A tariff or tariff schedule is a special type of contract between a regulatory agency, such as a public utilities commission or a government such as a municipality, and a business, to provide a product or service to the public, often in exchange for being granted an exclusive franchise to provide the tariffed product or service within an exclusive area.
A contract is a legally binding agreement which recognises and governs the rights and duties of the parties to the agreement. A contract is legally enforceable because it meets the requirements and approval of the law. An agreement typically involves the exchange of goods, services, money, or promises of any of those. In the event of breach of contract, the law awards the injured party access to legal remedies such as damages and cancellation.
A regulatory agency is a public authority or government agency responsible for exercising autonomous authority over some area of human activity in a regulatory or supervisory capacity. An independent regulatory agency is a regulatory agency that is independent from other branches or arms of the government.
In the United States, a utilities commission, utility regulatory commission (URC), public utilities commission (PUC), or public service commission (PSC) is a governing body that regulates the rates and services of a public utility. In some cases, government bodies with the title "public service commission" may be civil service oversight bodies, rather than utilities regulators.
Tariffs have generally been required for providers of public utilities such as water, natural gas, electricity, telephone, and cable television. They have also generally been required for such businesses as moving companies, taxicabs, and tow truck operators. In most cases, the company wanting to offer the service would obtain a franchise, granting them the exclusive right to provide the tariffed product or service to a specific area either permanently or for a specific number of years (with the right to renew).
Natural gas is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, but commonly including varying amounts of other higher alkanes, and sometimes a small percentage of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, or helium. It is formed when layers of decomposing plant and animal matter are exposed to intense heat and pressure under the surface of the Earth over millions of years. The energy that the plants originally obtained from the sun is stored in the form of chemical bonds in the gas.
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. In early days, electricity was considered as being unrelated to magnetism. Later on, many experimental results and the development of Maxwell's equations indicated that both electricity and magnetism are from a single phenomenon: electromagnetism. Various common phenomena are related to electricity, including lightning, static electricity, electric heating, electric discharges and many others.
A telephone, or phone, is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into electronic signals that are transmitted via cables and other communication channels to another telephone which reproduces the sound to the receiving user.
The company intending to provide the product or service would write a legal proposal describing exactly what product(s) or service(s) were to be provided and the price(s) to be charged for them. This proposal would then be submitted to ("filed with") a regulatory agency such as a public utilities commission, or, in some cases, a municipality such as a county, city, town, or township, for approval. The proposal is a type of contact between the regulatory agency and the business providing the product of services. If the contract is approved (either with or without changes) it is considered a tariff, and the company will be permitted to provide the tariffed goods or services at the rates specified in the tariff. In many cases the granting of a tariff also granted the exclusive privilege to provide the product(s) or service(s) within a specific geographic area.
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. It is to be distinguished (usually) from the county, which may encompass rural territory or numerous small communities such as towns, villages and hamlets.
A county is a geographical region of a country used for administrative or other purposes, in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French conté or cunté denoting a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count (earl) or a viscount. The modern French is comté, and its equivalents in other languages are contea, contado, comtat, condado, Grafschaft, graafschap, Gau, etc..
A city is a large human settlement. It can be defined as a permanent and densely settled place with administratively defined boundaries whose members work primarily on non-agricultural tasks. Cities generally have extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, utilities, land use, and communication. Their density facilitates interaction between people, government organisations and businesses, sometimes benefiting different parties in the process.
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A common carrier in common law countries is a person or company that transports goods or people for any person or company and is responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transport. A common carrier offers its services to the general public under license or authority provided by a regulatory body, which has usually been granted "ministerial authority" by the legislation that created it. The regulatory body may create, interpret, and enforce its regulations upon the common carrier with independence and finality as long as it acts within the bounds of the enabling legislation.
A request for proposal (RFP) is a document that solicits proposal, often made through a bidding process, by an agency or company interested in procurement of a commodity, service, or valuable asset, to potential suppliers to submit business proposals. It is submitted early in the procurement cycle, either at the preliminary study, or procurement stage.
A utility cooperative is a type of cooperative that is tasked with the delivery of a public utility such as electricity, water or telecommunications to its members. Profits are either reinvested for infrastructure or distributed to members in the form of "patronage" or "capital credits", which are dividends paid on a member's investment in the cooperative.
Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations, community endeavors or by individuals, usually via a system of pumps and pipes. Irrigation is covered separately.
Local Agency Formation Commissions or LAFCOs are regional service planning agencies of the State of California. LAFCOs are located in all 58 counties and exercise regulatory and planning powers in step with their prescribed directive to oversee the establishment, expansion, governance, and dissolution of local government agencies and their municipal service areas to meet current and future community needs. LAFCOs were established in 1963 and administer a section of California planning law now known as the Cortese-Knox-Hertzberg Local Government Reorganization Act of 2001.
Grants are non-repayable funds or products disbursed or given by one party, often a government department, corporation, foundation or trust, to a recipient, often a nonprofit entity, educational institution, business or an individual. In order to receive a grant, some form of "Grant Writing" often referred to as either a proposal or an application is required.
The Oregon Public Utility Commission (PUC) is the chief electric, gas and telephone utility regulatory agency of the government of the U.S. state of Oregon. It sets rates and establishes rules of operation for the state's investor-owned utility companies. With respect to publicly owned utility districts and cooperatives, its authority is limited to safety regulations.
A request for quotation (RfQ) is a business process in which a company or public entity requests a quote from a supplier for the purchase of specific products or services. RfQ generally means the same thing as Call for bids (CfB) and Invitation for bid (IfB).
The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board is an agency of the Republic of the Philippines under the Department of Transportation (DOTr). The LTFRB was established on June 19, 1987, during the former president Corazon Aquino’s administration.
Water supply and sanitation in France is universal and of good quality. Salient features of the sector compared to other developed countries are the high degree of private sector participation using concession and lease contracts and the existence of basin agencies that levy fees on utilities in order to finance environmental investments. Water losses in France (26%) are high compared to England (19%) and Germany (7%).
Public water supply and sanitation in Germany is universal and of good quality. Some salient features of the sector compared to other developed countries are its very low per capita water use, the high share of advanced wastewater treatment and very low distribution losses. Responsibility for water supply and sanitation provision lies with municipalities, which are regulated by the states. Professional associations and utility associations play an important role in the sector. As in other EU countries, most of the standards applicable to the sector are set in Brussels. Recent developments include a trend to create commercial public utilities under private law and an effort to modernize the sector, including through more systematic benchmarking.
Access to at least basic water increased from 94% to 97% between 2000 and 2015; an increase in access to at least basic sanitation from 73% to 86% in the same period;
This article was written in 2008 with some updates in 2012. Please feel free to further update it, if need be.
Water supply and sanitation in Zambia is characterized by achievements and challenges. Among the achievements are the creation of regional commercial utilities for urban areas to replace fragmented service provision by local governments; the establishment of a regulatory agency that has substantially improved the availability of information on service provision in urban areas; the establishment of a devolution trust fund to focus donor support on poor peri-urban areas; and an increase in the access to water supply in rural areas.
Entergy Louisiana, Inc. v. Louisiana Public Service Commission, 539 U.S. 39 (2003), is a Supreme Court of the United States case holding that a federal administrative agency approved public utility tariff preempted a state public utilities commission rate order under the filed rate doctrine.
Water privatization in Armenia – or, more accurately, the participation of private companies in the provision of water supply under contract with the government of Armenia – has been prepared since the mid-1990s. The first management contract for water supply in Armenia, covering the capital Yerevan, was signed in 1999 with financial support from the World Bank. As of 2010, almost 2.1 million people or about two thirds of the population of Armenia, including its entire urban population, received their drinking water from private companies. Sanitation is not included in the private sector contracts and remains a public responsibility.
Utility ratemaking is the formal regulatory process in the United States by which public utilities set the prices they will charge consumers. Ratemaking, typically carried out through "rate cases" before a public utilities commission, serves as one of the primary instruments of government regulation of public utilities.
Water supply and sanitation in Italy is characterized by mostly good services at prices that are lower than in other European countries with similar income levels. For example, the average monthly residential water and sewer bill in Italy is 20 Euro compared to 31 Euro in France. According to the OECD, water in Italy has been underpriced for a long time. With about 240 liter per day, per capita water use for residential uses in Italy is higher than in Spain or in France, where it is about 160 liter per day. Water resources in Italy are distributed unevenly, with more abundant resources in the North and scarcer resources in the South. Most water withdrawals are for agriculture and industry, with only 18 percent of water withdrawals made for drinking water supply. About one third of the water withdrawn for municipal supply is not billed to the customers because of leakage, malfunctioning water meters and water theft.
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Commission or WMATC is a regulatory agency established by the Washington Metropolitan Area Regulation Compact, an interstate compact established between the Commonwealth of Virginia, the District of Columbia and the State of Maryland, and consented to by Congress under Public Law 86-794 in 1960 to regulate passenger common carriers operating within the District of Columbia, and the suburbs in Maryland and Virginia.
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