Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, stands on the floor of the Alabama Senate on March 31, 2026 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. An Alabama Senate committee Tuesday approved changes to a House-passed bill that would make it significantly harder for the state Public Service Commission to hold formal rate case hearings on the reasons for Alabama's high electricity prices. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
An Alabama Senate committee Tuesday dramatically altered legislation to force public utility companies to be more transparent with how they set their rates.
The Senate Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Development Committee approved a substitute for HB 475, sponsored by Rep. Mack Butler, R-Rainbow City, merged components of it with a second bill that is making its way through the Legislature.
“The Senate had a bill, the House had a bill, both trying to accomplish the same thing,” said Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, who introduced the legislation in the committee. “Over the last week and a half or so, we have really worked and tried to figure out how to merge and mesh the two processes to get to the same objective.”
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Butler’s bill, aimed at addressing Alabama’s region-leading electricity rates, required the Alabama Public Service Commission to hold formal rate case hearings every three years.
The state PSC has not held a formal hearing on electricity rates since 1981. The commission instead uses a process known as rate stabilization and equalization that guarantees utilities a return. Critics sayit locks out the public and makes the reason for electricity rates impossible to determine.
But the committee’s substitute would require five of the seven members of an expanded PSC to vote to hold formal rate hearings, and put the whole commission under the authority of a secretary of energy, appointed by the governor. The secretary of energy could order a formal rate case hearing.
Chambliss said he discussed the matter with Butler, Rep. Chip Brown, R-Hollinger’s Island and Rep. Steve Clouse, R-Ozark. Brown sponsored a bill earlier this year that would have ended popular elections to the PSC which was pulled prior to a House vote in February.
Butler declined immediate comment on Tuesday, saying he would make a statement later.
Democrats on the committee voted against the changes. Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove, said the handling of the legislation was “the reason people have a poor perception of the Legislature.”
“This was a bipartisan piece of legislation that from your words, what you just said up there, three people out of the 140-member body, decided that this was going to be best for you to merge these two pieces of legislation,” she said.
Alabama has some of the South’s highest electricity rates, and nationwide frustration over rising electricity prices have had political consequences. Last year, two Democrats who ran on making electricity more affordable won election to the Georgia Public Service Commission, the first Democrats to win election to a state office in Georgia since 2006.
Several bills have been introduced in the session to address the state’s electricity prices. Chambliss’ bill, SB 360, would change the Public Service Commission from a president and two commissioners elected at-large from the state to seven members, each elected from a congressional district.
But SB 360 would also allow Gov. Kay Ivey to appoint four new members of the PSC prior to November’s elections, which could cancel out the elections of PSC members who may seek formal rate case hearings. The bill would also create a secretary of energy who would administer the PSC and set agendas for action.
The most recent version of HB 475 incorporates all the major provisions of SB 360, which requires that public utilities not increase the retail base rates on customers until 2029. The legislation extends a rate freeze that was already ordered by the PSC in December at the request of Alabama Power.
It happened after two legislators were elected to the public utility regulator in Georgia.
“If that doesn’t save people money, I don’t know what does,” Chambliss told the committee.
Chambliss said rate increases are necessary because “every cost of a company, of us as individuals, goes up over time, so when you mandate a rate case, and all of those costs are included in there, you are going to have mandatory rate hikes.”
“When we, those of us working together, including the House sponsor and other House members, realized that a rate study every three years is essentially the same as mandating a rate increase every three years, we decided that we would go with the formal hearing,” Chambliss said.
John Dodd, policy manager for Energy Alabama, said after the meeting that the idea that rate hearings increase prices was “absolutely false.”
“Having an open rate case on a three-year rolling calendar, like the state of Georgia currently does, will not increase rates,” he said.” I do not know where that comes from.”
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Georgia’s average residential energy prices in January were 14.46 cents per kW/hr in January, compared to 16.06 cents per kW/hr in Alabama.
Energy Alabama said in a later statement that Chambliss’ changes “hollowed out” Butler’s bill and left “the parts of SB 360 that Alabama Power has wanted all along: the ability to overrule the people’s rightfully elected utility regulators.”
Consumers also spoke out against the bill.
“It is hard to live on your own,” said Ashtyn Kennedy, who attended the hearing. “Even having roommates, it is hard to afford anything with these power bills. They are locking them in at the highest they have ever been.”
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Author: Ralph Chapoco