New York State’s Power For Jobs program has been flickering in recent weeks because despite its importance to our vital upstate manufacturing base and to the average residential ratepayer, the program has been caught up in the political whirlpool of Albany politics.

For several months, as the Ranking Member of the Senate’s Energy Committee, I’ve called for a permanent adoption of Power For Jobs so that manufacturers across central and northern New York can rely on lower-cost power far into the foreseeable future.  But despite my urging, despite its importance, despite the requests of some of the state’s largest private employers to make this program permanent, the Power For Jobs program has been on life support for several months now due to the lack of leadership that’s allowed the program to lapse.

The costs of doing business here are sky-high for a number of reasons, with a key point being that New York imposes a litany of energy taxes and surcharges: the 2-percent gross receipts tax on transmission and distribution for residential customers, the ‘18-A’ five-year temporary assessments, which add $500 million to energy costs, the system benefit charge, the renewable-portfolio standard and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, to name a just a few.

To help communities that have major employers who rely on energy, New York began giving out lower-cost power where it supports a local economy in proven cases. The State Business Council estimates that 600 businesses in the state representing 350,000 jobs depend on the state’s economic development power programs. A high percentage of these jobs are the better-paid, manufacturing jobs. In central and northern New York, Power For Jobs is essential to job preservation.

In the final Power For Jobs legislation, three aspects must be achieved: Permanency—there must be no more continual horse-trading by legislators who use the program renewal approval as a bargaining chip for other political initiatives; Balance—while businesses are the main beneficiaries of the program, any program change must be conscious to be impact-neutral to residential ratepayers; Strategic—the Power For Jobs program must be part of an overall energy plan that the state needs as a roadmap. Too often, we see that what passes for an energy policy in New York is a mishmash of piecemeal benefit programs allotted to certain regions due to political and population dynamics.  

The Power For Jobs program should be a linchpin of a larger array of aggressive economic development efforts, and not a bargaining chip in the endless pettiness of Albany. The current legislative leadership has waited until the last minute and minimized public attention to the Power For Jobs program’s importance, which in turn jeopardizes good jobs and threatens to put out the lights in New York’s businesses, until they, too, will go dark. 

 
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Joseph Griffo, a Republican representing parts of Oneida, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties, is ranking member on the Senate Energy and Telecommunications Committee.