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.
Empire Electric Association, other co-ops and their biggest customers say the new rate for wholesale electricity set by their power supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission, is unfair.
They want the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to overturn the rate - something has never done when it comes to Tri-State.
Tri-State maintains that the PUC has no jurisdiction to oversee its rates, which are set by a company board that includes representatives from Empire and the other protesting co-ops.
After arguing all year through legal briefs, the dispute finally made it to the courtroom Monday, the first day of a hearing that could last through Wednesday.
Paul Gomez, an administrative law judge for the PUC, first has to decide whether the PUC has the authority to review Tri-State's rates. If he decides in favor of Empire, then later this year, the co-ops can challenge Tri-State's rate.
If the PUC asserts authority over Tri-State, it could drastically change the balance of power between Tri-State and its critics, which include environmentalists who hate Tri-State's heavy reliance on coal power, 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 large industrial customers in Southwest Colorado like Kinder Morgan, BP and Exxon Mobil. 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, and that 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.
But Thorvald Nelson, a lawyer for the group challenging Tri-State, said Colorado law has always allowed customers to complain about the fairness of a rate to the PUC.
"Even if it happens only once every 60 years, the commission is obligated under Colorado law to hear a complaint" when a customer brings it properly under the law, Nelson said.
Gomez said he wants to issue a decision within two weeks of the end of the hearing.
joeh@cortezjournal.com