Act 2: A Closed Class of One (Part 1)

This report will rely upon the content of Act 2 and the applicable citations from Act 2 as listed in The Act 2 Citations Creating a 'Closed Class of One'.

Due to references in Act 2, I have also undertaken to look at the PUC's Dec. 2004 CPCN, Hermina Morita's formal complaint to the PUC on that CPCN, HSF's Tariff, all of the OTF Committee reports, the RRA report and RRA Appendix with EO 07-10, and the State Auditor's Report I and II. I did not have access to the protected Operating Agreement of 9/7/05 between the State and HSF which I believe would provide uniquely useful information on the special privilege awarded here. Additionally, to put 'large capacity ferry vessel' in context of the whole ferry industry, I reference a few related documents, and I accessed a database of ferry vessels operating in the U.S. maintained by the U.S. DOT RITA BTS, and developed reports from that.

This report is not a legal document, but it is intended to provide insight where legal scholars may lack the time to research and/or ferry industry knowledge to place the relatively newly coined phrase/class 'large capacity ferry vessel' into proper context. In evaluating Act 2 for a 'closed class of one,' I will be looking at the type of vessel within the industry as limited by Act 2, timing limitations involved in Act 2, the special advantage of previous agreements between DOT and HSF that Act 2 re-legalized, and determining need for 'public convenience and necessity.'

Part 2 of this report to follow,
Aloha, Brad