Dear Tompkins County Legislators,

We are writing to you as residents of Tompkins County who strongly support replacing NYSEG with a locally-owned and community-controlled public utility, which research indicates will have no impact on taxes and will improve energy affordability for all county residents.

We are asking the Legislature to commission a feasibility study to explore bringing our utility under public control.

The current utility model prioritizes profit and shareholder returns above all else. This allows NYSEG to line their corporate pockets—and those of their parent companies, Avangrid and Iberdrola—while ratepayers struggle with rising costs, poor reliability, and abysmal customer service.

A recent independent audit of NYSEG’s parent company, Avangrid, revealed multiple violations that demonstrate how unfit they are to be a utility provider. The audit found that NYSEG does not participate in strategic planning, neglecting key considerations of future grid and energy use that should shape infrastructure upgrades, repairs, and replacements. The audit additionally exposed Avangrid’s poor asset management practices, in which an outdated spreadsheet system used to track infrastructure and assets contributes to NYSEG’s poor electrical reliability. Perhaps most significant to everyday ratepayers, the audit found that NYSEG budgets prioritize shareholders and corporate earnings, not the needs of grid infrastructure or customers.

We deserve better. Public power offers us a pathway to take back control of our energy system. A public utility will keep ratepayer money local and bring local union jobs to the area. It will create systems of transparency and accountability in how our utility is run, with a locally-controlled leadership structure that will ensure community interests are at the heart of decision making. It will improve reliability and save ratepayers money on their bills, as multiple studies have found when comparing municipal and investor owned utilities. Public power is the logical response to a corporate-owned utility that has been failing customers for decades.

We’ve done our research, and despite the rhetoric from corporate utilities, public power is not too expensive. For example, recent findings by the American Public Power Association show, customers served by public utilities pay significantly lower rates and are faced with smaller rate increases than those served by private utilities. The 2024 report by the Institute for Local Self Reliance, Upcharge: Hidden Costs of Electric Utility Monopoly Power clearly documents the mechanisms utilized by investor-owned utilities to extract wealth from ratepayers with little public recourse.

The county would not pay the cost of buying out utility infrastructure upfront, and so the transition to public power wouldn’t involve increasing taxes. Instead, infrastructure buyouts are financed over time using revenue bonds, which would be repaid by electric rates. Revenue bonds do not impact property taxes like general obligation bonds do. In fact, they have zero impact on property taxes. Contrary to NYSEG’s claims, public power will save residents money over time.

We call on our legislators to support the formation of a public utility. We ask specifically that the Tompkins County Legislature take the first step forward by commissioning a feasibility study. A study would lay the groundwork for assessing the technical, social, economic, environmental, and governance aspects of what it means to bring utilities under local control.

We urge the Tompkins County Legislature to stand on the side of residents, creating an energy system that works for us, not for profit.