The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a penalty the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission levied against the state’s largest utility was overbroad. This ruling essentially annuls the $10,000 penalty.
The state regulators fined the Public Service Company of New Mexico and utility giant Avangrid—a subsidiary of the Spanish firm Iberdrola—$10,000 for not completely disclosing information during the regulatory proceedings that ensued during a proposed merger. The PRC ultimately rejected the merger request and the utilities appealed that decision to the NM Supreme Court.
During the regulatory process, the PRC requested information about violations and fines that had been imposed on Avangrid and its affiliates. Avangrid owns several utilities in New England that have faced fines and scrutiny over complaints like poor customer service and high utility rates.
The Supreme Court found that the penalty was unreasonable because the PRC imposed it on all of the companies, including PNM, when only Avangrid violated the order requesting information.
The decision annulling the fines comes as a result of the utilities’ appeal of the PRC’s decision rejecting the merger.
Avangrid and its affiliates withdrew from that appeal after deciding to no longer pursue the merger.
That left PNM and its parent company, the PNM Resources, as the only parties in the case and they filed a motion to dismiss all the matters in the case except for the $10,000 penalty.
For its part, the PRC agreed during the court case that the penalty should not have been levied against PNM.
Advocacy group New Energy Economy disagreed with the assertion that PNM should not have been fined, according to court documents. NEE intervened in the court case and argued that all filings made during the regulatory proceedings were done by joint applicants and therefore PNM shared in the liability.
However, the court order highlights that Iberdrola was not one of the joint applicants until June 2021 and the incomplete response to the order requesting information about the violations and fines was filed in May 2021. Nevertheless, Iberdrola was included in the penalty.
“In sum, Iberdrola does not appear to have been a party in the case when Joint Applicants failed to provide information in response to the discovery requests at issue and failed to respond adequately to the [hearing examiner’s] orders. In our view, this undermines NEE’s theory of joint liability based on jointly filed responses,” the court order states.
In a statement following the order, NEE Executive Director Mariel Nanasi expressed support for the court’s decision.
