In Re Charley''s Tour And Transportation Inc‪.‬

The Public Utilities Commission (PUC) was expressly constrained from granting the applicant's request for an expanded certificate of public convenience and necessity unless it found "that the applicant is fit, willing, and able properly to perform the service proposed." HRS § 271-12. In this connection, the PUC considered the  applicant's financial fitness to perform the proposed service an essential criterion of section 271-12. The majority opinion expresses, facially at least, agreement with this construction of the statute, and concludes that the record in this case contains "substantial evidence" to support the PUC's finding that the applicant is financially fit. Yet the evidence upon which the PUC relied and which the majority now characterizes as "substantial" lacks the most rudimentary indicia of the applicant's economic capacity to perform the operation for which it sought authority. I can only conclude that the majority has, through misuse of the already elastic concept of substantial evidence, abrogated the statutory requirement of financial fitness in this case to reach a result which it believes appropriate notwithstanding the state of the record.