Timothy S. Carey says money spent by the New York Power Authority isn't taxpayer money. The authority's CEO and president said so in an article that appeared recently in the Syracuse Post-Standard.
I, for one, am relieved.
For the longest time I've been concerned that the people who run the Robert Moses Power Project weren't exactly the best stewards of the profits generated by our region's most valuable resource. As the Post-Standard's article pointed out, 15 of the agency's top executives, including Carey, earn more than Gov. George Pataki's annual salary of $179,000. They are among the 199 authority employees who earn more than $100,000 per year.
These executives budget $1 million for themselves each year so they can give generously to their favorite charities. That's in addition to the festivals, soccer clubs, fire departments and various other community organizations NYPA already sponsors.
To get around, the executives make use of two authority-owned Beechcraft turbo-prop airplanes. The first plane cost $2.9 million in 1989. The second cost $5 million in 2000. To get the most use out of what NYPA refers to as its "business and management" tools, the authority pays $1,007 an hour to fly, maintain and store one plane, and $339 per hour to operate the second, a cost that is shared by the New York State Police Department.
In another Post-Standard story, the paper noted that the Power Authority financed a "$25,000 ski weekend for U.S. Rep. John Sweeney, of New York, a Texas congressman and his wife, at least a dozen lobbyists and other D.C. staffers in Lake Placid."
Sweeney said he was fact-finding.
NYPA said it financed the trip because it wanted to be a good neighbor and wanted to assist the Olympic Regional Development Authority, another public authority that runs Whiteface and Gore mountains and other sports complexes. Not to worry, though. As Carey said, taxpayers didn't pay for any of this.
The authority, as Carey noted, earns money off the plants they run, including the Robert Moses in Lewiston. That revenue, in turn, supports the authority's own budget, its various charitable and community works, New York state's annual budget, including $219 million in economic development projects, and, of course, all those trustee salaries and the fancy flying.
Sure, authority profits are derived from public resources, including Niagara Falls itself. Yes, the authority was created as a branch of state government under the Power Authority Act of 1931. And yes, federal regulations govern the authority's power distribution from various plants, including the Robert Moses.
Still, this is, as some authority executives suggest, a "corporation," technically a "public benefit corporation," but a corporation just the same.
In today's economy, would you expect the CEOs and presidents of places like GM or Ford or Delphi to cut salary and benefit packages, pare down expenses and look for ways to run a more efficient operation?
What would you have them do, drive to meetings? Take a bus? A train? Use their own money to support their favorite charities? Pay for vacations themselves?
Sure, the authority made money where those other corporations didn't. If you've got it, why not spend it?
The authority turns a profit each year while doing many wonderful things for the state. The authority's low-cost power keeps the companies running and the people employed. It helps keep electricity bills down.
Look at all the benefits the Niagara region continues to enjoy because of it. We're doing so well Syracuse is jealous.
That's what Carey thinks.
He said so in the Niagara Gazette last week. He suggested that the Post-Standard was hard on the authority because Syracuse doesn't have a power plant and we do. He said Syracuse was jealous of Utica for the same reason.
Why wouldn't they be jealous of Niagara Falls?
As for Utica, I don't recall ever visiting, but it's got a plant, so it must be nice.
In response to the Post-Standard's articles on the authority, Carey wrote a letter to the editor in which he questioned the paper's understanding of his organization and its finances. In it, he used the following quote from Mark Twain to describe his "dismay" over having to deal with the paper, its editors and its reporters.
"I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one." ("Galaxy" magazine, December 1870.)
No, Carey's no editor. He's a professional public employee. He's been living off the taxpayer-funded system for years, starting in 1984 when he was elected to his first of five terms in office as member of the Westchester County Board of Legislators. He later served under Gov. George Pataki as director of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs. For six years, Carey oversaw operations at the Battery City Park Authority, another quasi-governmental agency in New York.
Today, he's the Power Authority's top talking head, a guy who earns more than the governor for telling us that all is well and we needn't question anything his organization does.
I've got another quote for Carey.
I got it off NYPA's Web site, on a page titled "NYPA: Our History."
Former New York governor and president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his campaign to form a public authority to oversee power production along the St. Lawrence River, said he wanted to "give back to the people the power which is theirs."
After all these years, thanks to guys like Carey, we now know.
It's not our power.
It's not our money.
Those aren't our resources.
It's none of our business.
It's theirs, all of it.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 25 2006 |