Cuomo Wants LI Utilities Privatized

ALBANY-The Long Island Power Authority‘s operations would be privatized under legislation introduced Monday by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., which owns New Jersey’s largest utility, PSEG, would take control of Long Island operations in a plan that Cuomo said would “end LIPA as we know it.”

The move to bring in New Jersey-based PSEG as overseer of daily utility operations in New York City’s eastern suburbs had been in the works for some time. The slow pace of post-Sandy cleanup and utility restoration “made it undeniably clear that the LIPA status quo was unacceptable and that we needed to create a new Long Island utility system,” Cuomo said in a statement.