Mid-Atlantic Solar Energy Industries Ass’n v. Christie, 418 N.J. Super. 499 (App. Div. 2011). In 1999, the Legislature authorized electric and gas public utilities to impose a “societal benefits charge” on customers in order to recover certain costs, and for use in energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. The Board of Public Utilities (“BPU”) was given a role in allocating monies for those latter two purposes.
In 2003, the BPU created a separate “Clean Energy Fund” into which monies from the societal benefits charge that were to be allocated for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs would be deposited. In the years since then, the Legislature repeatedly put monies from the Clean Energy Fund to other uses, including transfers of monies from the Clean Energy Fund to the General Fund. For example, in the 2010 Appropriations Act, the Legislature transferred $10 million from the Clean Energy Fund to the General Fund. A 2010 Supplemental Appropriations Act authorized the transfer of up to $158 million more from the Clean Energy Fund to the General Fund, in order to help balance the State budget.
Plaintiff, a trade association representing the solar industry, sued Governor Christie after he signed the Supplemental Appropriations Act into law. Mid-Atlantic filed three other related appeals as well. The Appellate Division found it necessary to address only the challenge to the Supplemental Appropriations Act since the decision on that appeal mooted the others.
Judge Skillman’s opinion addressed in a footnote the threshold issue of whether the appeal was properly brought in the Appellate Division, or whether, as an appeal of a “legislative enactment,” it should have been presented to the Law Division. “[E]ven if such a challenge ordinarily should be brought in the Law Division, we elect to exercise our original jurisdiction and decide the legal issue presented by the appeal.”
Judge Skillman then made quick work of the merits. “Our courts have long recognized that the Legislature has authority to change or suspend the operation of its prior enactments through an Appropriations Act.” Thus, the Legislature could redirect the Clean Energy Fund monies even though the 1999 legislation had not contemplated use of the societal benefits charge for the General Fund. “Moreover, the authorization to transfer money into the General Fund is directly related to one of the basic purposes of an Appropriations Act, which is to assure that there is adequate money to fund the appropriations provided thereunder.”