Rep. Chip Brown, R-Hollinger's Island, prepares to speak to reporters at the Alabama Statehouse on Feb. 12, 2026 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. The Alabama House on Friday delayed a vote on a bill that would end popular elections to the Public Service Commission. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
Sometimes I wish Alabama legislators were a little more creative. A little more inventive in the ways they sell bad legislation.
Take this abrupt push to cancel Alabama Public Service Commission elections. Rep. Chip Brown, R-Hollinger’s Island, the sponsor of the effort, said switching to an appointed board would lower Alabama’s high residential utility bills.
Why? Because Alabama state leaders would choose commissioners with experience in utilities and business. Who (presumably) would make the right choices.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Come on, man.
Never mind that the Public Service Commission already has experienced staff to guide commission members. Or that this sounds an awful lot like packing the commission with utility allies. I’m not confident that Alabama leaders will pick PSC members ready to judge rates with ruthless objectivity.
Under this bill, the governor of Alabama will appoint the PSC president in 2028. All current signs point to that governor being Tommy Tuberville. Forgive me if I don’t think Sen. “Think Of The Suffering Forest Owners” will care much about Alabamians’ wallets. (And if it’s, say, Gov. Doug Jones, I’m sure the Republican-controlled Senate will find new and elastic definitions of the word “communist” to block his appointments.)
But let’s say the world’s most learned utility expert gets on the board. Maybe she makes it hard for utilities to raise rates further.
Or maybe spending a lifetime with utilities means she can justify everything they do, whatever suffering may result.
Expertise doesn’t guarantee good outcomes, particularly when it ignores outside factors. See Thomas Andrews and the Titanic. Robert McNamara and Vietnam. Or Alabama legislators, and, well, Alabama. We have a lot of talented lawyers in the Alabama Legislature. Who keep passing laws threatening teachers, denying women health care and leaving us exposed to gunfire.
Brown and other Republicans also threw up a miasma of shameful, irrelevant attacks on Energy Alabama Executive Director Daniel Tait, an opponent of the bill. As Alabama politicians do when they have nothing, they invoked George Soros and suggested the Huntsville-based organization was full of outside agitators.
So what else will they reach for?
“We don’t vote on banking. We don’t vote on insurance. We don’t vote on the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. We don’t vote on the Alabama Ethics Commission. We don’t vote on Soil and Water Conservation,” Brown said on Tuesday.
Four of those five bodies deal with political or industry regulations that rarely, if ever, touch daily life. The fifth, the Alabama Department of Insurance, does not regulate most health insurance plans. By contrast, the PSC is supposed to ensure that Alabamians pay reasonable rates for electricity, a necessity of life.
And for decades, it has failed to do so.
Alabamians pay some of the highest residential electrical power rates in the South. We’re usually in the top five in the region, and last November, we were No. 1. At 16.08 cents per kilowatt hour, Alabama residents paid more to keep the lights on than people in Mississippi (15.33) and Georgia (14.42).
Those aren’t just our neighbors. Like Alabama, Southern Company serves both states. Conditions in Georgia and Mississippi are not so different from ours that our power bills should be higher.
Democracy isn’t the reason electricity costs so much in Alabama. It’s a rate-setting process that’s a rubber stamp.
Since 1982, the commission has used something known as rate stabilization and equalization in place of formal rate hearings. Unlike a public process, where people can weigh in on a rate increase and take a look at the data used to justify it, rate stabilization and equalization guarantees a utility a profit. If the utility makes above a certain level, it’s supposed to refund the money. If it makes less, it’s allowed to raise rates.
And this is all automatic. If you don’t like it, tough. The utility matters above all else.
In fact, the only voice the public really has comes at the ballot box. PSC campaigns are not particularly exciting, and PSC candidates in the past have run on their opposition to abortion, or high gasoline prices, or liberals — things that have nothing to do with power bills.
But this year might be different. PSC Commissioners Jeremy Oden and Chris Beeker both face challenges in the Republican primaries. Four Republicans are running against Beeker alone. Cullman County Sheriff Matt Gentry, Oden’s GOP primary opponent, has talked about improving transparency on the commission. Four Democrats are running for the two seats and are hitting affordability issues hard.
Could this explain the rush to end PSC elections? It’s hard to forget that two Democrats in Georgia won election to that state’s Public Service Commission in November by emphasizing affordability. Even having a Republican calling for transparency could put the autopilot rate stabilization process in jeopardy.
It’s a far more plausible scenario than one where ending elections lowers electricity costs. The issue with Alabama power bills isn’t that the public is too loud; it’s that the public voice is, at best, muted.
Cutting your electric bill requires raising those voices, and giving Alabamians a say in how rates are set and who sets them. Not letting utilities decide both.
From Alabama Reflector Post Url: Visit
Author: Brian Lyman