Republican Fitz Johnson is facing a residency challenge to his effort to reclaim his seat on the Public Service Commission.
In a complaint filed with the Secretary of State in March, Daniel O’Toole alleged Johnson’s legal residence is in Cobb County, which is outside the boundaries of the District 3 seat Johnson is seeking. Georgia sets a mandatory residency requirement that “in order to be elected as a member of the commission from a Public Service Commission District, a person shall have resided in that district for at least 12 months prior to election thereto.”
O’Toole is a DeKalb County resident and Realtor who has worked on PSC Commissioner Peter Hubbard’s campaigns. He said he filed his complaint independently of the Hubbard’s current campaign.
Fitz Johnson
“Terrell Fitz Johnson Sr. has signed and notarized multiple affirmative statements indicating that he resides at 1505 Mars Hill Rd, Acworth, GA 30101 which is located in Cobb County, and that this address is his intended primary residence,” O’Toole wrote in his complaint.
Cobb County tax records indicate the fair market value of the 4,700-square-foot Kennesaw house is $1.3 million.
To back up his claim, O’Toole attached a copy of a March 5, 2025 security deed signed by Johnson and his wife, Suzann M. Wilcox, attesting that they reside at the Cobb County address. An occupancy clause of the mortgage loan document requires the borrower to use the property as a principal residence within 60 days after signing and for at least a year thereafter.
O’Toole said an owner-occupied, primary residence typically qualifies for better interest rates and cheaper insurance premiums.
“And because of that, the banks make you sign a statement that says ‘this will be my house, and I’m going to move into it, and I’m going to live there at least a year,'” he said. “So that is the language that he signed and agreed to.”
” … Signing that document and not doing it is straight-up mortgage fraud, and it actually hurts basically everyone, in some fashion down the road,” he said.
The Secretary of State’s office referred the complaint to the Office of State Administrative Hearings. Administrative Law Judge Kimberly Schroer is scheduled to hear the matter at 10:30 a.m. Monday at OSAH headquarters in Atlanta.
This house on Brantley Street, NW, in Fulton County is what Fitz Johnson claims as his primary residence for his voter registration.
Johnson denied the allegations on Saturday.
“I am a resident of District 3 and fully meet all legal requirements to serve,” he wrote in a text to The Current GA. “Politically motivated complaints like this may generate headlines, but they won’t change the facts. My focus remains where it should be, making sure Georgians have a PSC Commissioner who is delivering affordable, reliable and safe power for the people of Georgia.”
Johnson’s voter registration lists his address as 2432 Brantley St., NW, in Atlanta. That’s a 1,300-square-foot home Johnson bought for $430,000 in 2024 in an unqualified sale from a “related individual” listed as Corey L. Johnson in Fulton County property records.
PSC’s role
The five-member Public Service Commission regulates investor-owned utilities, with much of its attention focused on Georgia Power. Commissioners are elected in statewide voting, but must live in the district connected to the seat for which they’re running. The commission’s decisions influence both the price of electricity for millions of Georgians and the company’s reliance on climate-warming fuels.
Gov. Brian Kemp appointed Johnson to the PSC in July 2021 when Commissioner Chuck Eaton stepped down. Johnson, an Army veteran and businessman with a law degree from the University of Kentucky School of Law, lived in Cobb County prior to his appointment and ran unsuccessfully for the Cobb County Commission in 2020. Because he was filling a vacancy, Johnson was exempt from the residency requirement.
PSC District 3 includes Clayton, DeKalb and Fulton counties.
O’Toole said if Johnson lived in Cobb in 2025 he shouldn’t have been serving as the District 3 commissioner.
“My issue with Fitz is that he is perpetuating a fraud on the voters of the state of Georgia and it has real effects,” O’Toole said. “I’m paying a $300 to $400 f—— electric bill every summer now because of decisions he made when he shouldn’t even have been on the commission. So this is not just ‘I got you; you’re not a resident.’ This is this guy’s actively harmed every single resident and the economy of Georgia with his decisions, and he was doing them illegally, because apparently the rules don’t apply to Fitz.”
Commissioners typically serve 6-year terms, though that pattern was disrupted by an ultimately unsuccessful voting rights lawsuit in 2022 that sought to tie both voting and residency to districts. The litigation forced the cancellation of two scheduled PSC races in 2022.
To get the staggered voting back on track, the 2025 race for then-incumbent Johnson’s District 3 seat was for a one-year term. In November, Johnson lost to Democrat Peter Hubbard.
Johnson vowed to try again, but even if he overcomes the residency challenge he faces Republican Brandon Martin in the primary on May 19. Martin’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Hubbard is running unopposed in the Democratic primary.
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