Atlanta voters concerned about rising electric bills began casting ballots on Tuesday in a special election for the Georgia Public Service Commission, the administrative entity that regulates the state’s energy prices.
At stake is how much people pay for power in a state with some of the highest utility costs in America. PSC commissioners have taken heat this year for supporting six Georgia Power rate hikes since 2023, resulting in the average Georgia Power residential customer paying $516 more per year on their electric bill than they were two years ago.
Georgia Power and some PSC commissioners have argued that rate increases were necessary to account for rising fuel costs and make power grid infrastructure investments that will keep Georgia’s economy growing. But critics say the increases are unfair and too onerous.
Last week, Georgia Power agreed not to raise its residential rates for the next three years. But next year, the company is expected to request that the PSC let it begin recouping major storm-related losses from customers over the next few years.
The current five PSC members are due to vote on the proposed rate hike freeze on July 1.
All registered Georgia voters are eligible to vote in this election, which will decide who will represent Districts 2 and 3. It is not necessary to live in the district to vote in the district’s election.
The general election is Nov. 4, but early voting in the primaries for each district began Tuesday and ends June 13. Primary Election Day takes place on June 17. Visit the secretary of state’s Advanced Voting Location Information page to find out where to cast a ballot.
Here are introductions to the candidates running for the PSC. Their interviews have been edited for clarity and length.
The Georgia Secretary of State’s office confirmed last month via email that District 3 candidate Daniel Blackman had been ruled ineligible to run for the office because he has not lived in the district for at least a year prior to the general election in November. Capital B Atlanta has reached out to Blackman for comment.
Read More:
- How an Election Starting Today Impacts Your Power Bills
- Why Electricity Rates in Georgia Rose $516 Per Year on Average
District 3 Republican primary
Name: Terrell “Fitz” Johnson, 61
Where do you live: West Atlanta
Current job title: Business owner, professional services
Three priority issues?: Keeping rates affordable, grid reliability, sustainability
Campaign website: FriendsForFitz.com
Terrell “Fitz” Johnson, the incumbent in District 3 originally appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2021, is running unopposed in the Republican primary. His disproportionately Black district includes metro Atlanta.
Johnson is a military veteran and owner of ASID Group International LLC., a professional services provider that specializes in information technology, health care, logistics, and administrative and management services for several federal government agencies.
During a late April interview with Capital B Atlanta, Johnson acknowledged his constituents’ frustration with recent-year Georgia Power rate hikes for which he voted. He attributed those increases to “inflation” fueled in part by a gas surcharge mandated by the Georgia General Assembly and infrastructure costs for two new nuclear power plants, Plant Vogtle 3 and 4.
Johnson said refusing to increase Georgia Power rates could lead to blackouts or economic downturns.
“You may have rolling blackouts like in California because your reliability goes out the window,” he said. “You may have less jobs because businesses don’t want to come here, because they know, ‘If I go there, there’s a chance that my electricity is going to go out,’ or, ‘They can’t supply me the amount of electricity that I want.’ That’s not what our constituents want.”
Elevator pitch to Black voters: “[Black voters] need someone looking out for them as ratepayers. We’ve got to make sure that we’re delivering them affordable, safe, reliable energy. And we’ve got to make sure you have somebody that is going to get in their corner and understand and be able to explain all the different programs out there that we as ratepayers can afford ourselves to reduce our energy [consumption] and to use our energy more wisely. We want it to be clean. We want it to be affordable. We want it to be reliable. We want to make sure that the companies that are delivering it are also sustainable.”
What is your stance on future Georgia Power rate increases?: “[PSC commissioners] sit and we hear testimony and we hear intervenors come in to testify against that testimony. I can’t give you a decision without hearing all the testimony first. I will tell you my intent, to my eye, is looking at this and finding a way to not increase rates.”
District 3 Democratic primary
Name: Peter Hubbard, 45
Where do you live: Edgewood
Current job title: Clean energy advocate and renewable energy project developer for Cygnus Solar Power, a solar and battery storage project developer
Three priority issues: Stop rate hikes, accountability, a better energy plan for Georgia.
Campaign website: PeterHubbardforGeorgiaPSC.com
Peter Hubbard, the founder of the Georgia Center for Energy Solutions, has spent the past six years arguing for lower costs and cleaner energy during PSC meetings at the group’s offices in Atlanta.
“What we have are energy plans that are bad for business, bad for affordable power bills, bad for fiscal conservatism, bad for national security, bad for human health, bad for climate change, and bad for Georgia,” Hubbard said. “We need accountability in the commission, and that is the first thing I bring.”
Elevator pitch to Black voters: “Black voters feel the pain of high power bills more than most folk. They see more power cut-offs than most folk due to unpaid bills. … Black voters live next to — and breathe the air of — the polluting coal plants and gas plants that Georgia Power Company wants more of. Since 2019, I’ve been doing the work and showing up at the Public Service Commission to serve as an energy expert, and I am the only candidate who has boots on the ground. … I will improve your lives and the lives of your children by putting forward an honest clean energy plan that benefits all Georgians.”
What is your stance on future Georgia Power rate increases?: “For residential customers, yes, I would support blocking Georgia Power rate increases. They’ve already borne the brunt of these rate hikes. … As one commissioner, I’ll keep it locked in place and encourage my colleagues to do the same.”
Name: Robert L. Jones, 67
Where do you live: Brookhaven
Current job title: Technology consultant, Acylic Management LLC
Three priority issues: Limit price increases, rooftop solar energy, put investment risk back on the utility and off the backs of consumers.
Campaign website: robertjones4psc.com
Robert Jones is a former California utilities regulator, solar energy advocate, and former Microsoft executive. He said he is campaigning to make Georgia the nation’s leader in rooftop solar energy by enabling solar panel-owning rate payers to sell their excess solar electricity back to the utility company.
Jones said he will refuse to accept campaign contributions from companies the commission regulates.
If he wins this race, Jones said he will put greater emphasis on public input on rate hikes and on protecting the environment from polluters, while dialing back policies that he believes protect monopolies.
“What areas can we open up to competition in the marketplace that’s going to now drive competitive prices, pressure and basically better innovation of delivery of services to the public?” he said.
Elevator pitch to Black voters: “With me, you get someone from the inside, working on your side.”
What is your stance on future Georgia Power rate increases? “I have a plan that is viable, that will stabilize rates for five to 10 years, but I can’t make a commitment that, in fact, I will vote ‘no’ on a request for a price increase. It’s not practical, and it’s disqualifying in terms of being and performing the role of a commissioner to make that commitment.”
Name: Keisha Sean Waites, 52
Where do you live: Capital View
Current job title: Former Atlanta City Council member and former state legislator
Three priority issues: Increasing transparency, subsidize tax rates for needy seniors, campaign finance reform
Campaign website: keishawaites.org/
Keisha Sean Waites has nearly 24 years of experience as an elected official at the city and state levels.
If elected, Waites said she plans to advocate for creating subsidized tax rates for financially challenged senior citizens living on fixed incomes, arguing it’s only fair since companies that own data centers receive similar tax breaks.
“What I am hoping is that the same way that we’re giving these tax breaks to data centers, that data centers will pay their fair share, and we’re able to pass these subsidies on to seniors and individuals,” Waites said. “Obviously they can do it because they made the decision to do it for data centers in the state of Georgia.”
Elevator pitch to Black voters: “I’ve got a track record of fighting for working families and seniors. I think we all agree that deregulation did not serve the Georgia voters. In the last two years, we’ve had six rate increases. And so I think it’s important that we have someone that has some level of policy experience to navigate the climate.”
What is your stance on future Georgia Power rate increases? “To make a statement that I would not support a rate increase in a six-year period of time is reckless and irresponsible because we don’t know what the climate will hold. … What I will support is to ensure that working families and individuals who live on fixed incomes, that they, as we navigate any rate increase, that those families are not unnecessarily impacted.”
District 2 Republican primary
Name: Timothy Echols, 64
Where do you live: Hoschton
Current job title: Vice chair, Georgia PSC
Three priority issues: Establishing a moratorium on Georgia Power rate hikes; replacing fossil fuel with nuclear, solar, and [battery] storage power; increasing home solar and battery participation
Campaign website: TimEchols.com
Now seeking a third term, Tim Echols is a Baptist minister and the District 2 incumbent who won his first PSC election in 2010. He has acknowledged voting in favor of Georgia Power rate hikes in recent years to help the company pay for energy infrastructure investments, but said he won’t support raising customer prices again anytime soon.
He said decaying infrastructure and inflation have forced regulators in Georgia and across the country to raise utility prices not just on electricity, but water as well.
“Every regulated utility in America has had substantial increases,” Echols told Capital B Atlanta in late April. “Atlanta [already has] one of the highest water rates in the country, and DeKalb [County] is now going up. … It’s just impossible for all of these utilities to avoid increases from time to time.”
The GOP regulator said he wants to continue encouraging Georgia residents to adopt solar panel use to promote clean energy sources and help lower their power bills. He supports generating electricity from “diverse sources,” including nuclear plants, and said he wants to replace fossil fuel power plants with clean energy plants eventually, though he doesn’t believe clean energy sources are ready to completely replace coal and natural gas-burning power plants in Georgia.
“There’s been no greater champion on the Public Service Commission for solar than me,” Echols said. “We need all of it, but solar cannot provide the power that we need in order to replace all the fossil fuel plants that we have.”
Elevator pitch to Black voters:
“Tim Echols for more than a decade has reached out to Black constituents to hear their concerns, created a Georgia Power low-income discount, and helped direct millions of dollars to the Salvation Army for low-income voters. Echols wrote a historical fiction book, Jean Marc of Jekyll, that outlines the difficulty Blacks in Georgia had in the early 20th century — including the struggle to read, work, vote, farm and make a living. He has constantly promoted racial reconciliation through his relationship to Black pastors. One of his daughters is married to a Black man and Echols has strived to create an atmosphere in his home of colorblindness.”
What is your stance on future Georgia Power rate increases?:
“I think it’s just a matter of our commission putting its foot down and letting the company know we’ve had a lot of investments on the grid [and] folks have had enough. We aren’t going to just continue an annual rate increase, so that needs to stop.”
Name: Lee Muns, 63
Where do you live: Harlem
Current job title: Project manager at Muns Services LLC
Three priority issues: Electrical rates charged to consumers, cost allocation for new power generation, environmental stewardship
Campaign website: www.LeeMunsGAPSC.com
Lee Muns is the former Columbia County Board of Education member and mechanical contractor campaigning to stop PSC elections from being statewide office races. Muns believes voters in each district should decide who they want to represent them on the regulatory body.
Black civil rights activists took the same position in 2020 when they sued the state, arguing Georgia’s at-large PSC election system violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by unfairly diluting the power of Black voters. A federal court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in that case before an appellate court overturned that decision, concluding race didn’t play a role when the at-large PSC election system was created.
Muns said he wants to lobby the Georgia General Assembly to change state law to give district voters the power to elect their representatives.
“That needs to be addressed because right now you can have candidates that pander to certain areas and have no idea of what people in Screven County, Jenkins County, or [places] like that are dealing with when it comes to their utilities,” he told Capital B Atlanta.
Muns also wants to use the power of the PSC to determine how some of Georgia’s smaller electric companies can service their customers at lower rates than Georgia Power.
“I want to move from being a ratepayer to being a commissioner so that I can ask questions on behalf of the ratepayers that I represent, and I can’t be blown off,” Muns said. “When you go and do open records requests, you only get half of the information. But if you’re the county commissioner and you tell the county manager, ‘I want to see the information relative to this,’ you get everything.”
Elevator pitch to Black voters: “I understand that the Black population at a greater percentage live in older homes that are less energy efficient and have to make comfort and quality of life decisions that are not always faced by other races, whether to have the [air conditioner] on or have the heat on. Can they have a washing machine or a dryer? The wage gap has increased in our state and in the Black communities you have more multi-generational families in the home. This adds to the situation. So maybe this is not a sales pitch, but I work with blue collar individuals and I can relate.”
What is your stance on future Georgia Power rate increases?:
“I don’t think you can just carte blanche say you’re going to block [rate increases]. … I’m not gonna sit here and make a promise to somebody until I have a seat at the table and I’m able to look at all the information and make sure that what’s taking place is done prudently. In the past it hasn’t been done prudently. Then, if there’s a justification, [and] an increase has to take place, how is it going to happen? When is it going to happen? And why? … I can assure you, if we do have to build new [power plants] and there’s a cost associated with it, they will not be making a profit on the money that they’re taking in to build something.”
District 2 Democratic primary
Name: Alicia Johnson, 52
Where do you live: Savannah
Current job title: Managing principal, Health Management Associates
Three priority issues: Affordable energy, transparent leadership, clean energy future
Campaign website: Alicia4Georgia.com
Alicia Johnson, a health care administrator, is running unopposed in the District 2 Democratic primary. She will take on whoever wins the district’s Republican primary in November.
Johnson told Capital B Atlanta she wants to “halt unchecked utility rate hikes” and enact stronger protections for ratepayers, to ensure energy costs are reasonable and fair for everyone in the Peach State.
“I believe in holding utilities accountable to the people,” Johnson said. “We want to ensure that the voices of real Georgians not only shape our energy policy, but it should shape the presence of the PSC and ensure that utilities, those data centers, all of that, serve public interest, not just the shareholders.”
Johnson, advocating for clean energy, wants to limit the cost of energy production, in part, by building and supporting renewable energy infrastructure in Georgia.
“We know that fossil fuel expansion hurts public health and the environment,” she said. “I want to see more investment in infrastructure that accelerates us towards solar, wind, battery storage and other clean technologies that are more affordable and sustainable.”
Elevator pitch to Black voters:
“Historically, the PSC’s election process has been criticized for diluting voting power, as commissioners are elected statewide despite representing specific districts. Legal challenges have raised concerns about fair representation, emphasizing the importance of active participation in these elections. We need people in the seat and at the table to represent the everyday Georgian.
Voting in the upcoming PSC election allows individuals to advocate for equitable utility rates and ensure that the commission reflects the diverse voices within Georgia’s communities. Voting contributes to fair representation and accountability in decisions that influence their community’s and family’s well-being.”
What is your stance on future Georgia Power rate increases?:
“I’m committed to fighting for fair utility rates and ending practices that allow utility companies to profit while Georgians like you and me struggle to keep the lights on. My leadership on the PSC means no more unchecked rate hikes and a stronger focus on policies that build energy affordability and center economic inclusion for underserved communities.”
This story has been updated.
