Senate panel amends, advances bill requiring medical documentation before power disconnection for vulnerable customers

The Senate Regulated Industries Committee on Friday amended and unanimously passed out of committee a bill intended to protect residential electric customers with life‑threatening medical conditions from service disconnection.

Representative Veil, the bill sponsor, told the committee HB 641 would require electric suppliers to have a written policy for handling disconnections for residential consumers with serious life‑threatening conditions and to communicate that policy to affected customers. "The bill simply states that electric utility suppliers have some written policy regarding handling disconnections for those residential consumers with serious life threatening conditions," Representative Veil said, listing examples including LVADs, ventilators, oxygen concentrators and refrigeration for medicines.

The committee amended the bill to limit the protection to customers who have "provided the electric supplier with a written statement from a physician, county board of health, hospital or clinic identifying the illness, its expected duration and certifying that the illness would be aggravated by a discontinuation of electric service," language the chair said is taken from Public Service Commission rules that apply to Georgia Power. "That is verbatim from the Public Service Commission rules that apply to Georgia Power," the chair said during the amendment discussion.

Tina Marzen, a resident whose earlier testimony the sponsor referenced, was cited by lawmakers as an example of why documentation requirements matter. Marzen described past emergency situations and the importance of having access to backup power; as she recounted, after 2023 tornadoes a local firefighter and his wife provided a generator that helped maintain her medical devices.

Committee members asked how frequently medical certifications would need renewal; Senator Summers and others discussed 30‑day versus longer renewal windows. Representative Veil said she would defer the specific renewal period to suppliers and called a documentation requirement a "friendly amendment" that addresses concerns about potential abuse.

The committee approved the committee substitute as amended and recorded the vote as unanimous. A committee member said he would carry the bill in the Senate and the chair said a copy of the amended language would be circulated to members before further action. The measure now moves to the next committee steps of the Senate calendar.

The action in committee aligned the bill more closely with existing Public Service Commission practice for Georgia Power and limits the bill's procedural burden, supporters said, by obliging suppliers only to have a written policy and to provide it on request when a customer has supplied appropriate medical documentation.