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 The Chronicle welcomes you online! Please feel free to respond to these editorials or letters to the editor by sending your letters to the editor.

We condense letters; most, as published, won't exceed 300 words. A letter must include the writer's name and city, which will be published, and an address and telephone number for verification, which will not be published. Writers may be limited to one letter every 30 days. Open letters, letters to third parties and poetry are not considered. Letters from people living outside the Chronicle's circulation area usually are not considered.

Christmas present: The PSC's hefty cut

Web posted December 28, 1998

Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff

Want some good news going into the new year? How about this? Georgia's utility rates, already among the lowest in the nation, just got lower.

Spearheaded by indefatigable Public Service Commissioner Stan Wise, and backed by Chairman Bobby Baker, the four-member utility-regulating panel got the Georgia Power Co. to cut its rates by 8.7 percent -- or $834 million over the next three years. That's a hefty reduction.

The company's 1.6 residential customers will save $196 million, or about $3.25, on their average monthly bill. Large industrial customers won cuts of $147 million, but by far the biggest beneficiary will be small businesses; their rates will be going down a whopping $483 million.

With more than 70 percent of jobholders working for small businesses, it's easy to see what a large shot in the arm this is to the state's economy. Declining rates should attract more business and industry, both large and small.

Wise and Baker, in particular, are to be commended for forging a successful compromise that put an end to wrangling between the PSC and the power company, as well as between PSC members themselves about how much the rate cut should be and how to apportion it.

The final settlement, OKed just before Christmas, appears fair to all parties. ``No one's leaving with empty hands,'' notes Baker. ``No one can say they didn't get something.''

Certainly Georgians should be delighted that Georgia Power will actually be cutting rates for the first time since 1964. This is possible because Georgia Power's operational and management efficiencies have reduced the cost of producing electricity and the debt on costly construction of new nuclear and coal power plants is rapidly being paid off.