For more than a decade, you could pass quickly through the line of people at public comment sessions in the Georgia Public Service Commission’s hearing room. Liz Coyle, who has intervened in rate cases on behalf of the consumer group Georgia Watch since 2013, remembered when the room was nearly empty.
Lately, the comment period runs for hours, and the same faces come back day after day. “Over the last three to five years there’s been a significant increase in people who are even aware of the proceedings,” Coyle told Capital & Main. The crowd, she said, is driven by “concerns about climate change but also affordability and kind of connecting the two.”
