IV. Procedural Background

We go into some detail regarding the procedural background in order to address an important threshold issue, namely, Pacific's challenge to ORA's standing to file its complaint.

On December 19, 2000, Pacific filed a motion to dismiss the complaint and a request for judicial notice of its GO 133-B reports. Pacific's motion to dismiss and judicial notice request were denied by Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Ruling dated January 12, 2001. The case then proceeded to hearing (May 15-17, 2001), and was submitted on July 5, 2001, concurrent with the completion of briefing.

In its motion to dismiss Pacific claims that ORA lacks standing to file a complaint before the Commission.² Pacific cites §§ 1702 and 309.5 in support of its position. For the reasons discussed below, we reject Pacific's argument and affirm the ALJ's denial of the motion.

Section 309.5(a) provides that there is "within the commission a division to represent the interests of public utility customers and subscribers in commission proceedings. The goal of the division shall be to obtain the lowest possible rate for service consistent with reliable and safe service levels." ORA is the Commission division charged by § 309.5 with these responsibilities.

Pacific does not dispute that ORA may participate in Commission proceedings such as applications initiated by a utility, investigations initiated by the Commission, and complaint proceedings initiated by a third party. The issue here is whether ORA has standing to initiate a complaint against a utility.

Nothing in § 309.5 denies ORA standing to initiate a complaint. To the contrary, the plain language of § 309.5 (i.e., the term "represent") seems to encompass ORA initiating a complaint against a utility in order to represent the interests of public utility customers. To read this statute otherwise would deprive ORA of a fundamental tool to represent these interests. It would relegate ORA to a merely reactive role, with the ability to respond to a utility proposal, or to participate in another person's complaint or a Commission investigation, but would not permit ORA to initiate a complaint on behalf of the very interests it is charged to represent. We find that this narrow reading of the scope of ORA's ability to represent the interests of customers is inconsistent with the letter of the statute and would tie ORA's hands in carrying out its specific mandate.

Pacific next argues that § 1702 also precludes ORA from initiating a complaint. Section 1702 provides, in relevant part,

"Complaint may be made by the commission of its own motion or by any corporation or person, chamber of commerce, board of trade, labor organization, or any civic, commercial, mercantile, traffic, agricultural, or manufacturing association or organization, or any body politic or municipal corporation, by written petition or complaint, ..."

Pacific states that because ORA is not the Commission, nor any of the other people or entities defined by § 1702, it does not have standing to file this complaint. We disagree. Section 1702 authorizes complaints to be made by any "person," a term that is certainly broad enough to include a utility's ratepayers, and thus, ORA as the statutorily designated representative of those ratepayers.

Section 1702, when read together with § 309.5, cannot reasonably be construed to bar ORA from filing a complaint before the Commission. To read these sections as doing so appears contrary to the legislative intent. We therefore conclude that ORA has standing and affirm the ALJ's denial of Pacific's motion. We have reached the same conclusion in another complaint proceeding filed by ORA against Pacific. See D.01-08-067 in C.00-08-053.