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Some Georgia state legislators are again trying to revive a state office to advocate for utility customers. A similar effort passed the state Senate last year but floundered in the House.
Most states have a consumer utility counsel, or CUC, who represents the interests of utility customers before state and federal regulators and in courts. Georgia used to, until budget cuts during the 2008 financial crisis.
A bipartisan group of two dozen senators, led by Republican Chuck Hufstetler of Rome, is sponsoring a bill to revive it. The measure passed the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee this week.
“Forty-six states have seen the wisdom of having an independent person looking out for the consumer that has legal standing,” said Hufstetler in a hearing before that vote.
Currently, a group of staff members at the Georgia Public Service Commission is tasked with public interest advocacy, and PSC officials have argued that’s sufficient. The five PSC commissioners are directly elected by voters, and agency representatives have argued that provides another layer of accountability to consumers — though no elections have been held for several years because of legal challenges.
“We’re not opposed to [the CUC],” said PSC Director of Utilities Tom Bond in this week’s Senate committee hearing. “We just think it’s redundant.”
But critics disagree that the PSC advocacy staff is doing enough to protect consumers, pointing to repeated rate hikes for Georgia Power electric customers in recent years.
The CUC’s purview would also extend beyond the PSC, which deals primarily with the state’s largest electric utility, Georgia Power, as well as landline telephones and natural gas. The proposed CUC office would have legal standing to represent customers of any public utility before federal regulators and in courts.
Another bill this session also aims to protect electric utility customers, specifically from the costs of building new infrastructure to power data centers. Again sponsored by Hufstetler, the bill prohibits those costs from being applied to the power rates of ordinary residents and small businesses. It reinforces steps already taken by the PSC to prevent that kind of cost shift, though unlike the new billing rules approved by the commission, the bill singles out data centers.
Both the bill and the commission’s new rules deal only with Georgia Power, not with other electricity providers that new data centers could choose to contract with, like municipal utilities and electric membership cooperatives. Consumer advocates have argued those utilities’ customers need protections as well.
