Andrew Cuomo’s Epiphany
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His discovery that utilities being non-accountable results in poor service begs the question: will he apply such standard to all government agencies?
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Perhaps there’s good in all things; even something as devastting as Hurricane Sandy.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and up to 2 weeks of people without electricity, Governor Cuomo came to the discovery that the utilities were not as responsive as they should be and slow in restoring power to more than 2 million customers from Long Island to the Hudson Valley, as a result of the fact that they were pseudo government agencies not directly answerable to their customers.
“I’m going to do a thorough review-slash-investigation, and a very serious one, and they will be held accountable for past performance and then we also have to get smart about this and we have to make sure that we are prepared for when this happens again because I believe this will happen again,” said Cuomo.
For those of us who have sat in the dark for close to 2 weeks, it is hard to not feel heartened by the governor’s position.
But Mr. Cuomo must realize that when he criticizes the lethargic non-response of the utilities, he could well be describing that of any of New York state’s many other agencies, from environmental protection to taxation and everything in between.
And the governor has used this disaster to position himself for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination by blaming global warming for causing Sandy, thus endearing himself to the green wing of the party. He will thus be pushing for green energy solutions.
Yet as we have learned over the past decade, green energy is an industry not just unresponsive to the markets but often in direct conflict with the wants of consumers which is for a product that is cheap, efficient and reliable. Government force-fed companies like Solyndra (solar panels) and a host of similar entities have happily consumed copious amounts of capital only to produce a product that few if any want, let alone can use.
Storms like Sandy will likely come rarely but government, for good and bad, will be around for time immemorial. Holding utilities to a free market standard for responsiveness is a great start, and no doubt will help Mssr. Cuomo for his presidential run, but if he is truly serious about serving New Yorkers, he’ll focus on eliminating sclerosis throughout all of his government and not just the convenient pinata of utilities.
-I.M. Windee
