PPL Utilities and the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission have asked the state Supreme Court not to accept an appeal of a lower court ruling that allows them to keep secret details of an investigation the agency conducted into power restoration following a freak October 2011 snowstorm.

The investigation resulted in a finding that PPL stumbled in its response to the storm, leaving some 1,300 Lehigh Valley customers in the dark four hours longer than necessary while crews fixed an outage that was bumped up on the priority list. PPL agreed to settle the matter for $60,000 and promised to revisit power restoration priorities with staff to avoid future problems."There are no special and important reasons that warrant review," PUC attorneys argue in their brief. "The Commonwealth Court decision ... represents a straightforward interpretation of the Public Utility Code regarding public access to the documents presented to and relied upon by the PUC commissioners in taking action."The investigation was spawned by an anonymous letter. After the settlement was ratified by the PUC, reporters for The Morning Call and Wilkes-Barre Times Leader newspapers requested the letter and other documents generated in the course of the PUC investigation.The August 2013 settlement did not include information on the location of the outage that was improperly prioritized or the reason for the mistake.The PUC denied the reporters' requests, but they appealed to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, which in November 2013 ordered the requested documents released, citing a provision in the Public Utility Code. The PUC appealed the decision to Commonwealth Court, which reversed the decision, ruling last month that the documents could be kept secret.A coalition of media organizations, including the Times News, led by The Morning Call and Times Leader, asked the State Supreme court in December to accept their appeal of the lower court decision.In its brief opposing Supreme Court review, the PUC said the only documents relied upon by the PUC's five commissioners in their decision to ratify the settlement were the agreement itself and statements of support by PPL and PUC investigators, which are already public.It also argues that the state's utility code requires separation between the PUC's investigatory arm and the five-member commission, prohibiting the disclosure of such investigatory documents to the commission. The agency argues that legal precedent says commission interpretations of the utility code should be given deference unless they are clearly erroneous.PPL makes similar arguments in its supporting brief, saying the definition of documents relied upon by the commission to reach its decision does not include investigatory documents produced by its investigators."If adopted the petitioners' interpretation of commission would require the disclosure of all PUC documents," PPL attorneys wrote in their brief.The Supreme Court grants roughly 3 percent to 4 percent of appeals requested in any given year.Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC