Two highly regulated quasi-monopolies. Two new business models offering the kind of competition consumers want.
Two very different responses from Georgia lawmakers.
If you’ve ever considered installing solar panels on your own home, you may have found the upfront cost prohibitively high. Sure, you’d see savings on your electricity bill. But most people can’t spend thousands and thousands now to save dozens every month.
In 22 states, the solar industry has an answer: Lease the equipment or finance the cost with the company installing the equipment.
Georgia isn’t one of those states. “It’d be like saying you can’t lease a car; you’ve got to pay cash for a car,” says Bobby Baker, a Republican who served on the Public Service Commission from 1993 through 2010.
The problem stems from an ambiguity in state law. Solar supporters say the law can be interpreted to allow leases; the power companies beg to differ.
“We’ve seen the cease-and-desist letters [from power companies] to customers trying to finance solar on their property, saying, ‘you’re violating the law,’ ” says Jason Rooks, a lobbyist for the Georgia Solar Energy Industries Association.
The response in this case was HB 874, introduced by Rep. Mike Dudgeon, R-Johns Creek. The bill would provide for more competition in the electricity market by clarifying the law to allow more options for consumers.
“This is not getting into a true third-party agreement, where I’ve got a solar farm over here and I’m going sell [power] to you,” Dudgeon explains. “It’s really about that person who wants to generate solar for their own use.”
Businesses would also be able to lease equipment for their own power needs. But there’s no public money involved: “You’re not subsidizing my solar panel,” Baker says, “and I’m not subsidizing your solar panel.”
Entrepreneurs harnessing new technologies to spark competition in a free market, with government lowering barriers to entry and not picking winners and losers. Every day, some Republican somewhere says that’s what he or she is for.
Unfortunately, it’s not the way some Republicans are reacting to another disruptive technology.
If you’ve ever tried to hail a cab in Atlanta — downtown, Midtown, Buckhead, or pretty much anywhere besides the airport — or called a cab company and expected your ride to arrive on time, you probably know you’re out of luck far too often.
I’m 35 years old, and I don’t know anyone my age who even bothers with the taxi oligopoly anymore. They go straight to Uber.
For the uninitiated, Uber is an app that allows customers to contract instantly with an available driver. The time of arrival and price are all known beforehand. The app even handles payment. It’s quicker, easier and sometimes cheaper.
So naturally, the taxi companies are lobbying here, as they previously have in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, to shut down Uber and similar businesses like Lyft. And they found some Republicans who forgot about all that free-market talk and introduced a bill, HB 907, that would put Uber and Lyft out of business in Georgia as it’s currently written.
The bill goes far beyond requirements to conduct background checks of drivers and maintain commercial liability insurance, in an attempt to allay public-safety concerns. It also would subject these companies to the same restrictive licensing and pricing policies that have choked off the supply of cabs in Atlanta and elsewhere, sparking the demand for new entrants in the first place.
The existing cab companies are right to complain they’re not operating on a level playing field with the like of Uber. But why wouldn’t free-market Republicans respond to that complaint by lifting some overly onerous regulations off the incumbents, not broadening those regulations to crush the newcomers?
It’s not too late to turn the “Uber bill,” as it’s become known, into a free-market solution — or, of course, for the power companies to kill the solar-lease bill. The fates of these two bills will tell us a lot about whose interests are being served under the Gold Dome.
