Monday, June 8, 2009
News AG Thurbert Baker slaps PSC for illegal vote
Posted by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry on Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 5:19 PM
A month ago, the Georgia Public Service Commission voted 3-2 to elect Commissioner Stan Wise as board chairman for a two-year term, despite the fact that state law stipulates that the chairmanship is not an elected position. In fact, the law mandates that the chairman's seat is supposed to rotate among PSC members annually.
Chuck Eaton, one of the two commissioners who voted against the move asked state Attorney General Thurbert Baker for a legal opinion on the maneuver. This morning, he issued a six-page opinion filled with legalese, footnotes and Whereases. You can read the PDF here. But we'll offer a paraphrased version: "That shit was illegal as hell."
Here's Baker's own executive summary:
Code section 46-2-5 is constitutional; the Commission does not have the authority to declare the statute unconstitutional; the Commission is not free to disregard the statute; the Commission may not select a chairman for a two-year term; and a chairman whose term commences on July 1, 2009, may serve beyond Jan. 16, 2010, only if there are no other commissioners eligible to serve as chairman.
In other words, the vote by the PSC was in direct conflict with existing state law. But then, they already knew this because they'd tried to get the law changed!
What happens now? I can't imagine the PSC attempting to ignore the AG's advice, but as we've seen, stranger things have happened.
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