Pridemore resigned from the state Public Service Commission on Sept. 4, leaving her post a few months early.
Pridemore said in an interview Wednesday that she’ll be “leveraging [her] experienced understanding of the energy space, as well as Georgia policy and law, and being able to do that to support one of the largest customers in the state.”
“The world of energy and utilities is very detailed. It is likely one of the most … detailed policy and regulatory spaces that exist in states, and so I am intimately familiar with rate structures, tariffs, the Georgia Territorial Act, the entire section of the OCGA that regulates energy and energy deployment across the state,” Pridemore said.
Pridemore was appointed to the commission in 2018 by former Gov. Nathan Deal despite not having previous energy or regulatory experience. She ran for the seat that November and won with just over 50% of the vote. She has not faced an election since then because the 2024 commission elections were postponed.
While the commission does not directly control the growth of data centers in Georgia, it regulates electric utilities and contracts they sign with data centers, as well as the energy infrastructure that power these facilities. During her tenure, the commission passed a rule aimed at helping ensure data centers pay for the energy infrastructure they need, but critics raised concerns that the rule did not do enough to protect residential ratepayers from paying for some of those costs. Lawmakers attempted to pass legislation that would have codified the rule into law, as well as numerous other bills dealing with data center regulations, but all failed to become law.
Instead of running for the seat she held on the commission, she opted to run for Georgia’s 11th Congressional District seat, but she ended up coming in third in the Republican primary earlier this year.
When asked why step down from the position before her term concluded, Pridemore said that there are federal projects that are moving quickly and “DC BLOX needed [her] to be involved in those in the beginning stages of those projects.” She mentioned particularly that the U.S. Department of Energy tapped DC BLOX to help build a data center at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
“This is a project that really gained my interest because it is new not only to what the feds are doing, but it’s great to have it right here in the southeast with such close South Carolina and Georgia ties,” she said.
But her appointment has raised questions about whether it could give DC BLOX an unfair advantage in navigating the regulatory environment in Georgia. DC BLOX already has one data center in Rockdale County, and another in Douglas County, and the company has plans for another one near where Sara Kennedy, a Rockdale resident of 20 years, lives. Kennedy, who has been pushing back against the DC BLOX’s second data center in Rockdale since she found out about the plans in May, called it a “system failure” that the law allows a formerly elected official to go to work for an industry they were charged with regulating.
“When you have someone in place like this person who knows the ins and outs, the way the system is supposed to work, the way that it’s actually working, and they’re moving on to the side of corporate profit over tax-paying residents, it’s terrifying,” Kennedy said.
Brionté McCorkle, the executive director of Georgia Conservation Voters, a political advocacy organization focused on the environment, raised concerns regarding Georgia’s revolving-door policy. Georgia law prohibits public officials from registering as a lobbyist or engaging in lobbying for one year after leaving such office.
“That matters because DC BLOX is actively expanding data centers in Georgia, including a Conyers campus with 216 megawatts of power committed by Georgia Power. During Pridemore’s time on the commission, she voted on major expansions of Georgia Power’s system driven substantially by data-center demand,” McCorkle said.
But Pridemore said her duties at DC BLOX during the first year will be outside of Georgia in neighboring states and at the federal level. While she will continue to live in Georgia, she said her “roles and responsibilities for the first year will be centered around other projects.”
“You won’t see me appearing before the commission, or doing commission-type business, but the years of experience that I’ve gained – they’re all in my head, and it’s the same work that I’ve taken and represented Georgia and the great things that we’ve done in energy and utility regulation and management all across the country,” Pridemore said.
Even so, Edward Queen, the director of Emory University’s Center for Ethics, said in an interview that when a public official moves to the private sector, they run the risk of undermining people’s trust in the system. Even if the rules are followed, he said that there can still be the public perception that corporations have unfair access to insider information.
“Public policies or the acceptance of public policy fundamentally rests on people’s trust in the system, and when there are activities that at least on a kind of facial appearance would lead a reasonable person to lose that trust, there’s a fundamental problem,” Queen said.
Queen said perhaps having a longer waiting period before a public official joins the private sector could help address those concerns, but even that may not be enough to tamp down concerns.
“People that are going to kind of willfully suspect what’s going on are going to do it no matter what happens,” Queen said.
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