LOCKPORT — Opening another front in its running feud with the New York Power Authority, the Niagara County Legislature on Tuesday may vote on a request for an investigation on how a former NYPA board member received a new high-paying part-time job.

The resolution by Legislator John D. Ceretto, R-Lewiston, a frequent Power Authority critic, demands that the state inspector general open a probe of how and why Elise Cusack of Amherst, a onetime Erie County legislator, was hired for the $77,500-a-year job.

As The Buffalo News reported April 3, Cusack was given the post of community liaison for the CanalSide development in Buffalo. The job did not exist previously and no other candidates were considered, The News disclosed, quoting Power Authority President and Chief Executive Officer Richard M. Kessel.

Cusack had been a member of the Power Authority board of trustees until her March 1 resignation. Ceretto’s resolution charges that she was handed her job in exchange for “her silence on NYPA actions that have been detrimental to Niagara County and Western New York.”

Chief among those, in Ceretto’s eyes, was the 2009 donation of $544 million in Power Authority surpluses to balance last year’s general state budget.

The county has a lawsuit against the Power Authority seeking to order that money BE returned to the authority and distributed to Niagara County electric customers in the form of rebates.

The county’s theory is that if the authority had such large surpluses, it must have been overcharging for electricity produced at the Niagara Power Project in Lewiston.

A news release issued by the county’s Public Information Office charged that Cusack “was noted for her slavish loyalty to Power Authority CEO Richie Kessel and [for] regularly voting in favor of downstate and Albany interests at the authority.”

“What’s that Latin phrase? Quid pro quo?” Ceretto asked. “How do you only attend two out of 19 meetings as a trustee, and then, without any kind of job search, be judged the most qualified person for a job at the same employer? If most of us missed 89 percent of our scheduled work, we wouldn’t be in line for a $77,000 promotion.”

“No comment,” Kessel said when asked Friday about Ceretto’s resolution. A call to Cusack’s home was not returned Friday.