CPUC Mulls Unconstitutional Compliance Plan: Frontier

meeting to adopt the enforcement program set out in the CPUC’s spring OK (see 2104150059). "Frontier is committed to complying” with the settled decision’s “requirements that focus on improved service quality and is actively taking affirmative actions to achieve compliance so that no penalties for noncompliance would apply,” the carrier said in comments emailed to the A.20-05-010 service list Thursday. The draft resolution “unlawfully expands the scope of the Decision, deprives Frontier of due process, undermines the extensively negotiated and carefully crafted settlements, imposes unsupported and excessive penalties, and threatens Frontier’s ability to deliver the restructuring’s significant benefits to California consumers,” it said. One proposed penalty for outages would allow monthly fines between $1 million and $15 million, depending on severity, but California law allows maximum penalties of $100,000 per violation or $3 million monthly, Frontier said. The draft’s penalties would violate the "excessive fines clause" of the Eighth Amendment and due process protections of the 14th Amendment, it said. TURN said the CPUC’s conditional OK was clear on delegating authority to staff “to develop a meaningful and effective enforcement mechanism that includes penalty authority beyond what the Final Decision and Settlements Agreements crafted,” but it didn’t give staff authority to change terms of the decision or agreements.