Each month, the identical scene performs out at kitchen tables throughout New York. A household opens the gasoline and electrical invoice, sees the quantity soar once more, and begins doing the mathematics: What can we reduce this month?
They’d no say in that invoice, however they’re those scrambling to pay it.
And much too many can’t. As of this 12 months, greater than 1.2 to 1.3 million New Yorkers are behind on their utility payments — owing between $1.8 and $2.3 billion. In New York Metropolis and Westchester alone, practically 16% of Con Edison clients ended 2024 in arrears, with nearly $950 million owed. That isn’t a statistic. That may be a image of households underwater, seniors on mounted incomes falling additional behind, and small companies carrying balances they’ll’t take up.
But whereas New Yorkers are struggling to maintain up, Albany’s oversight of the system that produces these payments has barely stirred.
In recent times, utility firms like Con Edison, Nationwide Grid, NYSEG, and RG&E have returned time and again requesting permission to boost charges. Many times, the Public Service Fee — a small group of Albany appointees — has authorised these hikes. Your payments go up. Their assured returns go up. And nearly no one in state authorities is asking the essential questions in your behalf:
Had been these will increase justified? Had been affordability protections in-built? If utilities over-collect or under-spend, does that cash come again to the ratepayers or quietly pad their backside line?
That is precisely the place the State Comptroller ought to are available in — and the place the present Comptroller has been asleep on the wheel.
The Comptroller is meant to be New York’s impartial fiscal watchdog. The workplace has the authority to audit state businesses, authorities, and packages, to observe how public {dollars} stream, and to shine a lightweight on selections most New Yorkers by no means see. With regards to your power payments, that ought to imply one thing easy: when charges go up, somebody in state authorities ought to be digging into why.
However that isn’t taking place in any actual or sustained manner.
We’ve not seen constant, robust opinions of how the PSC evaluates price hikes — whether or not affordability was meaningfully thought-about, whether or not projected prices match precise spending, or whether or not the sample of approvals is pushing payments increased than they have to be. And we’ve not seen the Comptroller in Albany making the case for stronger instruments: specific authority to scrutinize utility spending tied to PSC-approved plans, transparency necessities for the way ratepayer {dollars} are used, and mechanisms to make sure that when utilities overcharge or underspend, the cash returns to the individuals who paid it.
As a substitute, the system rolls on. Utilities file. The PSC votes. Payments go up. Money owed climb. Households fall behind. And the watchdog stays silent.
For working New Yorkers, this isn’t an summary regulatory downside — it’s a month-to-month stress level. It reveals up as one other $25, $40, or $60 on high of hire, groceries, MetroCards, childcare, and medicine. Seniors really feel it on mounted incomes. Immigrant households really feel it in already overcrowded residences. Small companies really feel it when their margins disappear.
In lots of components of the state, power payments have risen 25–35% since 2020. On the identical time, new high-load customers like information facilities and AI amenities are driving up demand on the grid — and too typically, on a regular basis ratepayers find yourself subsidizing these prices whereas massive company customers negotiate reductions.
On this context, the Comptroller’s job is easy: deal with each greenback in your invoice prefer it’s a public greenback that deserves safety.
Meaning:
Auditing how the PSC evaluates price hikes — and whether or not affordability is actually entrance and middle.
Following the cash on main power and infrastructure offers the place the state is offering cash or incentives to see who actually advantages.
Calling out patterns the place ratepayers shoulder the chance whereas utilities and traders accumulate assured returns.
Telling the Legislature, in public, precisely what new instruments are wanted to guard New Yorkers — and preventing to safe them.
That’s what a shopper ratepayer advocate would do.That’s what a cop on the beat appears like in apply.
I’m operating for State Comptroller as a result of New Yorkers can not afford extra drift, extra silence, or extra rubber-stamping on this second. If utilities can increase your invoice, somebody impartial must be watching them. If regulators can approve billions in increased prices, somebody exterior that circle must be auditing their work and reporting again to the individuals who pay the worth.
Sure, we have to modernize our grid and plan responsibly for brand spanking new applied sciences. However we can not try this on the backs of households and small companies already stretched to their breaking level — not with out actual oversight and accountability.
On this economic system, each greenback in your invoice is a take a look at of whose aspect state authorities is on.
New Yorkers deserve a watchdog who’s awake — a Comptroller who treats their {dollars} as preciously as they do. That’s the job I’m asking for. And if I’m given the prospect to serve, that’s precisely how I’ll do it.
