LIPA urged to dump late fee

Ratepayers welcomed a planned 2.2 percent rate cut next year, but urged LIPA to shelve its plan to institute a 1.5 percent late fee and to increase funding for solar-energy programs at a hearing on its 2011 budget today.

The hearing, in Hauppauge, was the third in a series of four in advance of a LIPA trustee vote on the budget Dec. 16. Another session is scheduled for tonight at LIPA's headquarters in Uniondale at 7 p.m.

At the morning session, LIPA gadfly Rose Van Guilder, who heads the Alliance for Independent Long Island, urged LIPA not to institute the 1.5 percent fee on bills 23 or more days late, starting January. Nearly a fifth of all LIPA customers are late paying their bills.

"We have a 9.8 percent unemployment rate," she said. "People are suffering. To now charge a late fee is a hardship."

LIPA chief operating officer Michael Hervey has said the fee is fair because those who pay on time are subsidizing those who don't. Commercial customers already pay a late fee.

Van Guilder also urged LIPA to reopen a low-income senior program that ended this year with a small surplus. LIPA put that surplus into its general fund. It has proposed a new low-income program for all ratepayers starting in January.

Ratepayer Cheryl Holohan of Bohemia used the session to rail against a LIPA bill she said more than tripled this summer, despite the fact that she closely monitors electric use in her small apartment. She urged LIPA to discontinue meter readings every other month. She also argued against the late fee. "If you can't pay your bill in front, how can you pay it and the late charge in back?" she said.

Paul Lozowsky of the Utility Consumer Advocacy Project, a consumer group in Patchogue, agreed, and urged LIPA to carefully study the number of ratepayers who are late paying their bills because they are financially strapped, versus those who do so to take advantage of the lack of a late fee. Lozowsky added, "I'll bet 95 percent are 'troubled'" ratepayers who cannot afford to pay.

Mike Bailis, co-owner of SUNation Solar Systems in Oakdale and Southampton, urged LIPA to consider incorporating solar energy into the utility's current request for bids for 1,000 megawatts of new power for 2013. He said it would not only eliminate pollution from traditional power plants, but spur the local economy. He said some 100,000 "opportunities" exist for installing solar panels on rooftops among LIPA's 1.1 million customers. To date, only around 4,000 have solar.

"We can help reduce unemployment and put money back into the economy," he said. LIPA has budgeted around $20 million for solar programs next year, but Bailis noted this year's number was higher when state and federal grants are counted. He urged LIPA to keep the solar program dollar figures high. LIPA's budget for 2010 solar was $15 million but grants from the state and federal government lifted the amount.

Lozowsky said LIPA should consider funding more home solar roofs as an alternative to a $300 million project that is cutting down 153 acres of forest at Brookhaven National Lab for a 32-megawatt solar project.