December 21, 2005

The Heat is On

Syracuse New Times

During last month's mayoral campaign the most demonstrable audience response was occasioned by Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins' raising the issue of creating a municipal power authority. It would be a local source of energy, presumably less expensive, similar to those existing in Solvay and Sherrill. At the time the issue gained significant mainstream political concern after reports of anticipated rate hikes for National Grid customers were estimated at as high as 37 percent.

More recent motivation to examine the issue has been boosted by the Syracuse City School District's estimate that it will fall $1 million short in its budget to heat its 38 school buildings this winter, and a study by the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities projected a shortage of $321.4 million in funding for New York state's share of the federally financed Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

Last week Rochester attorney Paloma Capanna, who is seeking the Democratic Party nomination to oppose Rep. Jim Walsh in next fall's election in the 25th Congressional District, called on the Republican incumbent to secure additional LIHEAP funding. For Capanna, however, the issue of municipal power remains a conversation piece.
"I have two concerns," she said in a telephone interview. "First the program {LIHEAP} should have been funded at the necessary levels back in August or September. The Wall Street Journal was predicting the program would be underfunded by as much as 50 percent due to the surge in applications, as high as 47 percent in rural areas. This should have been on {Walsh's} radar."

Capanna said increases in heating costs for the coming winter, estimated at as high as 30 percent by the federal Department of Energy, were foreseeable even before the weather turned cold as a result of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent disruption of oil processing along the Gulf Coast. She criticized Walsh for joining his GOP colleagues in a party line vote Dec. 9 to declare an initiative to approve additional LIHEAP funding out of order. "There still may be a chance to secure additional funding," she said about congressional negotiations, "perhaps in exchange for drilling rights in Alaska." Walsh staffers pointed out that the vote was purely procedural.

Last week, Capanna started a drive to stock the shelves at the Sodus Family Resource Center, which ran out of food, clothes and toys for the holiday season. "My office looks like a shelter," she said. "Bags and boxes of coats and boots and blankets and comforters." Her staff spent two hours Dec. 20 handing out food baskets at the family resource center in Wayne County, part of the 25th District, which includes all of Onondaga and sections of Cayuga and Monroe counties.

Meanwhile, Hawkins is forming a nonpartisan citizens committee for public power, which will begin meeting after the first of the year. "As people's {utility} bills come in this winter I think they will really understand the issue," he said. "Actually I think they already have. It's been an issue for upstate New York for years. That's why we've lost so many jobs as business moves to places with lower energy costs. While some companies get reduced costs, they're still high relative to other states."

Hawkins said the committee's first step will be to present a position paper to the Syracuse Common Council, requesting a feasibility study to see if the concept is economically viable. "Which I think it will be," Hawkins added, "and to request a referendum on the issue like they had in Auburn last year." Hawkins noted that the residents of Auburn voted to implement public power by a margin of 8-to-1.

Ken Howland, another Democrat seeking to oppose Walsh, said that the heat crisis was part of the GOP's cut and run policy, cutting the taxes of the super wealthy and cutting the benefits to the elderly and poor.

Dan Maffei, Mayor Matt Driscoll's campaign strategist in his successful re-election and also a contender for the Democratic nod in the 25th Congressional District, said all the factors certainly put public power into the discussion of new solutions to the home heating crisis in Central New York. "I would support a feasibility study," Maffei said. "I'm going to keep the incumbent's feet to the fire, or snow, as the case may be, as to why nothing has been done about this for a decade. But frankly, I'd be surprised if Walsh didn't support a feasibility study himself."

"I think he'd be very supportive," said Walsh's press person Dan Gage. "He's always been interested in ways to cut home heating costs." Gage explained that the LIHEAP funding level would remain at last year's for the coming winter only if the Senate failed to approve bills recently passed by the House. "They approved $2.183 billion last week for the program," he said, "earmarked $2 billion for it in a Defense Department appropriation and added another billion in emergency assistance reductions. That would be an unprecedented more than $5 billion if the Senate acts by Dec. 31."

--Walt Shepperd

Posted by syracusegreens at December 21, 2005 05:31 AM