Posted on Mon, Jul. 02, 2007

By SHANNON McCAFFREY - Associated Press Writer

Georgia's Public Service Commission is set to vote Tuesday on a rule designed to open up more of the panel's business to the public.

The plan would ban PSC members from holding some closed-door meetings with companies who have business before the panel.

Commissioner Angela Speir, who authored the proposal, said that members of the public are often frozen out of decisions that affect them because they are based on private conversations between PSC members and lobbyists for the state's major utility companies and other interests.

Speir's rule would outlaw back door communications from the conclusion of a hearing on a particular matter until the commission decides on it. That's watered down from her initial proposal, which would have blocked such communications from the time a case was filed on the PSC's docket.

Speir said she liked the broader proposal she initially put forward but was unable to get a majority of her colleagues on the five-member panel to support that timeline.

Georgia's Public Service Commission is one of only a handful across the country that lacks rules governing so-called ex parte contact, Speir said.

Representative of the state's utility companies largely oppose the change, arguing that it infringes on free speech rights.

Commissioner Stan Wise agreed. He was the lone member of the panel to cast a vote against studying the proposal earlier this year. Wise argued that banning the closed-door meetings infringes free speech and would be "unworkable and unenforceable."

The planned vote comes just days after Georgia Power asked the PSC to approve a 7 percent rate hike for electric consumers.

Holly Manheimer, executive director of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, said even in its weaker incarnation the proposal was an improvement that would improve transparency in the state.

Reprinted with permission from The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, 07/02/07.