By Bill Brubaker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 25, 2007

The chairman of the State Corporation Commission has rebuffed a request by a state House candidate that the SCC suspend the toll increases it approved for the Dulles Greenway and reopen the case.

Lynn Chapman, a Republican running in the 32nd House District, had made the request in an Oct. 8 letter to SCC members. Commission Chairman Theodore V. Morrison Jr. rejected Chapman's suggestion that the SCC's research and data justifying the rate increases were flawed because they were based on a financial analysis of the local operator of the Greenway, not on an analysis of the Australian company that owns its stock.

"To assert that this Commission and its staff is so incompetent as to have performed a financial analysis 'on the wrong entity' would be insulting were it not so absurd," Morrison wrote in an Oct. 19 letter to Chapman. Morrison emphasized that he was giving his view and not writing on behalf of the other SCC members.

Chapman, who is seeking to unseat David E. Poisson (D) in a district that represents northeastern Loudoun County, had suggested in interviews and in his letter that the SCC review financial statements of the company that controls the local Greenway operator.

Morrison said the SCC has jurisdiction only over the operator -- Toll Road Investors Partnership II (TRIP II) -- not its investors.

"This is exactly the same way our regulation of all public service corporations is accomplished," he wrote. "For example, we regulate the rates and service of Virginia Electric and Power Company, but we cannot and do not analyze or consider the finances of its beneficial owner, Dominion Resources Inc., in fulfilling our regulatory responsibilities."

TRIP II won approval in September from the SCC to increase tolls for a one-way trip from $3 to as much as $4.80 by 2012, an increase that has been denounced by some state lawmakers and candidates.

Virginia Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell, responding to a request from U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R), said this month that he would review the Australian company's business practices and look at whether the toll road's owners submitted misleading information to state regulators. TRIP II officials have said that all the information was accurate.