From the Desk of Senator Jack M. Martins: Albany Wants To Control Our Electric

My Friends,

It’s almost impossible keep up with the bad ideas and power grabs coming out of Albany lately, but I’m trying. This latest one is an exceptional dud.  

If you’re a Long Island native like me, no doubt you’ve been disgusted by LIPA at some point, or as it was formerly known, LILCO. In fact, you may not really be a Long Islander unless you’ve experienced the blackouts, rude customer service, or surprise rate hikes firsthand.

And if you weren’t long-suffering enough, things are about to get worse.  Albany insiders are now sugarcoating a quiet, backdoor takeover of LIPA they call, “municipalizing.” I call it, “sticking their green agenda down your throat while they pick your pockets clean.”

They’re doing it in closed door fashion with unpublicized public hearings that they haven’t livestreamed or even shared with Long Island rate payers. Even if you do happen to stumble on to one of these charades, they won’t let you speak unless you register.

Did you even know this was going on?

It seems nobody does. That’s why I’m writing.

This is nothing more than a sordid power grab and here’s why. New York Democrats are trying to implement the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). It’s their version of the Green New Deal and you’ve already had a sampling. They don’t want you to have gas boiler, or use oil heat, or even cook with a gas stove.  But they can’t implement their vision unless they control the utilities. Once they have those, they can regulate what you use, when you use it and how much you pay. It’s all about control. You’re just supposed to suspend reality and believe that an electrical grid that seemingly fails every first humid day in July is suddenly robust enough to support thousands more megawatts of demand.

Everybody’s knows they’re kowtowing to the extreme fringes of their party on the backs of the everyday middleclass who must now be “woke” to boil a cup of tea.  I don’t know if they genuinely subscribe to this distorted narrative or they simply don’t care enough to fight back with common sense.

I’ll leave you with this: Has big government ever done a better job than private industry? These “authorities’ resolve nothing, spend everything, and answer to no one.  Think of the almost daily fiascos at the MTA.  We don’t need to be held hostage when it comes to our power, too.

Will you join me and tell them to keep their hands off LIPA? Just add your name and email on this petition and together we can stop this.