Central Utilities Commissions and Home Rule: A Paper before the Madison Literary Society, May 9, 1910

1911 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-393
Author(s):  
Balthasar H. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Public Utilities ◽  
National Commission ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Heat Power ◽  
Interstate Commerce Commission ◽  
The Public ◽  
Interstate Commerce ◽  
Central Commission ◽  
Local Use ◽  
Country Today

The term “public utilities” embraces all properties devoted to a use in which the public has an interest. As currently employed in this country today, it includes water, light, heat, power, and telephone plants; urban, suburban and interurban electric railways; steam railways; the telegraph, express companies and several minor organizations connected with transportation. In a narrower and more local use of the term, its scope is restricted to water, light, heat, power and local telephone utilities, and urban and suburban electric railways.Central utilities commissions are administrative bodies appointed or elected for the purpose of carrying out legislative acts with reference to public utilities. In the widest sense of the term a central commission is a federal or national commission, of which the Interstate Commerce Commission is the best-known representative. Central Commissions, in the narrower sense of the term, are illustrated by state utilities and railroad commissions. Like many other terms central and local have relative meanings with shifting and overlapping circumferences.

Special Interests and the Interstate Commerce Commission, II

1933 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 899-917 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Pendleton Herring
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
Special Interests ◽  
Interstate Commerce Commission ◽  
Administrative Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Influences ◽  
Interstate Commerce

In the juristic sphere, the Interstate Commerce Commission is charged with enforcing and interpreting certain statutes, hearing and weighing evidence, and rendering formal judgment when the facts have been ascertained. But the recognized judicial character of this work does not render the Commission immune from efforts to influence its judgments. The struggles of contending economic groups and political influences give rise to actions intolerable in a court of law and to repeated efforts to obtain favorable decisions through the use of propaganda. The Commission performs its duties in surroundings far from neutral, and must cope with pressures too powerful to be exorcised by simple exhortation or condemnation. The problem is one of canalizing influences which cannot be eliminated, to the end that they may increase rather than decrease the efficiency of the administrative process and that the public interest may not be submerged in the undertow of sectional and political cross-currents.

scholarly journals The growing nostalgia for past regulatory misadventures and the risk of repeating these mistakes with Big Tech

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine S Wilson ◽  
Keith Klovers
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Interstate Commerce Commission ◽  
The Public ◽  
Interstate Commerce ◽  
Economic Regulations ◽  
Better Than

Abstract Digital markets are increasingly described as the ‘railroads’ of the 21st century. Extending that metaphor, some commentators argue we should revive stale railroad-era economic regulations and adapt them to the digital age. This enthusiasm appears to be buoyed by both a sudden nostalgia for railroad and airline regulations once administered by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and an equally sudden amnesia of the enormous harm those regulations caused to consumers. ICC and CAB regulations are indeed an apt metaphor, as they illustrate perfectly how sectoral regulations sold to the public as simple, clear, and cheap can go awry. Ultimately, a bipartisan consensus emerged to disband those agencies and deregulate those industries. After deregulation, prices fell, output expanded, and firms innovated. Proposals to regulate Big Tech today in a similar fashion forget these important lessons. We should know better than to do the same thing again today and expect a different result.

Public Utilities

2020 ◽  
pp. 417-418
Author(s):  
Richard B. Collins ◽  
Dale A. Oesterle ◽  
Lawrence Friedman
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Public Utilities ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
The Public ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Privately Owned

This chapter addresses Article XXV of the Colorado Constitution, which governs public utilities. Added in 1954, the article grants the general assembly authority, which it had lacked, to regulate privately owned public utilities operating in home rule cities. It also affirms the general assembly’s power over privately owned utilities located elsewhere in the state and its authority over the Public Utilities Commission (PUC). A bit unusual is the article’s delegation to the PUC of full legislative discretion until the general assembly provides otherwise. This gave the PUC rather open-ended powers for a short time. The general assembly has now preempted the field with specific legislation. Meanwhile, Article XXV’s last phrase states that it does not “apply to municipally owned utilities.” This preserves immunity from legislative, and thus PUC, control.

Administrative Responsibility

1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-517
Author(s):  
Abdel Rahman Ahmed Abdel Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Public Trust ◽  
General Term ◽  
Public Utilities ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Bureaucracy ◽  
Basic Services ◽  
Administrative Responsibility

Public bureaucracies, a general term including government agenciesand departments in the areas of public utilities, social services, regulatoryservices, security, and law enforcement, are indispensable to our welfare;we need them for the provision of these basic services. To provide theseservices, bureaucracies need such resources as power and money. Thepower of bureaucracies is compounded by their virtual monopoly of technicalexpertise, which puts bureaucrats at the forefront of public policymaking.Indispensable to our welfare though they are, public bureaucracies alsopose a potential threat. In view of the technical knowledge they have andtheir consequent important role in policy making, they may dominate publiclife. In other words, they may develop into a power elite and, as a result,act as masters of the public rather than as its servants. More disturbingly,they may not use the public trust to serve the public or respond to its needs.Still more disturbingly, they may breach the public trust or abuse the powerentrusted to them.All of these possibilities have given rise to a widespread fear ofbureaucracy. In some societies, this fear has reached pandemic levels.Fear of bureaucracy is not unwarranted; there is a consensus and concernin administrative and academic circles that the degree of bureaucraticaccountability has declined in both developed and developingcountries. A central issue with public bureaucracy has always beenhow to make it behave responsibly or in the public interest. Despite aplethora of mechanisms for ensuring administrative responsibility orbureaucratic responsiveness, many public bureaucracies may still be unresponsive and unaccountable ...

Book Review:The Interstate Commerce Commission, Part III. I. L. Sharfman

1938 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 206
Author(s):  
D. Philip Locklin
Keyword(s):  
Interstate Commerce Commission ◽  
Interstate Commerce

THE DIMINISHING FEDERAL INCOME TAX BURDEN OF THE PUBLIC UTILITIES: MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS

1980 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 393-411
Author(s):  
DONALD W. KIEFER
Keyword(s):  
Income Tax ◽  
Public Utilities ◽  
Tax Burden ◽  
The Public ◽  
Measurement And Analysis ◽  
Federal Income Tax
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