Energy Updates From the Field by Patty Durand

Today is a day of unmasking: yesterday’s Regulated Industries and Utilities committee hearing at the legislature revealed just how in love with data centers Newnan Senator Matt Brass is. I want everyone to know because until yesterday I wasn’t sure. I mean, I saw him block Senate 34 last year, which is legislation that requires utilities to charge data centers for their grid expansion costs, but I was naive and thought that he wouldn’t do that again after seeing voters dramatically remove two Public Service Commission incumbents in blow out numbers last November, then saw voters flip House District 121 from Republican to Democrat last December, but I was wrong.

Despite phone calls and emails from many of you, despite pressure and input from his constituents asking him to support SB 34, Senator Brass was unmoved. I mean, he didn’t vote against it – but he tried to weaken it by adding language from House Bill 1063 written by Georgia Power which allows Georgia Power discretion on what to charge data centers. He didn’t succeed, but he tried. And that’s not cool.

What makes Senator Brass think there are no consequences to doing that? Two reasons:

1. He thinks his constituents won’t know what he did.
2. He thinks voter backlash against data centers doesn’t apply to him.

In some ways he is not wrong – it is hard for people outside the legislature to understand what is going on. And many Georgians fighting data centers think it is won or lost at the county commission. They do not understand that the state legislature is where data centers and Georgia Power have created the environment in which they have to fight (and lose) county commission battles. The state legislature is where the data center tax breaks come from, and the state legislature is where Senate bill 34 would mandate that utilities allocate data center costs to data centers and not across their customer base, which they have been doing and is why data centers are flocking to Georgia.

People have to know where to fight and they have to know how to use political power, but they don’t. I am working on the first part, with you help: where to fight. Answer: at the legislature.

For the second part, let’s look at what is and how to create political power. This is from the Midwest Academy, a nonprofit training institute based in Chicago that teaches people how to build power and win change.

Political power is “a method of gaining enough power to make a government official do something in the public’s interest that he or she does not otherwise wish to do.”

Political power can mean defeating someone at the next election – that is something President Trump is very effective at doing. It’s why you’ve seen the Republican party cave in to the most outrageous of his demand and the most preposterous of lies. When you see Trump threaten to primary someone, that is using political power.

It can mean disruption and resistance, such as at town halls, forums, and speeches when elected officials are forced to leave or walk off the stage from shouting and booing or screaming questions from the audience. It can mean boycotting Disney & Paramount for cancelling Jimmy Kimmel’s show. There are endless examples of political power that works, and of course, many efforts that fail.

In the case of Senate bill 34, yesterday we saw Senator Brass try to incorporate weak language from HB 1063 into SB 34 because he knows that Georgians are angry about data centers and so doing nothing is not an option. So to help Georgia Power but hide what he is doing he tried to weaken Senate bill 34 so that he can later say he passed a bill to rein in data centers. But he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

In the case of Senate bill 34, yesterday we saw Senator Brass try to incorporate weak language from HB 1063 into SB 34 because he knows that Georgians are angry about data centers and so doing nothing is not an option. So to help Georgia Power but hide what he is doing he tried to weaken Senate bill 34 so that he can later say he passed a bill to rein in data centers. But he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

So now we need to find and use our political power. In order to ensure that Senate Brass works for his constituents instead of Georgia Power here is where I think we need to act to build and use political power.

To read more, click here.