Schumer Supports Iberdrola Takeover of NYSEG — Payoff in the Works?
By Jim Willis on Jul 15, 2008 in Energy, Government & Politics | Printable Version
According to the Press & Sun-Bulletin (Schumer presses for utility-merger deal), New York’s esteemed senior Senator, Chuckie Schumer (D-New York), wants to help a foreign company take over most of Upstate New York’s energy utilities. Yes, the good Senator has thrown his weight behind the proposed Iberdrola takeover of Energy East, the company that doesn’t care a whit about its customers and the owner of New York State Electric & Gas, the power company in Greater Binghamton.
As I’ve written before, the Iberdrola/NYSEG deal has been a boondoggle from the start. A few people at the top will get a boatload of money for brokering the deal and retire to an island in the South Seas. Ratepayers (you and I) will get hosed with higher rates. And a foreign company will own a key piece of America’s infrastructure–something that should NEVER happen.
It’s no surprise to me that Senator Schumer is lending his gaseous voice to help the cause. He wants Iberdrola to dedicate a piddling $640 million in a fund to offset the rate hikes they’ll ram through as soon as they take ownership. And he wants them to invest more than $2 billion on wind farms. (If we could only harness the wind that emanates from Schumer’s mouth, we would have a renewable energy source for years to come!)
Schumer also wants the Public Service Commission (PSC) to remove its restriction that Iberdrola sell off its wind farms. With deregulation of the power industry, utilities that deliver the power are supposed to divest themselves of operations that produce the power, like coal burning plants, nuclear power plants, hydro-electric plants and the like. Because of the current energy “crisis,” Schumer does what libs always do–they want to break or change the laws they themselves created.
Why would Chuckie be in favor of a foreign takeover of our infrastructure? Money, of course. I smell a payoff. You can be sure if Iberdrola consummates the deal, they, or their shell corporations, will heavily donate to Chuckie’s campaign/retirement funds. Color me cynical…but I predict one day in the not-too-distant future you’ll hear about “irregular” payments to Schumer’s coffers from Iberdrola.
When will New Yorkers wake up and bounce this jerk out of office? Let’s hope the PSC can stand up to the pressure of this windbag and stop the deal.
Technorati Tags: Senator Charles Schumer, Iberdrola, Energy East, NYSEG, political payoff, New York Public Service Commission, wind farms
Franco DiRosa | Jul 17, 2008 | Reply
Why is it that NYSEG charges the 3rd highest rate in the Country? Are neighbors are almost half the rate that NYSEG charges. Why don’t we rise up and demand fairness. Why aren’t their investigations into monopoly practices and price gauging? Just remember, I said it first here… After this whole Natural Gas drilling in our region gets going and we start producing Natural Gas, instead of our energy rates going down, it will go up. That’s just the way things work here in NY, the opposite of logic.
Jim Willis | Jul 21, 2008 | Reply
Your comment is cynical Franco, but likely true! Somehow we have to keep making noise about the nosebleed high electric rates we pay under NYSEG. Instead of investigations, I would settle for true competition. Open up the market and let someone else put in their own lines to households and businesses–then the price would come down.
A quick story about NYSEG: I once knew a local printer who printed a run of brochures for NYSEG. There were over 50,000 brochures in the print run. I don’t recall the price involved, but it was something like $4-$5K to print the brochures in full color. A NYSEG reps notices a typo after it’s printed, scraps the whole thing, and has it reprinted with the correction. $4-$5K down the toilet for ratepayers–and no accountability for the person in NYSEG who wasted that money. That’s why we pay high electric rates. It’s waste and mismanagement at NYSEG, with no real competitors to keep them honest.