Clean energy advocate Patty Durand, who was accused of stealing a booklet labeled as containing “trade secrets” during an energy regulatory hearing, will not be indicted after the Fulton County District Attorney’s office formally declined to prosecute the case.
The decision was filed Wednesday in Fulton County Superior Court. Durand, who founded a watchdog organization called Georgians for Affordable Energy and is a frequent critic of the Public Service Commission, had been charged with one felony count of theft of trade secrets following an incident at a Public Service Commission meeting in October. Durand was captured on video picking up the booklet during a lunch break.
The original charge could carry a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000.
“Although I am pleased with the outcome of my particular case, Georgia Power customers deserve more transparency and accountability in proceedings at the Georgia Public Service Commission,” Durand said in a statement Thursday. “The extensive redactions and trade secrets Georgia’s commissioners allow are outside of regulatory norms and continue to harm Georgia Power customers. It’s wrong and it needs to end.”
The district attorney’s office in the filing highlighted several legal shortcomings in the case, saying that the arrest warrant fails to claim that Durand actually intended to steal anything from Georgia Power or that the booklet contained any information that was a protected, valuable secret.
Matthew Kent, a spokesperson for Georgia Power, pointed to a previous statement saying that confidential data is meant to protect customers’ interests, and that revealing trade secrets can harm their business operations. A message seeking comment was left with a spokesperson for PSC.
Prosecutors also wrote that two people were tasked with supervising the protected information, but they were not paying attention at the time of the incident. They also found that Durand’s actions did not financially hurt the utility.
“Georgia Power further confirmed that the Defendant’s taking of the booklet did not result in any actual financial harm to Georgia Power,” the prosecutors wrote in the court document.
Furthermore, the prosecutors said that Durand “voluntarily returned the notebook” on the same day it was taken. The warrant also failed to establish that the information inside the booklet was “subject to efforts that were reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy” or that the information was “not commonly known by or available to the public.”
As part of the resolution, Durand completed a four-hour theft awareness class, and the district attorney has requested that the court restrict access to her criminal history record for this case.
Durand, a former Democratic candidate for the commission, indicated she plans to continue her advocacy through her newsletter, which she said has a subscriber base of 7,000, and by engaging with newly elected commissioners Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson, who flipped two Republican-held seats in November by running on energy affordability.
“I don’t have a game plan other than to ask the new commissioners to object to the high levels of trade secret information, whereas previously no commissioners had done so,” Durand said.
Hubbard said in a statement Thursday that he is committed to transparency and believes the “public benefits when dockets are as open and transparent as possible,” pointing to testimony he provided the commission previously calling attention to other state utilities that provide the public with information about infrastructure costs.
“I also hope to maintain the public trust that I earned as an advocate and intervenor on behalf of consumers, such that I am reviewing all information in the dockets before the Commission and will look with a critical eye at what was vs. what was not designated trade secret and what can be moved in the public disclosure category,” Hubbard said.