Commissioner Tim Echols’ term on the state Public Service Commission expired last year.
ATLANTA – State energy regulators have denied a request by two citizen watchdog groups to consider delaying hearings on how much of the costs of the Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion must be paid by electric customers until after commission elections.
The U.S. Supreme Court put the filling of two seats on the five-member Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) on hold last year until the General Assembly changes the way PSC elections are conducted.
Because the November 2022 elections were postponed, Commissioner Tim Echols’ term has expired and Commissioner Fitz Johnson, who was appointed to the panel to complete the term of a commissioner who left the PSC, has not stood for election in his own right.
The PSC will hold “prudency” hearings this fall on how to divide the costs of building two additional nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle between Georgia Power customers and the utility’s shareholders, with a vote set for Dec. 19. The two watchdog groups asked the commission to put their request to delay the hearings on Thursday’s Energy Commission agenda.
“Allowing unelected commissioners Johnson and Echols to participate in any phase of this case is reckless, unnecessary, and unduly jeopardizes the authority and legitimacy of any decision the commission makes,” Glenn Carroll, coordinator of Nuclear Watch South, told commissioners Thursday.
PSC staff lawyer Preston Thomas said Georgia Power filed documents seeking the hearings in late August, while Nuclear Watch South and Georgia WAND, the two statewide nonprofits that asked for the delay, didn’t file their petition until four days before Thursday’s meeting. That made it impossible for the commission to give other parties involved in the case the usual 30 days to respond in time for Thursday’s meeting, he said.
“Any urgency that Nuclear Watch claims might exist is dispelled by the fact that they failed to act over the last two months,” Thomas said.
In a system unique to the PSC in Georgia, commissioners run statewide, even though they represent one of five districts. The court ruling putting off elections in the districts served by Echols and Johnson stemmed from a lawsuit a group of prominent Black leaders filed claiming the redistricting plan the General Assembly’s Republican majorities passed in March of last year dilutes the Black vote in those two districts.