A. Cooperatives may form, organize, acquire, hold, dispose of and operate any interest up to and including full controlling interest in separate business entities that provide energy services and products and telecommunications and communications services and products, including cable and satellite television and water and wastewater collection and treatment, without prior approval from the public regulation commission so long as those other business entities meet all of the following conditions:
(1) the subsidiary is not financed with loans from the federal rural utilities service of the United States department of agriculture or the United States department of agriculture or with similar financing from any successor agency. This limitation shall not apply to rural utilities service loans or United States department of agriculture loans, or loans from successor agencies, to the extent the loan is to be used for a purpose authorized by the lending agency;
(2) the subsidiary fully compensates the cooperative for the use of personnel, services, equipment, tangible property and the cooperative's fully distributed costs, including all direct and indirect costs and the cost of capital incurred in providing the personnel, services, equipment or tangible property in question;
(3) the total investments, loans, guarantees and pledges of assets of a cooperative in all of its subsidiaries shall not exceed twenty percent of the cooperative's assets; and
(4) the subsidiary agrees to not offer any service or product to the public until it has obtained federal and state regulatory approvals, if any, required to provide the service or product to the public.
B. A director, or spouse of a director, of a cooperative may not be employed or have any financial interest in a separate business entity formed, organized, acquired, held or operated by that cooperative pursuant to the provisions of this section.
C. Should the public regulation commission, upon complaint showing reasonable grounds for investigation, find after investigation and public hearing that the charges for the transactions between the cooperative and other business entity do not conform with the provisions of this section, the public regulation commission is authorized to direct the cooperative to adjust those charges to comply with the provisions of this section. If the cooperative does not comply with the public regulation commission's directive, the public regulation commission is authorized to direct the cooperative to divest its interest in the other business entity. For purposes of enforcing this section, members of the public regulation commission, and the public regulation commission staff, are authorized to inspect the books and records of such other business entities and the cooperatives, provided that proprietary or confidential data or information of the separate business entities shall not be disclosed to a third party. The public regulation commission shall adopt rules and reporting requirements to enforce the provisions of this section.
D. Nothing in this section grants the public regulation commission the power to regulate a generation and transmission cooperative referred to in Section 62-6-4 NMSA 1978.
History: Laws 2003, ch. 416, § 1.
ANNOTATIONSEffective dates. — Laws 2003, ch. 416, § 6 makes the act effective on July 1, 2003.