Suzette Smookler resigns as LIPA trustee

LIPA trustee Suzette Smookler has resigned her post after 11 years on the authority’s board.

LIPA in a statement said Smookler, who was appointed by the State Senate, was a “vocal advocate for energy policy that protected the environment, advanced clean energy and focused on rate affordability.” Smookler’s term was set to expire in December 2019.

She was the lone trustee to vote against Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s upstate nuclear plant bailout, which costs Long Island ratepayers $45 million a year.

“This is nothing more than another bailout,” she said before the vote last September. She called it a “political ploy” to maintain 1,500 upstate jobs.

Also, Smookler along with LIPA trustee Matthew Cordaro voted against a three-year rate hike in December 2015.

Smookler more recently voted with Cuomo board appointees and a fellow senate appointee for a new policy that would commit the authority and PSEG Long Island to better communicate about controversial construction projects and provide for residents to pay to bury power lines that otherwise would be on large poles. State Sen. Kenneth LaValle (R-Port Jefferson) has opposed the policy.

In a statement, Smookler, a Port Jefferson resident who is Director of Clinical Nutrition and Education Services at Stony Brook University Medical Center, called it a “privilege” to serve on the unpaid LIPA board. “I was honored to succeed a longtime community advocate and former LIPA board member — the late Edna Gerrard — who believed, as I do, in putting the environment and ratepayers first.”

Smookler’s departure leaves the board with eight trustees. Five are appointed by Cuomo, two by the senate and two by the state Assembly.

Two of the five Cuomo appointees, including Elkan Abramowitz, who is also Cuomo’s defense lawyer in the federal Buffalo billion investigation, are serving despite expired terms; three others will see their terms expire at year’s end. One Assembly appointee and one Senate appointee also are serving expired terms.

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.