The Great Atlanta Gas Light Giveaway?

Hey, remember SB 31 from 2009? The one where the General Assembly (with the help of some Democrats, unfortunately) gave Georgia Power a sensual financial massage permission to jack up your electric bill in order to put about $1 billion more in their investors’ pockets?

It must have looked pretty good to Atlanta Gas Light, because now they want a piece of that sweet, sweet action.

Ahem, and I quote:

The company says it would cost $25 million, but Commissioner Bobby Baker says it’s more like $80 million after financing costs, and the numbers show the project won’t benefit existing customers even though they would have to pay for it.

“It doesn’t make any financial sense. Anybody with any common sense and the ability to add and subtract and read a financial spreadsheet can see it doesn’t add up,” says Baker.

Disgusted yet? You ought to be. Let’s get even more disgusted. Just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, we’ll review. Reynolds Plantation is a big deal in Georgia; anybody who’s anybody plays golf, drinks juleps, and mocks the poor at Reynolds Plantation. And by “anybody,” I mean folks like Sonny Perdue, Saxby Chambliss, Johnny Isakson, and the like. Not low-bred cretins like us, of course.

Revel in the Swanky:

the Reynolds resort … includes a $90 million Ritz Carlton, world class golf courses and homes that can cost more than $4 million apiece.

You might also remember Reynolds Plantation, and its owners, in conjunction with Linger Longer Properties and the plan to turn Jekyll Island into one big condo development.

So, everybody feel good about AGL raising prices on, say, a single mom in South Atlanta, or perhaps a senior citizen on a fixed income in Savannah, so that a bunch of overprivileged rich jackwagons don’t get cold when they come in from the back nine?

According to the AJC, AGL says, “the first-of-its kind project will serve the public benefit by opening up a strategic corridor into a growing area that doesn’t have natural gas service now.”

I smell something. Not natural gas. More like bovine excrement.

Now, to be fair, right now AGL is just taking this thing before the Public Service Commission, the elected body charged with making these decisions. But, given the precedent set by Georgia Power with SB 31, who wants to bet that we see a bill in the legislature in 2011 if they don’t get their way with the PSC?