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The Georgia Senate adopted legislation Friday that would encourage judges to think of regular people when considering disputes about contracts between electric utilities and big customers like data centers.

The legislation is aimed at shielding residential customers from Georgia Power’s costs to build new power plants, transmission lines and other infrastructure as it ramps up to feed massive amounts of power to future data centers.

Democrats rejected the measure as fake protection.

Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta, characterized Senate Bill 410 as “window dressing,” since it codifies what state regulators at the Public Service Commission have already been writing into contracts, rather than demanding other protections.

Consumer advocates have been critical of the commission because it voted in December to allow Georgia Power to add 10 gigawatts of power for data centers and because it allowed six rate hikes in recent years.

Critics contended that the contract terms would leave the public on the hook for expansion costs over the next half century if data centers failed to arrive in Georgia as promised — or left early.

“The public understands what is going on here and we are giving them the middle finger,” Parent said.

Republicans heralded SB 410 as an affordability measure that would protect rate payers. It would require that contracts include terms “designed to protect residential and retail electricity customers from costs associated with serving new large load customers … .”

Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, said critics of the legislation misinterpret it because of their disdain for Georgia Power, a monopoly electricity provider to a substantial proportion of the state population.

“Don’t let your hate for Georgia Power cloud your judgment on what this bill actually does,” he said on the Senate floor.

The bill attempts to fill gaps that were opened after Senate Bill 34, a measure that consumer advocates praised, was heavily amended. It initially prohibited electric utilities from recovering costs for serving data centers and other high-demand customers by raising rates on everyone else, including households and small businesses. It was revised by dropping the prohibition and leaving only the requirement that utility contracts protect residential and retail customers from large load costs.

During a committee hearing on SB 410 on Tuesday, Brass explained that the protective language in the bill would not be in law, but judges could find it in the preamble to the legislation in case someone sued.

“It will be in the notes to the code,” he said. “And the notes to the code can be used by the courts to help guide the courts’ interpretation of our law.”

Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, the author of SB 34, chairs the committee that heard SB 410.

“The intent of the legislature is here. It’s not codified into law, which would be my preference,” he said at the hearing. “But it’s basically what’s been worked out.”

Sen. Mike Hodges, R-Brunswick, a member of the committee, asked any lawyer on the panel to explain the legal implications of a preamble.

Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, a lawyer, explained that some courts ignore legislative intent while others consider it, and those that do would check the Legislature’s notes.

“So,” asked Hodges, “it might matter and it might not?”

“That’s fair,” Tillery responded.

SB 410 would also abolish tax exemptions for computer equipment and other technology used by future data centers, although existing centers could keep their exemptions.

Sen. Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta, a member of the committee, raised concerns about that, saying the tax breaks had been “instrumental” in attracting Fortune 500 companies to Georgia.

Nonetheless, she voted to pass SB 410 out of the committee, which comprises several Democrats. The vote was unanimous.

But on the Senate floor Friday, Halpern and all the other Democrats who chose to vote went against SB 410. All Republicans voted for it. It passed 32-21.
Later, Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, said Democrats had voted against ending corporate subsidies that would cost the state general fund $1.3 billion.

“The Democrats can sit there and debate all they want, but that’s what they voted against ultimately,” he said in a meeting with reporters.

Anavitarte, the Senate majority leader, said Republicans had just won on the main issue for voters this year, affordability. He nodded to the major upset in November when two GOP members of the Public Service Commission suffered defeat by Democrats who attacked them over those half dozen electricity rate increases. For the first time in years, Democrats were joining the five-member commission, albeit as a minority that would not be in control.

Even so, Republicans saw it as a warning for other elections: take affordability seriously.

“It’s no secret. You all know where the public sentiment is,” Anavitarte said. “I know where it is in my district. And people are tired of politicians making bad decisions. That’s why two members of the PSC were un-elected — because they did not vote in the interests of Georgians.”