COMMENTARY
Donn Esmonde: Our own folks betray us on power rates
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The people we pay to watch our backs instead stabbed us in the back.
It is bad enough when downstate politicians play us for suckers. What is worse is when our own people help them do it.
That is what just happened, as follow-the- leader state legislators and two other officials sealed us in a barrel and sent us over the falls.
It started last month, when the State Power Authority shifted $500 million to help Albany fill a $1.6 billion budget hole. Critics warned then that there would be a price to pay. The bill came due last week, when the Power Authority announced a rate increase for folks across WNY’s economic gulag.
Power Authority officials contend that the spike is not connected to the $500 million it let Albany use to caulk its budget gap. But common sense tells you that when $500 million disappears, there is—one way or another—a price to pay.
“That $500 million was going to come out of somewhere,” said Assemblyman Jim Hayes, an Amherst Republican. “Don’t these people understand how much the average family is hurting?”
The double drilling—the $500 million siphoning, followed by the rate hike —started when state legislators last month OK’d the budget deal. Most of the supposedly “surplus” dollars—which could have been used to cut rates or help businesses—came from the Power Authority’s cash cow, the hydropower plant in Niagara Falls.
The $500 million knife in our back passed the Senate in a 32-29 vote. The difference was two local Democrats— Buffalo’s Antoine Thompson and Lake View’s Bill Stachowski—who followed downstate party boss Malcolm Smith’s lead.
State Sen. George Maziarz, a Republican from Newfane, said he pleaded with them to vote “no” on the bill that included the $500 million transfer.
“I told Stachowski and Thompson that [the Power Authority] is lying, that there will be a rate increase,” Maziarz said. “They voted for it, anyway.”
Thompson told The Buffalo News that “painful decisions” had to be made. Stachowski went for the predictable emotion-laden defense, contending that raiding the Power Authority avoided cuts to hospitals and nursing homes.
Republicans are predictably using the Democrat-sealed deal as a political weapon. But this goes beyond the usual Republican vs. Democrat warfare.
Going along with the sellout of WNY were our two locals on the Power Authority board, Republican Elise Cusack and Democrat Patrick Curley. I thought they were there to protect us, not to pin our arms while their cohorts lifted our wallets. Hayes and Maziarz called for Cusack, their fellow Republican, and Curley to resign.
The $500 million kick in our gut was rubber-stamped in the Democratic-controlled Assembly. Local Democratic legislators who joined party boss Shelly Silver in WNY’s mugging were Robin Schimminger, Crystal Peoples, Sam Hoyt, Dennis Gabryszak, Bill Parment and Francine DelMonte.
The practice of voting along party lines in Albany is as old as dirt. But this was a prime time—particularly for Thompson and Stachowski, whose votes made a difference—for Democrats to serve the people who elected them. Instead they followed the party leaders who control them.
We might as well tattoo the word “victim” across our foreheads. Having seen that it was this easy to lift $500 million from our wallets, you can bet that— with another multibillion-dollar budget hole on the horizon—the same folks who got away with this will be back again.
And it does not look like anyone will stop them.
desmonde@buffnews.com
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