immediate financial relief<\/a> to utility ratepayers.\u00a0<\/p>\nNew York State Assemblyman Bill Conrad, who is a Democrat representing the Tonawandas, sees it this way: “Energy shouldn’t be political. It sometimes can be, but when it comes to energy rates and your bills, everybody is on the same page. Nobody wants to see those increased.”<\/p>\n
Of course, energy policy has become politically charged with the state’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act and all the spinoffs like the All Electric Building Act. That was paused by Governor Hochul with litigation and, of course, just before this election year.<\/p>\n
But now just as Governor Hochul’s proposed $260 billion state budget is being shaped there is now this push by Western New York Assembly Members Conrad, Pat Burke, Karen McMahon, and Jon Rivera along with other upstate Democrats. They signed and sent a letter to the governor, calling for some way to provide either energy bill credits, return excess utility revenues, or even pause state taxes on utility bills for immediate financial assistance to utility customers. \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
And they say in the letter dated Feb. 20 that they are looking at some way to give back to ratepayers over $770 million collected by utilities on behalf of the State’s Clean Energy Fund to promote and advance clean energy projects as administered by the state’s NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conrad explains: “It’s sitting there. It’s not earmarked for any specific project right now, and if we’re not using it, then it should be put back as a credit to the ratepayers to kind of alleviate the energy crisis that we’re kind of experiencing right now. We’re asking for our own coffers to kind of kick back what we’ve accumulated due to what I would say different policies that have been implemented over the years, in the meantime, to kind of alleviate the stress. And then we can work on long term solutions to this issue.”<\/p>\n
Conrad went on to say: “There are taxes on receipts that the state does go after a little bit of. And we’ve done it before. I don’t know if you remember that we did kind of a tax hiatus on gas when gas rates were going up really high. And that’s where we kind of took the cue of, ‘Hey we’ve done this before,’ and provided some relief. It wasn’t major relief, but it was something, ad I’d rather have something than nothing.”<\/p>\n
This may sound rather familiar with Republicans previously claiming up to $2 billion could be sitting in state energy policy accounts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We heard this two weeks ago from Republican State Assemblymember Patrick Chludzinski, who represents Cheektowaga and Lancaster, and said he had written another letter to the governor requesting what he called an Energy Emergency Declaration.<\/p>\n
He also spoke about those funds held by NYSERDA: “These were monies that were already taken from ratepayers and we’d like that to be given back in the form of rebates to help offset these extreme utility bill costs.”<\/p>\n
Assemblymember Conrad confirms that the Governor’s Office did receive the letter signed by him and other Democrats but there was no response so far.\u00a0<\/p>\n
2 On Your Side also reached out to the Governor’s Office on Wednesday afternoon with no response so far.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However we did get this response from the Governor’s office for our article on February 10th which mentioned the comments of the Republican lawmakers. It stated \u00a0“The Governor has made energy affordability a top priority which is why her State of the State includes a Ratepayer Protection Plan that will protect against utility increases, remove hidden fees and hold the line on executive pay. Coupled with the implementation of her all-of-the-above energy plan, the Governor is laser focused on keeping the lights on and costs down. If these State Senate Republicans were serious about driving down energy costs, they would push their GOP colleagues in Washington to stop trying to kill key energy projects\u00a0that will provide needed supply and lift the Trump tariffs that are driving energy supply costs up across the board.”<\/p>\n
A NYSERDA spokesperson also offered this response to the GOP lawmakers and their statements regarding collected charges such as the SBC or Systems Benefit Charge charge listed on utility bills: “What is falsely being described as a NYSERDA budget surplus is actually a reflection of funds committed to multi-year programs including those that assist New York families, businesses, and communities with energy affordability. NYSERDA\u2019s collective work aligns with Governor Hochul\u2019s commitment to keep the lights and heat on while prioritizing affordability and ensuring that New Yorkers save money on their energy bills. NYSERDA’s use of funds is in full compliance with time-bound documents such as Public Service Commission orders, federal grants, and Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative operating plans.<\/p>\n
NYSERDA is committed to transparency and accountability in the administration of public funds. The Authority consistently provides reports to the legislature on the status of its programs, the projects it supports and the numerous benefits they provide to New York residents; and these reports are publicly available on NYSERDA\u2019s website.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"State lawmakers from both parties are pressuring Governor Hochul to provide immediate financial relief to New York utility…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-145726","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-headlines","10":"tag-new-york-news","11":"tag-new-york-state","12":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-state-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}