Consumer advocate leaves PSC

Baker’s decision stunned both his colleagues and those who argue cases before the PSC.

"I'm shocked," said Commission Chairman Lauren McDonald. "I don't even know what to say. I hate that. Bobby is a good commissioner. He's seasoned. We don't always agree all the time, but he's a good sounding board. I do not know what to say."

Will Phillips, a lobbyist for AARP, also was surprised: "Ohhh, boy," he said, sighing.

"People should know that he stood up for the little guy, and stood up for fairness. While the votes didn't always go his way, the fact that he would register dissent, ask tough and probing questions of the people who went there to make their cases, it made a difference."

The five-member PSC handles arcane regulatory issues that are nevertheless worth billions of dollars to the state’s monopoly utility companies and their customers.

This year alone, the commission will rule on rate increase requests by both Atlanta Gas Light and Georgia Power, and ramp up oversight over a $14 billion nuclear reactor construction project.

Baker’s tenure on the PSC spans a shift in the state’s politics. When he won his first six-year term in 1992, Baker was the first Republican since Reconstruction to win a statewide office.

He approached the office with an outsider's eye: Unlike most of his colleagues, for instance, he treated the $115,000-a-year post as a full-time job, showing up daily at the commission's downtown Atlanta offices.

Baker also was an outspoken opponent of the commission's then-nonexistent limits on behind-closed-doors conversations between regulators and the industries they regulated.

The PSC is now all Republican. But Baker remains the odd man out, the one in 4-1 commission votes, particularly since supporter and fellow commissioner Angela Speir left at the end of 2008. Speir, now head of Georgia Watch, said Baker "dedicated himself to serving our state tirelessly, selflessly, courageously and always in the best interest of the greater good rather than his own.”

Baker ran afoul of Republican state lawmakers in 2006, when he fought an AGL pipeline bill championed by then-House Speaker Glenn Richardson and opposed by consumer and industrial groups. A few months later, he became the target of a residency challenge that kept him in court for more than two years. The suit came from a failed 2004 primary challenger. Baker won, but was never able to determine whether others were footing his opponent's legal bills.

Baker demurred when asked whether his status at the commission played into his decision not to run, saying only that the job was a challenging one.

His most recent 4-1 vote came last month, when he voted against a deal that  increased Georgia Power's fuel charges and let the company increase them again automatically if certain triggers were met.

Commissioners Stan Wise and Doug Everett both took shots at Baker afterward, saying the deal was a good one and Baker had taken the easy way out.

Baker shot back. "You gentlemen have thrown the gauntlet down, and so I'll explain my vote to you. What you gentlemen have now done ... is you have authorized another increase in the next 12 months. And it will come. The trigger will be met sometime this summer."

He asked for a reconsideration vote. Nobody seconded the motion.