Fortnightly Magazine - May 15 1995

The bad news for qualifying facilities (QFs) continues. A high-profile project in the District of Columbia appears dead, but developers won a small victory when a federal court refused to stop a suit by the developers against municipal officials for damages connected with the regulatory barriers erected by the city at the behest of concerned citizens. More damaging was the recent decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court requiring reluctant regulators to review the ceiling price set for QF purchases in a recent bid conducted by Boston Edison Co.

The Michigan Public Service Commission (PSC) has approved terms for interconnection and mutual compensation between Ameritech Michigan, a dominant local exchange carrier (LEC), and City Signal, Inc., a newly certificated competitive provider of LEC services. The move marks another step in the PSC's experiment with local telephone competition in the Grand Rapids exchange.

The Louisiana Public Service Commission (PSC) has turned down a request from South Central Bell, a telephone local exchange carrier (LEC), to switch its form of regulation from the existing incentive-based rate plan to a pure price-cap plan. Under its proposed plan, the LEC would freeze rates for basic residential services for a three-year period, and then cap rate changes based on the rate of inflation. Rates for interconnection and nonbasic services would be market-based.

The West Virginia Public Service Commission (PSC), on rehearing of an earlier rate order, has reduced the level of emissions control investment in rates for two electric operating subsidiaries of Allegheny Power System, Inc., Potomac Edison Co. and Monongahela Power Co. The PSC excluded one-half of the difference between amounts actually spent and those budgeted for emissions plant needed to comply with the Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA), finding that the budget was nearly a year old and did not qualify as a "known and measurable" change in rate base.