Huff Don Parsons Has Had 32 Years. Your Power Bill Shows What He Did With Them.

2 hours ago

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Early voting is open through October 30, and Election Day is November 3. If you live in Georgia House District 44, which covers parts of Cobb and Cherokee counties, you have a choice to make between Republican Don Parsons and Democrat Danielle Bell.

Here's the short version: Don Parsons has run the House committee in charge of your electric bill for years. During that time your bill went up about 35 percent, solar bills that could have saved you money quietly died in his committee, and he took lobbyist dinners and utility PAC checks while calling limits on those gifts "silly." Danielle Bell is a social worker and mom of three who's running to lower your utility, housing and childcare costs and to answer to the people of this district.

Don Parsons at a glance

In office since January 1995, almost 32 years
Chairs the House committee that handles utility and telecom law
Spent decades at BellSouth, which became AT&T, and later worked as a telecom consultant
Georgia Power bills rose six times starting in 2023, adding about $43 a month
Let three solar bills die without a vote after pushback, including one Georgia Power opposed
Called a cap on lobbyist gifts "silly" while lobbyists bought him meals
Took money from the Georgia Power employee PAC this cycle

Here's the longer version, with sources at the bottom so you can check every word.

Who Don Parsons is

Parsons was sworn into the Georgia House on January 9, 1995. That's almost 32 years. He chairs the House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee, the panel that decides which bills about your power bill, your internet and solar energy get a hearing and a vote. He already held that gavel in 2012.

He spent decades working at BellSouth, which became AT&T, and in 2018 local news described him as a consultant in the telecommunications industry. Ballotpedia lists him as a member of ALEC's telecommunications committee. ALEC is the corporate funded group that writes model bills for state legislators. So the man who oversees the telecom industry at the Capitol comes from the telecom industry.

He hasn't faced a challenger in his own party's primary since 2018.

What happened to your power bill

Starting in 2023, Georgia Power raised residential rates six times. Together those increases added about $43 a month to a typical bill. A Northeastern University report published in May 2026 calls that a jump of about 35 percent. That's about $516 more a year for the same electricity.

The two biggest drivers were fuel costs and Plant Vogtle, the nuclear plant near Augusta. Vogtle came in at about $35 billion, more than double its original $14 billion budget, and seven years late. You're paying for it on every bill.

Meanwhile Georgia Power did very well. It made $2.5 billion in profit in 2024. The same Northeastern report found that the share of a Georgia Power residential bill that goes to profit rose from 6.1 percent in 2021 to 22.6 percent in 2025. On a $200 bill, that's more than $45 going to profit. Georgia Power recorded about 273,800 residential disconnection events in 2025.

Bills finally stopped climbing in 2025, and they dropped about $4 a month in June 2026. That relief came after Georgia voters threw out two incumbent Public Service Commissioners in November 2025 by more than 25 points, with power bills at the center of the race. It didn't come from Parsons' committee.

What happens in his committee

The clearest way to understand Parsons is to look at which bills he lets die.

Balcony solar, 2026. House Bill 1304 would have let Georgians use small plug in solar panels without the full rooftop solar paperwork. It had support from both parties. At the hearing, a Georgia Power official told the committee the company wouldn't support it. Parsons never called a vote, and the bill died.

Solar for homeowners in HOAs, 2025. A bill to stop homeowners associations from banning solar panels ran into pushback, and Parsons announced he'd set it aside until the next year.

Community solar, 2024. House Bill 1152, filed by a Republican, would have let families who can't put panels on their own roofs subscribe to a shared solar farm and get a credit on their bill. Parsons sent the idea to a study committee instead of a vote.

Patty Durand, a former Public Service Commission candidate who leads Georgians for Affordable Energy, puts it plainly. She says Parsons has "continuously blocked" legislation that would let Georgians use solar at home to lower their bills.

What does he push instead? In 2026 he sponsored House Bill 1320, which deals with nuclear generation in Georgia Power's long range plan. Nuclear generation is what gave us Vogtle, and Vogtle has been a disaster for Georgia families. The two new reactors were supposed to cost about $14 billion. They ended up costing about $35 billion and came online seven years behind schedule. The Northeastern University report blames years of mismanagement and weak oversight from the Public Service Commission. Georgia Power got approval for two special rate increases to cover those runaway costs, and Vogtle alone added about $14.38 to the average monthly bill. Every household in Georgia Power's territory is paying for those overruns. His campaign website shows he was named a "Nuclear State Champion" by Nuclear Matters, a nuclear industry advocacy group. Durand also reports that Parsons claimed nuclear fusion reactors were in the works and capable of powering the whole country. Fusion power is nowhere close to ready to supply the grid.

He's standing up for data centers instead of your power bill.

The biggest fight over your power bill right now is about data centers, the massive warehouses of computer servers that big tech companies are building across Georgia. They use enormous amounts of electricity. Georgia Power says about 80 percent of its projected growth in demand over the next decade comes from new data centers. In December 2025, the PSC approved nearly 10 gigawatts of new capacity, mostly to serve them, and the Northeastern report estimates customers will pay $50 to $60 billion for it over the coming decades. If those data centers don't pay their full share, you will.

In September 2026, Parsons went on a local radio show to talk about data centers and, in the station's words, why he believes the industry has "national security implications." That's the same argument national Republicans use to wave away people's concerns. Speaker Mike Johnson called data center opposition "a Chinese psyop," and President Trump has said people call it "a China PR thing." NPR and PolitiFact both looked into that claim and found little evidence behind it.

The man who chairs the House utility committee is talking up the data center industry while you're the one at risk of paying for its power. Even his own chamber didn't trust his committee with the job of protecting you. The main bill to keep data center costs off your bill was pulled out of his committee by a vote of 123 to 10. None of the 20 data center bills filed that session became law.

Here at home, the opposition comes from our neighbors. Cobb commissioners extended their moratorium on new data center applications until February 24, 2027. Marietta passed its own moratorium after residents turned out to oppose a data center near Delk Road. Cherokee County extended its moratorium too. Local governments across our area are hitting pause while they figure out what these projects mean for our bills, our water and our land. Parsons is talking about national security.

The money and the gifts

In 2012, when Georgians were pushing for a cap on gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers, Parsons called the cap "silly" and refused to sign a pledge supporting it. State ethics records from that year showed lobbyists for Georgia Power, AT&T, AGL Resources and the cable industry buying him meals.

He's still taking utility money. In the 2026 cycle, Transparency USA lists a $2,000 contribution to Parsons from the Georgia Power employee PAC. Southern Company, Georgia Power's parent, disclosed a contribution to him in 2021 as well.

Parsons says contributions never influence how he votes or how he runs his committee. He points to his experience, his work on rural broadband and cybersecurity, and tax cuts he supported. His campaign site says government "must provide for a mechanism that ensures fair utility rates." After 32 years, the bills, the dead solar bills and the gift records are the best measure of how that's gone.

Who Danielle Bell is

Danielle Bell is a licensed clinical social worker and therapist. She grew up on a farm in Greensburg, Indiana, earned her master's in social work from Case Western Reserve University, and moved to Cobb County in 2015. She's raising three daughters in Marietta.

She decided to run after watching patients and her own family fall through the cracks of our health care system. She ran against Parsons in 2024 and won 43.1 percent of the vote, and she's back for a second try.

How Danielle Bell would help District 44

She'll go after your monthly costs. Her campaign commits her to lowering housing costs, childcare expenses and utility bills so working families can get ahead. She's said Georgia needs leadership that works to reduce utility costs and an economy that works for ordinary Georgians instead of corporate monopolies.

She'll answer to you. Her platform says lawmakers should answer to working families, not special interests and out of state corporations, and she's promised to listen first and tell the truth.

She'll fight for health care. She supports expanding Medicaid so Georgia can join the 41 states that already have, ending surprise medical bills, and strengthening the health care workforce.

People who fight for ratepayers back her. Georgians for Affordable Energy is urging District 44 voters to elect Bell and send Parsons home. She's also been named a Moms Demand Action Gun Sense Candidate and a Mental Health Candidate by Inseparable Action.

This seat is winnable

In 2024, Parsons beat Bell 19,216 to 14,571. That's a margin of 4,645 votes. Fair Fight, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and the Georgia House Democratic Caucus now list District 44 as one of the seats that could flip this year. A few thousand neighbors decide this race.

You can check your registration, find your early voting location, and see your sample ballot on the Georgia My Voter Page at https://mvp.sos.ga.gov. Early voting runs through Friday, October 30, and polls are open on Tuesday, November 3. You can learn more about Danielle at https://danielleforgeorgia.com.

Thirty two years is long enough. District 44 deserves a representative who works for the people paying the bills.