Brent Woodall, a Tuscumbia attorney, announced recently that he would be running for the Republican nomination for Place 2 on the Public Service Commission (PSC).
Woodall narrowly lost a PSC Place 1 Republican primary runoff against incumbent Jeremy Oden in 2022 by a 52% to 48% margin.
Woodall told 1819 News in an interview on Thursday that he would be able to spend more time campaigning and fundraising this cycle due to his retirement from full-time employment in July.
“If I had had some better finances that would have put me more on par with him, I don’t think I would have had a problem,” Woodall said of the 2022 race. “Upon my retirement, I’m going to be covering as much of this state as I can.”
In the 2026 race, Woodall will be running for the Place 2 seat on the PSC currently held by Chris Beeker III, who was appointed by Governor Kay Ivey in 2024 after his father, Chris “Chip” Beeker Jr., resigned his seat due to health issues.
“The two commissioners who are up for election this upcoming cycle simply do not spend enough time at the Public Service Commission to know the impact of their votes, and they don’t fully understand what the PSC does,” Woodall said.
Woodall, who previously worked as a chief of staff for a former PSC member, said he hoped to end the PSC’s “hidden tax” on ratepayers if elected.
“I call it the hidden tax. The Public Service Commission gets no money from the state General Fund. It gets its money to operate from the utilities that it regulates who pay to the Public Service Commission fees for the privilege of being regulated. Every year, the Public Service Commission collects more money than it needs to cover its operating expenses, its personnel costs, and everything it needs to keep the doors open. At the end of the year, instead of sending the money back to the utilities, back to the ratepayers…that money quite frequently gets sent over to the General Fund. It’s not a few hundred dollars a year or a few thousand, it’s quite frequently, I think almost always in the millions,” Woodall said. “This is a lot of money that, as a conservative, I recognize should go back to the ratepayers who paid the money, thinking that all that they were doing was paying their utility bills. That is why I am running for the Public Service Commission is to put a stop to the hidden tax that operates there.”
Woodall continued, “There would be a few ways you could accomplish that goal. The first thing would be to stop doing it. Whether it was done in the form of a refund or a rebate or just a reduction that would be something that we could work out once we get rid of it. I think just maybe a rebate or a reduction in rates, either way, would be a good thing for the ratepayers.”
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