Durand joins SPOTLIGHT, relaunches campaign for PSC

I am delighted to introduce you to Patty Durand, who is running for a seat on the Georgia Public Commission. Patty recently relaunched her campaign in anticipation of the races for two PSC seats being placed back on the ballot this year. She has also agreed to share with our SPOTLIGHT readers information on the PSC, why it is important that Georgians pay attention to the decisions that impact their lives, and why this state agency – that is supposed to provide service to Georgia citizens – needs new leadership, and much more.

New leadership can occur with your help. Please share with your family and friends that Patty Durand and Shelia Edwards are ready to serve and protect you. We are running as colleagues for two different seats and you can vote for both of us. With your votes and prayers, we can become the fresh voice on the PSC that will make decisions that will serve your families and protect your pocketbooks once this race is put back on the ballot.

Here is Patty in her own words…

Did you know your electric bills are increasing substantially over the next 12 months? Most people have no idea how the electric grid works or how electricity is priced. I would like to introduce myself as the author of a new weekly column on energy, and as a candidate for the Georgia Public Service Commission (Ga PSC). The Ga PSC is a state agency whose mission is to regulate Georgia Power and other utilities. Georgia Power has 80% of the electric customers in Georgia. If you are not a Ga Power customer you are probably a Cobb EMC customer, also a monopoly.

Most people assume those in charge of providing oversight are doing a good job, or at least the best they can. Nothing could be further from the truth. I work in energy, or I did until I stepped down to run for office because I could not watch the bad PSC behavior from the sidelines anymore.

For the past 10 years, I ran a nonprofit in the energy space called the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC). We published energy research on consumer interests and knowledge about the electric grid. That gave me a front-row seat to what state commissioners in charge of utilities do, and I discovered that Georgia’s PSC is treating Georgians badly. Rather than complaining about it, I decided to run and unseat the worst of the five commissioners on the Georgia Public Service Commission.

You deserve a leader who puts the public first, not the utility. Our utility bills have skyrocketed under my opponent’s leadership. He has never seen a rate increase he didn’t love and he’s approved billions of dollars of expenditures that should never have been approved. It is only going to get worse if he is not stopped.

You might be seeing a lot of news this week about Georgia’s Plant Vogtle finally producing electricity. Plant Vogtle is the only nuclear power plant under construction in the U.S. and has been a fiasco for Georgia Power. At $35.7 billion it is now the most expensive power plant ever built on earth. That is federal levels of money spent in one state on one power plant and 8 times more expensive than other clean energy solutions. Georgian’s electric bills will go up substantially, including Cobb EMC bills because EMCs own 30% of the project.

We are lucky in that there are two seats up for election on the Ga PSC this year so voters have a chance to hold the commission accountable for this fiasco. These seats were supposed to be on last year’s November ballot but were removed due to litigation which I will explain in the next column. For now, just know that you have two champions who are going to unseat two of the all-Republican conservative commissioners who deserve to lose their jobs for not protecting you – the customer, from monopoly price gouging.

As your Public Service Commissioner, I will fight to lower your energy bills, create clean tech jobs, and bring honesty back to the Georgia PSC. Georgia has the 8th highest power bills in the country. With your help, we can get Georgia back on track. Visit my website at PattyforPSC.com to learn more about me and this election.

Please take my PSC survey to learn more about what the PSC has been doing and help me learn which issues you care about the most.