Last October when the New York State Comptroller’s audit of the Power Authority was released, I pointed out how the people of this region are being screwed.  Here’s a few highlights:

• NYSPA donates $53 million to the State in 2004
• NYSPA has $49 million in other expenses in 2004.
• NYSPA donates $106 million to the State in 2005.
• The Niagara Power Project accounted for 284% of the NYSPA profit for 2005, effectively subsidizing the other 16 power plants operated by the NYSPA.
• 2004 net revenues (profit) for the Niagara Power Project were $112,243,536.
• 2005 net revenues for the Niagara Project were $165,837,784.

Click here for my detailed report. 

The Buffalo News did a more in depth study of the fiscal practices of the New York State Power Authority and the results are even more startling.

• The state-operated hydropower plant north of Niagara Falls generates enough low-cost electricity to power 2.5 million homes. But more than half of that power is shipped out of town — in some cases, out of state.
• Little of what remains goes to residential customers, whose rates are 50 percent higher than the national average. Most of the power that stays here goes to industry. It’s a lot of juice — more than one-third of the plant’s generating capacity.
• Just two Niagara Falls chemical manufacturers — Occidental and Olin — get 29 percent of the low-cost industrial power earmarked for the region, although they employ only 1 percent of the workers of the 98 companies participating in the program. The discounted power last year saved Occidental and Olin an estimated $53 million, or an average of $126,155 per job. And it doesn’t stop there.
• The discounted power saved the 98 companies that receive it an estimated $180 million last year.
• Those industries that don’t enjoy low-cost power from the authority or receive some other type of discount pay nearly four times the national rate for power. A state commission last year determined that New York’s industrial rates are substantially higher than neighboring states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Public Authority system in New York State has failed the taxpayers.  The Power Authority is among the worst of the worst.  Public Authorities are managed (I use the word loosely) by appointed bureaucrats with no accountability to the people of the state.  The capricious distribution of low cost power has done major harm to the business and economic climate of Western New York.

It is time for the privatization of the Niagara Power Project and the rest of the New York State Power Authority.  This would lead to many millions of dollars returned to the local economy in the form of property taxes alone.  The benefits would be felt by the region, not just a select few at the expense of others.

Brian Higgins, through his shameful public posturing, has been a major force to assure that we have 50 more years of the Power Authority’s self-serving rape of our economy.  Higgins agreed to a paltry few million dollars per year for waterfront development in exchange for paving the way for another 50 year license for the Power Authority to operate.  In return he turns the money over to a newly created virtually autonomous bureaucracy known as the Erie County Harbor Development Corporation.  The result is the ECHDC is now ignoring the master plan for the Buffalo Inner Harbor development.