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QUEENS WEEKLY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2019
Queens pols want public option for NY electricity
After summer of blackouts, lawmakers press Con Edison on prepping for and responding to problems
BY MAX PARROTT
After the blackouts
that swept the Upper West
Side, south Brooklyn and
southeast Queens following
the heat wave and ensuing
storm in July, the state
Legislature held a joint
hearing on Tuesday, Sept.
3, to interrogate Con Ed’s
preparedness and response
to the disruptions.
While the hearing was
premised on assessing
Con Edison’s emergency
response, a group of
legislators, including a
notable number of Queens
representatives, pushed
to expand the scope of the
conversation to consider
whether a public agency
would be more effective at
providing energy to the city
than the private company.
The first half of the
hearing focused on the
testimony of Con Edison
President Tim Cawley,
who maintained that the
company’s decision to
intentionally shut off the
power to south Brooklyn
was the correct thing to do in
response to circumstances
that he claimed were
unforeseeable.
“These outages did
not occur because of a
lack of infrastructure,
or neglected maintenance
or investment,”
Hawley claimed.
In response, Queens
legislators including
Senator Michael Gianaris
and Assemblyman Ron
Kim all confronted
Cawley with lines of
questioning that attacked
the tension between Con
Edison’s investor-driven
profit motive and the
public interest.
“When you have a
private entity like Con
Edison, who at least in part,
predominantly responds to
its investors as opposed to
the public interest, you’re
making decisions on which
of the grids to improve, not
necessarily 100 percent
focused on what is in the
best interest of the people of
the city,” said Gianaris.
In response to Gianaris’
and others’ questions on
this theme, Cawley avoided
getting defensive. Instead,
he simply responded that it
was outside of his scope.
“I won’t share a whole
lot about my opinion.
Certainly you folks can
look at that,” he said.
The enthusiasm about
the prospect of a public
utility system was not
without its skeptics. Nicole
Maliotakis, a Republican
assemblywoman from
Staten Island, said
she found the
idea “mind-boggling.”
“Just look at NYCHA.
Look at our education
system. Look at our transit
system,” she said.
Senator Leroy Comrie,
on the other hand, remained
mute on these structural
issues in questioning
Hawley. The Jamaica
senator was more concerned
over how southeast Queens
was being left out of the
State Senator Michael Gianaris speaks at a Sept. 3 hearing on recent power outages in New York City.
conversation. Comrie
very vocally called for the
hearing after at least 8,000
people lost power in Queens
— the vast majority of them
in the neighborhoods
around Jamaica.
“I’ve asked you twice
now to give us an update
on the Queen’s outages
and I’ve yet to hear
anything from Con Edison
about the reasons behind
the Queen’s outages,” said
Comrie.
After Cawley finished
his testimony, legislators
got a chance to speak
with the John B. Rhodes,
chair of the Public Service
Commission, the agency
that is in the middle of
an investigation into the
blackouts. Legislators
took up issues ranging
from the blackouts, to the
company’s proposed rate
hikes and also pressed
him for his opinion
on transferring to a
public utility.
But on the debate
over state versus private
ownership, Rhodes
remained agnostic. When
Senate Energy Committee
Chairman Kevin Parker
asked him about it, he
dodged and said that
the challenge facing any
energy provider is serving
the customer best.
“That is a challenge
that exists whether the
utility is publicly owned
— investor-owned — or an
actual publicly managed
entity,” he said.
Rhodes was not
completely impartial on
the topic of the company’s
rate of public reinvestment,
however. Senator Julia
Salazar raised a detail in
Con Ed’s most recent rate
proposal, which she said
justifies a rate hike as a
way to increase its return
on equity to more than
9.75 percent.
Rhodes admitted that
he thought that return on
equity was too much.
To cap off the event,
the committee called on
Amber Ruther, a member of
the Democratic Socialists
of America Ecosocialist
working group, to
Photo courtesy of Gianaris’ office
testify. She argued that
of the more than 2,000
U.S. cities that operate
publicly owned utilities,
they are more reliable
with outage durations,
and their residential
rates are 14 percent lower
than those of privately
owned utilities.
“I want to emphasize
that public ownership
in and of itself is not
a panacea. We need to
ensure rigorous reviews of
utility spending plans and
community and worker
input. We could definitely
have a conversation about
what the most effective
democratic oversight
structure could look like,”
Ruther said.
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