Despite multiple efforts by the chairman, the Georgia Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee on Tuesday passed a bill with few burdens on electric membership corporations that want to sell high-speed internet.
Before approving the legislation, the committee struck down a previous amendment that would have forced EMCs to provide broadband to every resident in their districts – no matter how expensive that expansion would be. The amendment’s sponsor, committee Chairman Bill Cowsert, argued the lawmakers needed to be tough on the EMCs to put the internet in the hard-to-reach places.
That, he said, was the whole purpose of the bill. He added that EMCs have benefited for decades from the Legislature’s decision to give them a monopoly in selling electricity to customers. (The state did this to incentive putting electricity in rural areas, where the return on investment was nonexistent.)
But with resistance from the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, the committee rejected Cowsert’s demand.
“It goes too far,” Gooch said. ” We don’t require that of any other providers that’s in the room. Now if [every provider] would agree to do that, then I would say, ‘Game on. You just solved the problem.’ But if that were true, you wouldn’t need this bill to begin with.”