LIPA to publish Earl invoices on website

The Long Island Power Authority has agreed to publish on its website invoices showing the costs for the unprecedented September 2010 response to Hurricane Earl, but legislators and critics say the action may not be enough.

In a letter to Suffolk County Legis. Edward P. Romaine (R-Center Moriches) last week, LIPA chief operating officer Michael Hervey agreed that the costs of responding to the storm, which largely missed Long Island yet resulted in $34 million in charges to ratepayers, "should be made reviewable by the public."

"Although this is not standard utility practice, LIPA is committed to transparency and accountability and in the spirit of that LIPA is currently investigating our technical capability to accomplish publicly posting these documents on our web site as the review of each audit is completed," Hervey wrote in the letter to Romaine, a copy of which Romaine showed to Newsday.

Hervey explained that making the costs publicly available after they are reviewed by National Grid and audited by LIPA was "appropriate because the information presented to the public would then be accurate and represent the true costs that LIPA has approved."

Romaine and others said they worry they will be getting a "sanitized" view of the storm costs, since LIPA has committed only to making the documents available after they have been reviewed and "if necessary, corrected," as Hervey put it, by National Grid, which manages the system under contract to LIPA and has agreed to reverse any improper charges.

Reports have detailed a litany of questionable charges related to Hurricane Earl early last September, when LIPA requested 1,600 outside workers to travel to Long Island in advance of the storm. In addition to inflated meal costs and disallowed tabs for alcohol, some charges were unrelated to the storm and pre-dated it by days.

Peter Schlussler, a member of the Suffolk Legislature's LIPA Oversight Committee, said his team will file a Freedom on Information Law request to get the pre-audited documents. National Grid, in a statement, said it will "absorb" any storm costs deemed inappropriate.The Oversight Committee plans to hold a public forum on LIPA issues at 2 p.m. on June 13 at the Suffolk County offices in Riverhead.