SAIPAN — Rep. Vincent R. Aldan is framing the Legislature’s CUC fight as something bigger than one audit bill. A legislative briefing from the House Transportation and Infrastructure chairman lays out 17 measures as a single coordinated package covering regulation, billing, collections, auditing, financing, fuel costs, public assets, customer funds and long-term energy and water resilience.
“No single bill can solve CUC,” the briefing says. Together, it says, the measures address what CUC owns, what it is owed, what it spends, what it charges, what it borrows, what it may privatize, how it is audited, who is accountable, how customer money is protected and how the utility becomes more reliable and affordable.
The centerpiece is House Bill 24-88, the independent utility audit measure now at the center of a House-Senate standoff after the Senate amended it into a financing vehicle. The briefing describes the audit as the source of verified facts for every other reform, requiring corrective action plans, named responsible officials, deadlines, quarterly reporting, a public dashboard and compliance consequences.
A companion funding measure, the Ratepayer Protection Through CUC Audit Act of 2026, would pay for the audit with approximately $1.5 million in CUC-derived CEDA dividend funds while protecting ratepayers from being charged through the fuel adjustment clause, base rates, surcharges or loan repayment. The controlling principle, the briefing says, is that CUC-related funds should audit CUC, not households and businesses.
Two pieces of the framework are already law. Public Law 23-29 strengthened the Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission’s administration, procurement authority and enforcement tools, and Public Law 24-11 created a framework to reconcile the long-running financial dispute between CHCC and CUC.
The remaining bills run the length of the utility relationship. House Bill 23-59 moves government electricity accounts toward commercial treatment. House Bill 24-3 would eliminate or redirect the 10 percent statutory distribution of CUC revenues. House Bill 24-53 reforms the automatic 1 percent Public Auditor assessment in favor of cost-based audit funding. House Bill 24-59 establishes fair billing standards covering delayed bills, back-billing, estimated bills, meter problems, disputes, payment plans, disconnection and appeals. House Bill 24-87 requires independent valuation and public-interest safeguards before any privatization, concession, lease or transfer of operational control. House Bill 24-99 targets meter tampering, illegal reconnection and utility theft. House Resolution 24-24 puts the House’s formal request for an immediate independent utility review on record.
The briefing also describes six companion reforms developed with the package: a receivables and arrears recovery act built on the principle of collections before rate increases, an emergency line of credit guardrail act permitting borrowing only for documented fuel, restoration, generation, water, wastewater, essential vendor and FEMA-reimbursable costs, a fuel adjustment clause transparency act requiring independent verification of fuel invoices and supplier margins, protections prohibiting customer deposits from being pledged as loan collateral, a grid modernization and renewable integration act and a water catchment and emergency resilience act.
The framework arranges the measures in nine stages, from establishing an effective regulator through determining what is truly owed, protecting customers, establishing the truth, correcting failures, controlling emergency financing, verifying fuel charges, protecting infrastructure and building long-term reliability.
“Emergency stabilization, yes. Blank check, no,” the briefing says. “Audit, collections, transparency, repayment safeguards, and enforceable accountability first.”
