Suffolk Closeup: Restore the old LIPA

Irving Like last week called for “recreating LIPA” with “a publicly elected ratepayer board with candidates that are qualified.”

Mr. Like, instrumental in forming the Long Island Power Authority, is now a member of a special LIPA oversight committee established by the Suffolk County Legislature.

The committee was holding a hearing at the Evans K. Griffing County Center in Riverhead, and as it opened, Mr. Like set the tone for the criticism that would follow, zeroing in on what has become LIPA’s central fault.

He noted the statute that created LIPA provided for it to have an elected board “as the method of its governance.” But this was “thwarted,” said the Babylon attorney, when Governor Mario Cuomo postponed LIPA board elections and later Governor George Pataki flatly eliminated them. The LIPA structure was then changed to having “a board appointed and controlled by Albany politicians.”

LIPA must have a board “accountable to the ratepayers” through elections, said Mr. Like. He was deeply involved in LIPA’s creation as counsel to the main organization, which pushed for a Long Island public power entity to replace the Long Island Lighting Company.

He blasted the current LIPA chairman, Howard Steinberg, for having called for privatizing LIPA. Mr. Steinberg, with no experience in the energy field, whose Manhattan law firm describes him as experienced in “mergers and acquisitions … and corporate governance issues,” was appointed to LIPA by Mr. Pataki. Mr. Steinberg asserted at a LIPA board meeting in April that LIPA “has outlived its usefulness” and he wanted to “restore LIPA to private hands.”

Other speakers also criticized Mr. Steinberg at the hearing on June 13 and said that LIPA, instead of going private, should become a completely public utility. Now, it was pointed out, LIPA contracts out production of the electricity and gas to the British-based private utility National Grid.

Jane Fasullo, speaking for Sierra Club Long Island, said privatizing LIPA “would be a boon to Wall Street and a tragedy for our people … We think this would be a disaster for Long Island.” The result would be a private entity putting “corporate profits ahead of renewable energy.”

LIPA, she said, should “become a municipal utility” along the lines of the Long Island municipal utilities in Greenport, Freeport and Rockville Centre.

Suffolk Legislator Edward Romaine, who led in setting up the oversight committee, testified that “privatizing LIPA would be a huge mistake” and said LIPA “should be a full-blown public utility.” He also said privatizing LIPA would benefit “those on Wall Street … at the cost of the ratepayers.”

Mr. Romaine, whose district includes Shelter Island, also stressed elections noting that when LIPA came into being in the 1980s, the  promise was “that we were going to get an elected board.”

Peter Maniscalco, an environmental educator from Manorville, said the “deeper issue” in the LIPA story involves how “Wall Street and corporations corrupt our political system.” Instead of an elected LIPA board, LIPA board members are appointed by “politicians … [and] do Wall Street’s bidding.”

The recreation of LIPA can happen. It will take a great effort like the one that led to LIPA’s creation in the first place.

Back then, Mr. Like worked with Maurice Barbash in Citizens to Replace LILCO. I recall in 1985 visiting Mr. Barbash, the group’s chairman, at his office, a mile from the waterfall on Sumpwams Creek in Babylon, the source of renewable energy for Long Island’s first utility, Babylon Electric Lighting Company. “It’s unbelievable,” Mr. Barbash was saying. “The phones are jumping off the hooks. I’ve never seen an issue that has generated more public response on Long Island.”

The kind of public anger that created LIPA is needed again to force government to restore LIPA to what it was supposed to be — a vehicle for Long Islanders through democracy to chart their own energy future.

The Suffolk Legislature’s new LIPA Oversight Committee could play a big role in the needed initiative to bring LIPA back to its original vision.