Many of us have seen a sharp increase in utility bills that border on ridiculous. Last week, representatives of various Hudson Valley Community Organizations gathered in Kingston to propose a solution.

“If you are one of the 630,000 single parents in New York, our state’s energy crisis is an inescapable reality,” said Leanna Zilles of the Planned Parenthood of Greater NY Action Fund. “Skyrocketing utility bills are an attack on all of our communities.”

The solution proposed Friday was two-fold: legislation that would make large utilities absorb the cost of debt relief, a call to stop the Central Hudson delivery rate increase, scheduled and approved for this July.
Communities for Local Power (CLP), formerly Citizens

for Local power hosted the event. Other organizations represented at the rally included For the Many, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Newburgh, Renewable Newburgh, Planned Parenthood of Greater NY and Ulster Immigrant Defense Network.

It makes sense. The state moratorium preventing New Yorker’s electricity from being shut off due to non-payment expired in December, 2021. More than 48,000 of Central Hudson’s residential customers and 7,000 businesses face power shutoffs. (A Central Hudson representative said in February, that no shutoffs had occurred.)

The utility company is currently under various investigations for their billing, rate hikes, unresolved customer service issues and handling of the winter storm that led to power outages in February 2022. And utility companies throughout the state are under scrutiny for exploitative practices.

Central Hudson has blamed some of the problem on a new computer system that estimates usage. As far as we know, the system is still broken.

Petitioners have urged that shareholders of Central Hudson’s parent company, the highly-profitable Canadian company Fortis be the ones to absorb these high costs. If you agree, you can sign their petition at communitiesforlocalpower.org.