The Constitution of the United States recognizes the right of citizens to petition any level of government for redress of grievances. That is what I came here to do.
My grievance, and the grievance of most of the citizens of Suffolk County, is that forces outside this county have attempting to impose on us and our children (and on other residents of the state of New York) a massive debt -- the largest in history -- and attempting to lock us into obscenely high, monopoly electric rates by freezing out competition until after most of us have retired on fixed income.
These monopoly rate-gougers have already decimated businesses on Long Island and if continued they will force my children to move elsewhere. It seems like the goal of some groups is to transform this county into one large, tax-subsidized private park to be enjoyed in the next century only by the few special interests who can afford to remain here, after driving most of the workers and middle class residents off the island, using tactics like the Southwest Sewer District and the LIPA Bailout deal.
I am petitioning for
"redress".
That is an archaic word which means
"remedy".
The only remedy that is left
to stop this undemocratic juggernaut,
is to let the people of this county decide their own fate.
But the referendum, called for by the people and ordered by their representatives, was delayed when a court found a technical error in the wording of the legislation.
Now that means that this legislature passed a law, but the wording of the bill was faulty. The letter of the law is important, but so is the spirit of the law. If the wording was defective, then the only honest course is to fix it! Don't use the defect as an excuse to go against the will of the people, or to reverse the good-faith vote of this body. It is up to this legislature to correct the wording error and to reaffirm, once again, that the people have a right to be heard before this horrible burden is imposed upon us without our consent; without even the opportunity to register our disapproval. To now prevent a referendum which the people called for, and which the people's representatives voted for, would be even worse than "taxation without representation".
Just as taxation without representation is morally wrong, so is imposing a huge debt upon us without even permitting the oppressed an opportunity to voice their disapproval.
To fool the people into swallowing their "deal", the politicians, bankers, and proponents of this bond issue say there will be rate reductions. But this too is a scam.
LIPA control of power production will not reduce your electric rates by one penny!!! The only reductions LIPA offers are merely TAX reductions; there are no reductions in the electric rates themselves.
The only way to reduce the cost of power is with: new technology and competition . But that is precisely what they will prevent on Long Island: new technology and competition.
All LIPA promises to do is to stop
taxing you thru your electric bills.
That doesn't necessarily mean
there will be any less government spending
or any less tax revenue collected.
This only means that the governments
will have to get the money they spend
some other way -- unless they also plan
to somehow reduce government spending.
;-)
Nope. Sorry.
That is one of the very few things that LIPA has not
promised in their zeal to sell their bad "deal".
This proposed government takeover is no better than the entrenched monopoly we have now, and a government monopoly power company cannot make cheaper electricity. The so called "savings" are merely a shell game -- make the monthly electric bill seem smaller but only by removing the tax on electricity. But you can be sure that this "revenue shortfall" will be made up by taxing something else.
You will pay exactly the same, or even more, per kilowatt hour, before taxes. Sure, they say they will remove the 20% or so taxes from your bill, so you'll write a smaller check to LIPA than to LILCO, but you can bet that you'll still pay the same amout of taxes somewhere else!
Regardless of where the tax burden falls, this deal offers NO REDUCTION in what you will actually pay for the electricity itself!
Now, the projected revenue stream is supposed to pay back the bondholders, but that revenue stream already is very, very uncertain. During the next decade, the new technologies, such as microturbines and fuel cells, will pull more and more industrial buildings out of the power grid. The residential ratepayers will take up more and more of the slack, and the bonds will still fail -- just like WPPS. The only guarantee we can count on is that the taxpayers will then be forced to repay this bond if and when it fails -- regardless of what the bailout proponents now say.
Anyhow, the fact remains that the people demand a vote on whether this risky 21 billion dollar bond shall be underwritten by their children and their children's children!
The New York State Constitution forbids the state from backing bond issues without a vote of the people affected. However, recent governors have found a loophole called "back door borrowing" , wherein only a city or county votes on something that benefits it, but the whole state is left holding the bag. As bad as that is, the present state government has come up with something even worse:
This is not "back door borrowing", it is "basement window borrowing" , like a burglar following the LILCO wires into your basement, in the dark of night, to rob you without your knowledge.
At this point, only a referendum can shine the light of day on these sneak thieves. A referendum will force the issue, and the facts, and the arguments out into the open, and then allow the victims -- excuse me, I mean the citizens of Suffolk County -- to decide their own fate.
No one denies that the citizens of Suffolk County have already asked for a referendum on the LIPA deal, nor that their Legislature has already voted to have one. It is the duty of this representative body to give the people the voice we demanded, by rescheduling a referendum for this November, 1998.
222 years ago, 52 other legislators meeting in Philadelphia said, in Thomas Jefferson's words:
I say that if the Suffolk County Legislature thwarts the will of the people of this county by blocking this referendum (which was already requested by the people and approved by the previous legislature), or if it does not reassert its order to hold a referendum on the LIPA deal in November 1998, then it will have failed its duty to represent the people, it will have become destructive of its proper ends, and it ought to be abolished by November 1999.
To me, this is the last chance for the Suffolk County Legislature to justify its existence to validate the experiment which created it about 25 years ago, and to show that it was not the huge mistake which Suffolk residents increasingly feel it was
To many, many citizens of this county, the legislature is already a joke, a very expensive and self-serving joke, sometimes a disorganized and bumbling practical joke, but sometimes a harmful and dirty joke.
Since I am one of those who favor abolition of the legislature, regardless of this issue, I expect that most Legislators will therefore disregard my petition. Perhaps the silver lining in LIPA's threatening, dark cloud is that refusal to schedule a referendum may be the last straw for the voters who have tolerated the Legislature's existence. But, alas, much as I want to see the replacement of this Legislature with something far better, even that would not be worth the horrible cost of this LIPA bailout deal.
|
Bruce A. Martin
on behalf of
Society for Individual Liberty, Suffolk County Chapter | |
| http://www.civic.LI/lpny/essays/bam/lipa.htm |
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