The Door Shop, Inc. (“Door Shop”) with electric service beginning in November 2004. In the course of setting up Door Shop’s account, ACE failed to enter the proper data into their billing system. This error resulted in Door Shop being dramatically under-billed…
In an opinion issued on December 31, 2018, the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld Charlestown’s sale of its water utility to the Indiana-American Water Company. See Now!, Inc. v. Indiana-American Water Company, Inc., Case No. 18A-EX-844 (Ind. Ct. App. Dec. 31, 2018). The City of Charlestown owned and operated its…
Both the IRS excess benefit statute and the private inurement doctrine DO NOT apply to tax-exempt cooperatives. 26 U.S.C. § 4958(c) defines an excess benefit transaction as “any transaction in which an economic benefit is provided by an applicable tax-exempt organization directly or indirectly to or for the use of…
A group of four former cooperative members filed a breach of contract claim against Flathead Electric Cooperative. Wolfe v. Flathead Elec. Coop., Inc., 393 Mont. 312, 314 (Mont. 2018).Plaintiffs were members of the coop during various times, the latest of which was in 2007. Plaintiffs alleged that Flathead violated Montana…
On September 13, 2018, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an Illinois law, 20 ILSC 3855/1-75(d-5), who provides subsidies to some of the state’s struggling nuclear generation facilities, against a challenge by the Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA), an advocacy group for the electric power industry. Under the Federal…