It\u2019s not only winter in Albany, it\u2019s budget season\u2014arguably the biggest and most important job for the Legislature each year.\u00a0 Once the governor proposes his budget, it\u2019s up to the Legislature to decide how to react.\u00a0 Every year, both houses of the Legislature hold joint hearings to look into what the governor has proposed.\u00a0 This year is no different.<\/p>\n
Virtually every working day since the last week of January up until President\u2019s Day, hearings on various budgetary topics are taken up.\u00a0 Usually the heads of the relevant state agencies testify first followed by various business and nonprofit interest groups and any members of the public.<\/p>\n
The hearings are supposed to cover all aspects of the governor\u2019s proposed state budget.<\/p>\n
But some topics fall outside of the hearings.\u00a0 One such case is the decision by the Cuomo Administration to jack up electricity rates by an estimated $7.6 billion.\u00a0 You heard that right, $7.6 billion.<\/p>\n
Under the Cuomo proposal, everyone has to pay.\u00a0 It is being imposed by the government, so it is essentially a \u201ctax.\u201d\u00a0 But since it was imposed by a state agency \u2013 in this case the Public Service Commission \u2013 the Legislature has no direct say.<\/p>\n
And, despite it being a hike on everyone, the public has had little say in the decision.<\/p>\n
What makes this different than a traditional tax is that the benefits are not going to the government, or to individuals in need, or to broadly enhance the public\u2019s interest. \u00a0Instead, the money is being directed into the coffers of an Illinois-based company, Exelon, which is one of the most profitable companies in America.<\/p>\n
Some have called this is the biggest transfer of wealth in New York State history.<\/p>\n
While not part of the budget, the issue of the Administration\u2019s bailout of aging, inefficient nuclear power plants located on Lake Ontario will have a huge financial impact on every resident, local government, non-profit group and business in the state, and divert funds from transitioning to clean, green renewable energy.<\/p>\n
The impact will be real: if you\u2019re a National Grid residential customer, $465 million will be added to electricity rates over the next twelve years. \u00a0For New York State Electric and Gas energy consumers, nearly $350 million.\u00a0 For ConEd residential ratepayers (who already pay one of the highest rates in the nation) another $700 million will be tacked on.<\/p>\n
And while many of us may be able to absorb the additional increases, many cannot.\u00a0 There are roughly 6.5 million residential ratepayers, but more than 800,000 \u2013 or one in eight \u2013 are currently more than 60 days behind their due dates on their electric bill.<\/p>\n
Hiking those rates even more will not help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s not only winter in Albany, it\u2019s budget season\u2014arguably the biggest and most important job for the Legislature each year.\u00a0 Once the governor proposes his budget, it\u2019s up to the Legislature to decide how to react.\u00a0 Every year, both houses of the Legislature hold joint hearings to look into what the governor has proposed.\u00a0 This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1825,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions\/1825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}