How the Georgia PSC race shook up Alabama’s legislative session

When Democrats defeated two Republican incumbents to win seats on the Public Service Commission last November, it was considered pretty big news here in Georgia. After all, it was the first time since 2006 that a Democrat had won a statewide race.

But sometimes it’s the reaction of the folks next door that tells you what a big deal something really is. And it’s safe to say Georgia’s PSC election has so far stirred a much bigger commotion in Alabama than it has here.

Some states have PSCs which could be described as easy-going; some, even sleepy. Alabama’s PSC has a special distinction. It has not held a formal rate hearing in 44 years, relying instead on unofficial agreements to set rates, which are the highest in the Southeast, about one or two cents a kilowatt hour more than people in Georgia pay.

This has not been a pressing concern of the Alabama Legislature, but this year it has been abuzz with proposals for “reforming” the PSC. This has been inspired by — you might say “horror at” — what happened in Georgia.

It was “environmental dark money” which caused the “hijacking” of the Georgia election, the website Yellowhammer News claims, and the same dank cloud of far-left, California and even Chinese-linked money is drifting into Alabama.

“If the Georgia model is any indication, Alabama’s traditionally low-profile PSC races could become ground zero for a well-funded campaign by national environmental interests,” the website reported.

The Democratic PSC candidates in Georgia did benefit from a lot of out-of-state money, but not enough to be the decisive factor in what the site calls “one of the most stunning political upsets in Southern politics in more than two decades.” But the news from Georgia seems to have stirred similar alarm in the legislature.

As Sen. Garlan Gudger put it, “After environmental extremists funded by the most liberal Soros groups captured the Public Service Commission in Georgia, the importance of preventing the same outcome from happening in Alabama became an urgency.”

At first, Republicans proposed changing the three elected PSC seats to appointed positions chosen by the governor.

“We’ve got to raise the bar and ensure the right, qualified people are overseeing our utilities,” U.S. Sen Tommy Tuberville, a candidate for governor, said of that idea, which went nowhere.

Seeing how unpopular this was, the legislators plunged in the opposite direction, expanding the size of the PSC to seven elected seats for each of the state’s congressional districts, creating a new state secretary of energy position, imposing a rate freeze until June 2029 and setting new restrictions on utility spending, all while casting these concessions to rising consumer dissatisfaction as crafty ways of avoiding Georgia’s fate.

“These California hijackers, with financial backing that goes all the way to China, have crossed the Chattahoochee River. But they will find it a whole lot harder to work their devious plans with seven elected commissioners rather than three,” columnist Steve Flowers wrote in Yellowhammer.

Last week the Power to the People Act, as this bill is called, passed the Alabama Senate. A separate bill that would require the PSC to hold a rate hearing at least once every three years also passed in the Alabama House.

Whether either bill survives the passage through the other chamber remains to be seen. But we can say that because of last year’s election in Georgia, some giants that have been asleep for a long time have been rudely awakened.