March 24, 2026 · Energy and Telecommunications · 4,259 words · 6 speakers · 145 segments
Good afternoon. I'm State Senator Kevin Parker, Chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Energy and Telecommunications. Welcome to our meeting. We have a number of colleagues here, starting with Senator Matera, the Rank Order Committee, Senator Brian Kavanaugh, Senator Rachel May, Senator Chris Ryan, Senator Mark Walcheck. Senator and my good friends in a timely manner. Thank you all for being here. Hopefully we'll have a boring and uneventful meeting. That never happens here. So, you know, something to wish for. Don't mind me. You were like, that was our plan already.
Well, you already started by saying Tom o' Mara was a good friend.
So Tom was sitting all the way over there. I wanted him to feel special. And we have the committee director, Justin chairs, as well as Grant. Just one name, Prince Madonna, Grant, you know. But we have a pretty hefty agenda today, so let's get started.
JUSTIN yes, Sir. Bill number 120A sponsor Senator Clare an act amend public service law in relation to prohibiting termination of residential utility services during forecasts of extreme temperature.
Questions, comments, concerns about this bill?
Sen. WALTER yeah, Chairman. So this bill would be the utility, even if someone's not paying their bill, can't cut their cut their utilities off if there's a forecast that has the temperature being above 90 degrees or below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Am I reading that right?
That is correct.
So for the for the usage of that person or that corporation or whoever it is that's not paying, who would, who would pick up the cost as they're continuing to use while not paying their bill?
Well, it wouldn't be an ongoing thing.
Right.
It would just be over a period. So what you don't want is it's, you know, you're going to have a blizzard over the next three or four or five days and somebody gets their utilities cut off and then during that period they have no electricity like, you know, or gas or whatever. Right. So that's what this is doing. It's not saying that they that the utility would never recoup the cost of energy being used during the period. That's not how I read the bills. That's correct.
So we have Chairman, we you know, According to the PSC, we have 1.4 million ratepayers in arrears currently. I know the utility companies will try their best to collect from them. My question is, if we're continuing to extend people from non shut offs that are continuing to use, who ultimately picks up the tab when those utilities bring a rate case, isn't that the rest of the ratepayers that are.
This does not, this does not indemnify anybody against the. It does not do that at all. It just simply says you cannot receive a cutoff during these periods. Right. But it doesn't create a dynamic where they don't have to pay their bills. Right. So the people, the ratepayers who are responsible for arrears continue to be responsible for their arrears, but this is a
cutoff for someone that is already not paying.
They're already. But in this conversation, they would already be in arrears. Yeah. Right. So we're not, we're not creating a new situation. We're just simply saying don't cut them off when we're having an extreme, extreme weather emergency.
And that extreme weather would be anything that is forecasted to be above 90 degrees or anything that is forecasted to be.
Correct.
32 degrees. So that we're asking the utility companies to also go off of the. The forecast.
Yes.
Okay. That forecast is 72 hours out, is that right?
It's the forecast that's promulgated by the National Weather Service.
What's the, what's the penalty if the weatherman at the utility company gets it wrong and they do a shut off and it ends up, you know, it's forecasted to be in the 40s, but then they do a shut off and it's actually 32. Is there a penalty included here?
We make them strip down and we walk them through the town and ring a bell and say, shame. It's a preventive measure. We don't believe that there'll be enough instances of mistakes in this particular case. You know, doing the shut off for utility is a really big action, so they don't do them arbitrarily. We just want to create some safeguards to make sure that we're not leaving New Yorkers vulnerable during weather emergencies from lack of. Any other questions, comments, concerns? Yes.
Move the bill.
Bills will probably move the second. Any no votes. Any without Rex.
Nay.
When? No. This bill will move to third reading.
Next.
Bill number 904B sponsor Senator Gonzalez. An act to amend the public service law in relation to termination of certain utility services to report on investment proceedings related to gas, electric and steam service.
Senator Gonzalez, you want to.
I just. I thank you. I do want to thank the chair for putting this on the agenda again. We have so many constituents that are dealing with affordability issues and certainly struggling to keep up with their bills. But we think in certain cases, when a utility company is under investigation for perhaps overcharging that they should have some consumer protection. So appreciate this important bill input on the agenda and certainly again, want to also thank my fellow colleagues on the committee for their support on this.
Thanks, Senator Gonzalez. Any other questions, comments, concerns?
Senator Wolchek So this, this bill, if a utility company is under investigation, can't shut off the utilities until 120 days after the investigations have been complete. And even if, even if it's found in the utility's favor, can't charge late fees or penalties. Am I understanding that right?
That is correct.
And what, how does, how does an investigation, how does an investigation or a complaint get filed here that would be relevant to this bill?
That's a good question. So the PSC has to determine if the, I would say in this case the complaints are, you know, plausible or they are worth investigating. And there's a high threshold for that. So on one hand, it could be a municipality asking for the utility company to be investigated, or there's a certain number of New Yorkers that have submitted a complaint. And I believe that is a, dozens of, there are dozens of the same complaint. In order for the PSC to consider. Now, if the PSC receives complaints on either of those sides, again, they can look at the complaints and say that this is not worth investigating. We don't think that this, you know, seems plausible, but if they do, then, you know, they are officially under investigation. There has to be notices that go out to the utility customers that the utility company is under investigation. And to your point, and I just wanted to clarify for my colleagues as well, if, let's say, the utility company is found to be innocent in this case, after the investigation, if there are bills that are still owed, those customers have to pay the full amount so the utility company will be made whole. But if, of course, they are found guilty, then those customers deserve to have either, you know, part of their bill returned to them. And I think PSE determines what happens next.
So complaints with the public service, and you mentioned it in your bill, references a mayor or certain elected officials could start an investigation. Section 71 of the Public Service law says upon the complaint in writing of not less than 25 customers or purchasers of gas or electricity, and the commission shall investigate as to the cause of such complaint. So one clarification that I think I want to make is that the current law requires the PSC to investigate. If 25 people have come forward and said, we think that our utility company is billing us too much or too high, the PSC actually has to investigate. If 25 customers will come forward.
Right. But the investigations look different if they find that those aren't actual valid complaints. And I think I would clarify that for the substantive investigations. Part of the reason for this bill is that those can take two years. It can be significant. They can be very lengthy and significant. However, something that is a little bit more expedient. Of course, the utility company is innocent. Those are resolved fairly quickly, so there is not a lengthy investigation involved.
So if they're just so that I understand. So if it's an expedient investigation, if 25 people have come forward and asked the PSC to investigate the utility company because their bill is too high, they've gone forward and they've quickly said, sorry, they're doing the right thing, they're paying the right rate, the utility company still wouldn't be able to shut them off even if they're not paying their bill for 120 days after that investigation is complete.
Correct. I don't think. I do want to go back and certainly am happy to follow up. I don't believe that there has to be a full investigation every time. There is a threshold of 25 complaints. So I'm happy to. Yeah, I'm happy to. Because my understanding in talking to the PSA is that, you know, they're not. Every single company is under investigation simply because there have been complaints submitted. So there is a higher, A higher threshold. But happy to. Happy to talk more about the substance of a lot of the investigations the PSE is seeing. And if there are questions about that, certainly it's not under this bill, but I'm sure there are other bills talking about how these investigations should be conducted.
Additionally, Senators, if I may add on page two, line six says the term investigation shall not include commission inquiries triggered by an individual customer complaint. So this would not be like, you know, you, you complain like, oh, my bill was 200 this month. It should have been 100. That won't instantly trigger a PSC investigation.
That's what I'm referring to. It's not every complaint.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you.
Just if 25 customers complain that, that triggers the official investigation, and then whether you pay your bill or not,
it
triggers the ability for them to approve it. It does not necessarily automatically trigger it. So they can be 25 letters and they complain about, you know, about the same company and, or the same instance, and the PSC still could choose not to do an investigation.
That's. That's not what Section 71 says. Section 71 says there shall have an investigation of 20, 25 customers in writing.
I'm actually looking right at it.
It does say allow, just as I'm looking right at it right now, just for clarification purposes. I apologize, Senator, I didn't want.
Yeah, what are you seeing that's different? Is this an A print? No, it's a regular print. No, it's a B print.
That's the current column, Chairman.
So we may be talking about, we may be talking about the differences in prints because this is the one that we're voting on today is a B print. And I don't know, are you looking at the B print or are we looking at the apron or the original print?
No, that's current law.
It's kind of law.
Right.
And I'm saying that. But the bill amends this.
It's added to it the current bill on, on page two, line four and five shall include such proceedings conducted pursuant to section 71 of this chapter. You're looking at section 71 of the chapter, chapter which says if 25 customers come forward in writing, they shall have an investigation.
Okay, but I think what Grant, and just to interject here, it is not the. I think what you're pointing out today, if 25 New Yorkers submit a complaint about a utility company to the psc, that utility company isn't suddenly considered to be under a formal investigation. There is still some consideration. And so I think what Grant was pointing out is, is there different levels of investigations if there are actually carve outs in this bill so that we're not looking at every. For example, I think, you know, when there's a rape case happening, rape cases are explicitly excluded from this bill so that a rape case isn't considered an investigation. And then this law would apply.
So you're right in one hand. I'm sorry, I said another. In one hand it does say shall, but in other places it says may. So it says when such a complaint is made, the commission may by his agents. So like there's a number of inspectors, the works, the system, the plant devices, the methods. Right. And so it may or may not use all of these things and it may or may not do the thing even though it says it shall investigate.
And to that point I'll say for my utility company, I can name 25 customers who called my office in the last 72 hours who we had referred to DP for complaints. And there's way more than that over the last couple of weeks. And there's no investigation that has strong from Philip's phone calls. So I think they're probably interpreting it with the may but that same utility has been under investigation which is actually where I think this bill came from. So there was a deep investigation. There have been continuing problems. People call all the time but there's not been an additional investigation Post someone
that has already well, there should be.
I would agree Wait, wait.
Let's stop on agreement. I don't know.
Let's not.
Let's.
Let's be miss moment we'll talk about this Wait. Sorry. Any other questions? Governor's concerns Do I have a motion to move the bill? We probably move the second any no votes Any without Rene there's three no votes. Do we have enough votes? Yes, sir. The bill is moved to third reading.
Next bill number 1553 response to Senator Parker an act amend the public service law and public authorities law in relation to credit for electricity generated by customer generators subject to net energy metering.
Questions, comments, concerns about this bill? The bills will probably move the second any no votes any without RECs there is one no vote. The bill moves to third reading.
Next bill number 1668 Senator Hartin enacted on public service Excuse me Public authorities law in relation to the Authorizing New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to administer a program to provide grants related to switching residents to electric heat pumps.
Questions, Comments? Concerns about this bill.
I have a question.
Yes?
We have $2.4 billion in Isera's account. Can you use any of this money to help with this situation at all?
Yes, absolutely. I mean no.
I'm just wondering because we're looking at $2.4 billion that are ratepayers. We have 1.6 million that can't afford their bills and I was just wondering in other words, what are we doing obviously with this money? Do we have another category? Are we generating any money from this?
What are we doing?
Any kind of interest anything do we need?
I don't have a broad a broadcast I'm saying but in this particular bill, this bill actually goes exactly what you're saying which is to use research use resources in NYSERDA to in fact administer this program to advance the use of heat pumps.
Okay.
Okay. And bill's been probably move. Oh, sorry. We have another question.
Yeah, Mine was along the same lines, Chairman. The fiscal impact on the sponsor's note says tbd. Yeah.
Much to be determined.
Yeah. How much. How much do we anticipate NYSERDA is going to be?
I. I don't know that.
Do we have a finance take the lead on that?
Yes.
So since NYSERDA is funded off budget, this bill will have no direct cost to the state. As you know, as we've talked about in this committee before nyserda, the programmatic funding comes directly from fees and utility bills and other sources. And so absent any appropriation, NYSERDA would be directed to use existing funds and may need to, you know, move things around between existing programs to fund this legislation.
Thank you. That answers my next question as well. Will taxpayers be picking up the tab or will ratepayers. And it will be ratepayers in this case. Thanks, Chairman.
All the time. The ratepayers and taxpayers in my. I'm sorry, the ratepayers and taxpayers. In my experience, a lot of times it's a safe people. Right. So, you know, so it's, you know, six in one hand, half a dozen together. Senator, may I just think it's also
important to note that this would be
bringing very large savings to some of the rate peers. Yeah. Any other questions? Comments, Concerns? Bills were probably moved and seconded. Any no votes. Any without wrecks? No. Two no votes. Three no votes. We have enough votes?
Yes, sir.
Going to go to third reading. Just note, Bill 2477 is being held for possible amendments.
And so next bill bill number 4989A sponsor Center Harcom, an act on the public service law, the general business law and the public authorities law in relation to requiring utility services providers to disclose planned rate increases to consumers within a certain amount of time.
Questions? Comments, Concerns about this bill. It's been properly removed and seconded. Any no votes. Any thought rights? This bill is going to be referred to the Consumer Protection Committee.
Next bill number 5111, Center Parker. Enact.
Enact.
Enacting the Just Energy Transition Act.
Questions? Comments?
Concerns about this bill, Chairman, Senator, got some questions?
Yes, sir.
So the. The goal of this bill is to remove 4 gigawatts of fossil fuel generation by 2030. Is that the goal here?
It's primarily a study more than anything else about how do we get to a place where the, where we can implement the clcpa. Part of my thinking in this is that I remind people all the time the CLCPA was written as an environmental document, but not an energy document. So part of what this tries to get to is create somewhat of an energy overlay to be able to talk about. How do we do that from an energy perspective?
Yeah, I do see the study portions here.
And that number is correct, 4K.
So in looking at page three of your bill, it says deliver a study to the Governor, temporary President of the Senate and the speaker of the assembly within 180 days of the effective date. So if that were passed today that would be on September 19, 2026.
But
then later down in line 32 to 35 you're asking that the public Service Commission to no later than July 30, 2026. So prior to the study being delivered such order at a minimum shall facilitate the replacement and redevelopment of at least 4 GW fossil fuel generation facilities. So in July you're asking the 4 gigawatts to be removed the order to go out to remove the 5 gigawatts but then in September the study is completed and delivered and I didn't understand. Maybe you can just explain to me the timeline here and how those. Yes, okay so the, the study is due after the order goes out to facilitate the replacement and redevelopment of at least 4 gigawatts of fossil fuel generation.
If that's how you're reading it.
Well that's, that's how I'm reading your, your bill Chen. So we're going to put out the order to remove 4 gigawatts of fossil fuel generation and then months later complete the study on removing 4 gigawatts of fossil fuel generation.
I'm not sure that that's exactly how it goes but. Question
I mean you know it's the language of the bill allows for the PSC to commence this proceeding and you know the study, you're correct on the timelines but it doesn't prevent the PSC from moving.
That's all the questions I have. Chairman.
Chairman.
Yes sir. I'm sorry,
you know I see light was in here and everything like that. Did you see the Newsday report about retooling our existing power plants especially on Long Island? We had this discussion a lot of times also too pipelines coming in which I'm very excited about which maybe you're not, I don't know that but does this study is this study in other words combined cycle plants save 50% plus carbon free just like we have Caithness 2 on Long island that hopefully is going to be coming forward which we need to be sufficiently self reliant is this study. Give me a heads up about this. What is this looking to do?
So what it's looking to do in a nutshell is take old dirty fossil fuel plants offline and so things that are combined cycle things that are newer technology would not necessarily fall under this.
It wouldn't.
Okay.
I was just wondering about that because that's something that you see in the world that's heavy.
Absolutely. Okay I'm still I'll entertain a motion. Is it possible properly moved and seconded Any no votes any without wrecks 1 no vote 2 no votes 3 no votes do we have enough votes to advance the bill?
We do.
The bill will move to and so it says finance. It's not going to Finance it's going third week
next bill number 7869 sponsor Center Congress enactment public service law in relation to proposed rate changes for gas and electric service.
Any questions comments, concerns? Bills when possibly properly moved and seconded any nobles any without wrecks this bill will advance to third reading.
Next bill number 8019 sponsor Center Conry An act of UN Public Authorities Law in relation to the annual reporting obligations of New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
Any questions comments, concerns?
Yes Senator Walter comment Chairman I've I'm a co sponsor of this legislation. I think NYSERDA needs more accountability for all that they're collecting from ratepayers and this bill specifically asks NYSERDA the authority that has not been open and honest about where all of the money is going to report on where the money is going. So I appreciate you putting it on the agenda the sponsor bringing it forward and thank you for that.
Excellent. Any other questions comments, concerns? Bill has been properly moved and seconded Any no votes any without recs this bill will move to third reading.
Next bill number 8710 sponsor Senator Hinchey enacted public service law in relation to prohibiting the increase of of certain utility charges after 12 months in the time service was provided.
Senator you want to comment on your
no I'll just say thank you for putting it on the agenda today. I appreciate it. This builds off of a bill that we passed on limiting back billing from utility companies but we wanted to make sure it extends all of the protections extending our small businesses and small non residential customers. So thank you for putting on motion
Second has been possibly moved and seconded Any no votes any directs this bill will move to third reading bill number
8908 sponsor Center Crime react amend public service law in relation to certain sanctions and civil penalties.
Any questions comments concerns? It's been properly removed and seconded Any no votes any without records this bill will move to third meeting bill number
96
he's got some he's got some good bills on here. He does I like.
Bill number 9065 sponsor Senator Parker enacted public service law in relation to the reconnection of service for low income customers.
Any questions? Comments? Concerns the bill will probably move in seconded any no votes any without wrecks this bill will move to third reading.
Last bill number 9433A sponsor Senator Parker enacted public service law in relation to requiring gas and electric corporations to disclose certain information with an application for a major rate change.
Any questions? Comments? Concerns this company moved the second any no votes that he was directs this bill will move the third reading. That concludes our job strong. Yeah. Same with the com comment?
No.
But again, thank you everybody for being here. We have full attendance today. Everybody gets a gold star. Good conversation. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.
You adjourn.
Thank you.