III. Test Year

In its application, PacifiCorp used 12 months ended September 30, 2000 as a test year. PacifiCorp says that, given the short time it had to respond to its financial situation and the information it had available, it believes this test year period is reasonable for interim relief. The Commission's Office of Ratepayer Advocates (ORA) says that, since PacifiCorp's test year is more than 15 months old, the Commission should be very cautious in deciding what weight to give PacifiCorp's test year evidence. Roseburg Forrest Products (Roseburg) recommends that the Commission reject PacifiCorp's test year because it is unreasonably flawed, and will have no credible relationship to the period the interim rates would be in effect. Siskiyou County (Siskiyou) echoes Roseburg's objections.

The application was filed on March 16, 2001, five and a half months after the end of the test year period. We do not find this to be an unreasonable amount of time in which to gather and finalize the recorded information for the test year, analyze the data, and prepare the application. Therefore, we will utilize PacifiCorp's test year.