Governmental Affairs State & Local Governments Subcommittee 2.3.26

Seven. Chairman Anderson, you have the con, sir.

Thank you. Thank you very much, colleagues. We're working from l C 473866, and this is, this is the proverbial simple bill for protection of rate payers for MEAG customers. All it does is it allows MEAG participants, and these this would be cities and the one county that are part of the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia to enter into electric service contracts, that's retail service contracts, with customers for longer than ten years. It expands that to twenty years.

This is, it it does two things. It provides the opportunity for large load up customer choice situations for MEAG cities and and and the county to be able to competitively work on those projects while providing protection over a long term contract for their rate payers. And that's pretty much all it does.

Okay. You have one question. Representative Sanchez.

I'm four for four today. Thank you, mister chair. Does the the electric power, that you're validating here, does this will this have any relation to data centers at all?

Data centers fall under the category of large load customers, so it could potentially all this does, this does not directly affect or impact any policy or local ordinance or anything related to data centers. All it does is says that if that were to happen, our MEAG participants would have the protection for the rate payers to be able to go after that load if it was advantageous to their membership. They're they're member owned, member operated, and operated by board of local entities.

So currently, it would be you can't do it for more than ten years. This would change to more than twenty.

That is correct. It changes it to twenty.

Two up to twenty. Up to twenty. Yes. Thank you so much.

Okay. Chairman Anderson, if you don't have any more questions at this moment, Pete Degnan or MEAG Power, Come on down.

Mister chairman, I'm Pete Degnan. I'm general counsel of MEAG Power. What we really wanna do here, it's been well explained. I don't need to to repeat, the the message. We provide wholesale power to 49 cities.

We want to ensure that the cities can protect themselves against any liability they incurred to us. They enter into long term power sales contracts with us. This will allow them to enter into long term twenty year power sales contracts with large load data centers. So whatever financial responsibility they incur with us, they can impose upon the the large load customers. We also limited the the proposed legislation so that these contracts would have to be validated by Georgia Court as to the reasonableness and enforceability of the contract to ensure that the contracts with any large load customers are airtight and could not be challenged on any grounds subsequent to the validation process.

Thank you for your attention. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Seeing none, thank you very much, sir. And, the last one is Jim Thornton, GMA.

Thank you, mister chairman. I'll also be brief and appreciate chairman Anderson bringing the bill. As was mentioned, 48 of the 49 MEAG participants are Georgia cities, and, GMA does support this bill. We feel like that by extending the term of twenty years, we're better aligning the contract term with the bond term. And so it's a good business decision, for those cities.

But we also do appreciate what, Pete referenced, which is the provision of

the bond validation process, providing some guardrails on that so that there

is some limitation. And process, providing some guardrails on that so that there is some limitation in, the scope of that, that extension of the contract. We do support the bill.

Alright. Thank you very much, Jim. Okay. Here's actually, chairman Anderson, if you have any last closing comments, great. I don't see if there's any more questions.

Okay. So at this fast. Thank you. In a second, and I will recognize both. At this point, we'll put it up for vote.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. Alright.

So you are everyone but one. Thank you. Alright. So that gets us through our agenda for state and local government today. Thank you all for sticking with us, and, I guess we'll see you next Tuesday.