LIPA reform effort trips a breaker

Albany’s initial effort to chart a path for LIPA as a fully public entity came up short as the commission in charge of the process on Tuesday fired its outside consultant and asked the State Legislature for more time to complete the job.

A well-run Long Island Power Authority is foundational to a thriving Long Island. Residents of Nassau and Suffolk counties as well as those served by the utility on the Rockaway peninsula have suffered through frustratingly repetitive iterations of high rates and bad service. The callousness of the for-profit Long Island Lighting Company and its failure to get its nuclear plant in Shoreham running led to the creation of LIPA in 1986. Superstorm Sandy exposed the lack of competent oversight so Albany came up with the so-called LIPA Reform Act of 2012 which was supposed to create a better hybrid of public oversight of a private utility. When current grid operator PSEG stumbled badly responding to Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020, the smoldering flame of true public ownership flared again.

But the Legislative Commission on the Future of the Long Island Power Authority, directed specifically to devise a plan for public ownership, is mimicking some of the past disarray. Before state lawmakers agree to a revised timetable for delivery of the commission's final report, they should require specific information. State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli's mandatory review of the draft report found “many details unsettled,” especially the governance and labor issues.

Long Islanders need to be told exactly how the promised savings of approximately $50 million a year would be spent. How could it reduce bills or mitigate future rate increases? How would the new utility executives make the transmission and distribution system more reliable and responsive to outages? How would this new bureaucracy fulfill its goal of being more accountable, or will the politics that have long plagued LIPA return?

At Tuesday's meeting, the commission terminated its contract with GDS Associates because of misconduct by one of the lead analysts. That incident justified the dismissal but it also overshadowed the incompleteness of GDS's final draft report. Released just weeks before the end of the legislative session, it provided no model legislation for grappling with the tough issues of how the utility should be governed and how to transition the 1,400-member union workforce. Would their benefits and National Labor Relations Board protections stay intact or would workers become public employees? What are the labor costs of each scenario?

New York's bold requirements on reducing fossil fuels mean residents will be ever more dependent on a supply of reliable and affordable electricity. Most importantly, the public needs to be convinced that a fully public utility is the best option. No groundswell of support has emerged for this radical change, nor has any significant political leadership been willing to risk taking the lead to champion it. That is telling.