The Partial Observer by Mary Sommer Tingley
Common Council Should Emulate Ithaca
I recently left a voicemail for Mr. Rory M. Christian, who serves as the chair of the New York State Public Service Commission and as the chief financial officer of the Department of Public Service, reporting to our governor. These entities are responsible for oversight of New York State utilities, including NYSEG, under the broad mandate to ensure access to safe, reliable utility service at just and reasonable rates.
I wanted to share with him the pain I, and so many NYSEG customers, experience when our monthly bills fluctuate wildly. Nothing until now has made me want to change my party affiliation to Independent than dealing with increasing utility costs.
The last straw came this week when I made my monthly call to the poor souls at NYSEG, who tried to explain the unexplainable. This involves a little-known line item on page four of six called “Detailed Adjustments Weather Norm Chrg Sales Dr Adj.,” aka “WNA.”
The state allows for utilities to use this mechanism to keep rates stable and predictable. Fine, but NYSEG had a computer software update as first revealed by News10 NBC in April. This caused a “glitch” that inaccurately recorded and processed much colder than actual average temperatures, which artificially inflated customer gas usage. The result of NYSEG’s error? My $13.93 charge. Who approved that? PSC. Multiply that by the affected customers? You do the math.
Add to this the recent “Public Notice” NYSEG/PSC published in “The Daily Star” to notify/justify temporary rate increases plus a $52.6 and $1.2 million increase in base electricity and natural gas revenues, respectively. The following spin attempts to justify this because PSC didn’t act within the required 11 months they should have (paraphrased).
“The New York State Public Service Commission today set temporary rates for New York State Electric & Gas Corporation (NYSEG) and (RG&E) that are substantially less than what the companies have requested. By setting temporary rates, the Commission is protecting customers from rate hikes that would be compounded by a delay, allowing the utility to continue making necessary investments for safety and reliability, and providing all parties involved with additional time to review a complex record and establish permanent rates.”
This begs the question, who is protecting customers from the PSC?
And the bone PSC threw to customers to soften that blow? Their new order to “Implement a Company-Administered Energy Efficiency/Building Electrification (EE/BE) programs surcharge separate from the State’s System Benefits Charge (“SBC”).
Gee, thanks! Translation for those of us who misplaced our New York State acronym decoder rings: We will now see a separate SBC line in the “Electricity Delivery Charges” section of our already complicated statement, to distinguish between what goes to the state to directly fund mandated energy programs (e.g., funds for Energy Star gas furnaces and other initiatives driven by state climate acts) versus NYSEG’s administrative and operational costs we pay them to manage those mandated programs and to recoup their cost to participate in energy efficiency initiatives.
No wonder we need more than 650 employees in the DPS to oversee this nightmare.
I can now understand why the Ithaca City Council passed a resolution requesting that our attorney general investigate NYSEG, Rochester Gas and Electric DBA Avangrid, its parent company, Iberdrola, and our own PSC.
Let’s push our Oneonta City Council to join Ithaca and pass our own resolutions asking for investigation into their performance and rate case proceedings, as Ithaca has. And while we’re at it, let’s call out the politicians who appointed the seven members that lead the PSC, who accepted campaign dollars from the Avangrid/NYSEG Political Action Committee. Conflict of interest much?
Enough is enough!
Mary Sommer Tingley is a resident of the City of Oneonta.
