The three state legislators challenging the Oklahoma Corporation Commission over its use of ratepayer bonds and securitization in support of Winter Storm Uri rate hikes that will exist for 25 years now contend the Commission is not adequately responding to court orders and requests for files and records. Their complaints focused largely on issues surrounding thumb drives offered by the agency.
In a filing this week in a challenge of the Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company rate hike (OSC Case No 123021) , Reps. Tom Gann, Kevin West and Rick West accused the commission of “broken-down OCC excuses for repeated delays,” calling them “unacceptable” and complaining the Commission “has not yet provided these Appellants with a fully-functional copy of the Record of Appeal.”
The legislators compiled a list of complaints against the Commission over its response. They stated they received from the Commission Secretary a PDF file “in which all the transcripts had been wrongly redacted—even transcripts that had been previously provided as part of the Record” in another rate case appeal.
The Representatives further said they did not designate any confidential documents to be part of the record and objected to the OCC’s filing that declared the “Record on Appeal on the above-captioned case has been completed and is now ready for transmission to the Supreme Court,” even though it is not yet available to them.
Reps. Gann, West and West said they didn’t object to the Commission providing the documents electronically, “But they object vigorously to the OCC’s repeated failures, excuses and delays attributable to unnecessary redactions, carelessly faulty PDF files and the OCC’s absurd insistence on using encrypted flash drives.”
The legislatures further cited numerous attempts by the Corporation Commission to provide them with electronic files beginning on July 23 which “ultimately failed” because the OCC and the State House both use a third-party vendor but via different accounts that do not enable “internal” file sharing between them.
Rep. Gann charged he was notified a week later on July 30 that a flash drive containing the redacted version of the Record was available for pick up. But on August 1, he notified the OCC about “major problems” with the redacted PDF file “including numbered pages that were out of order, hundreds of pages without page numbers at all, and landscape-oriented pages that had been turned into portrait-oriented pages with their sides (including content) cut off.”
He charged in the filing he was told the OCC Secretary was out and nothing could be done for another week. When he complained to the Commissioners and General Counsel, he was informed a corrected PDF file would be available August 5.
On August 5, according to Rep. Gann’s filing, the OCC Secretary filed an amended notice of completion of the record with the Court indicating the “corrected document is now too large for the 2 GB thumb drive” and the agency was searching for a larger thumb drive with its OMES team.
Gann stated he was then informed the thumb drive needed to be “capable for hardware encryption.” The legislator said he was “exasperated” and used Amazon to overnight a package of ten encryptable 16GM flash drives that arrived at the OCC the morning of August 6. It was later in the day when the agency provided him with a “functional (through still-faulty) PDF.”
“However, four more weeks later, Gann still does not have a fully-functional copy of the Record in CU-122861,” declared the legislator in the filing.
“Wherefore, appellants pray the Court will use whatever authorities are at its disposal to end the gamesmanship and get these utility appeal cases back on track—beginning with requiring the OCC to provide these Appellants with fully-functional copies of the Records on Appeal, having already verified them to be “completed” and “ready.”
