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NYSEG Gas Rates now almost Double to Landlords Meeting with NYSEG: Revisited THE LANDLORD FORUM’S "Utility “Utilities should not be allowed to set their own definition of commercial and residential usage. State agencies, such as the Dept. of Taxation, have uniformity in their classifications throughout the State an Color d should overrule a local utility’s classification when it is inconsistent with existing New York State classification criteria.” — State Assemblyman Jay Dinga “It is deceiving to the public that NYSEG’s rates are “frozen” when, in fact, they are driving the small multi-family owner into bankruptcy. We cannot pass this increase along to the tenant, as most are hard-working people earning minimum wages.” — Connie Lawson, Binghamton Task Force" is currently documenting, reviewing, and addressing many of the concerns raised at THE LANDLORD FORUM’S February 13th "Meeting with NYSEG.” FORUM Members have additionally met with N.Y.S. Jay Dinga (123rd A.D.) to discuss the NYSEG classification, taxing, and pricing policies negatively impacting housing providers and tenants. Contrary to what NYSEG asserts, it is NOT gas crunches OR market mechanisms that are hurting landlord consumers. We maintain, and can defend, that it is far more NYSEG’s corporate policies and institutionalized over-sights that, taken together, are pushing many landlords to the brink of bankruptcy, while further eroding our cumulative Tax base and destabilizing our regional economy. NYSEG defends their “commercial” classification of multi-family housing— coupled with the KILLER Index Price Adjustment that comes with it— by insisting that residential-use utility consumption is a “value-added service” essentially “resold” by the landlord. This claim runs in the face of logic and the most basic of landlord-tenant housing laws. It also violates the Home Energy Fair Practices Act (HEFPA) and Public Service Commission (PSC) guidelines. New York State’s own Consolidated Public Service Laws expressly forbid NYSEG from enacting “rates, charges or classifications or... acts or regulations... that are unjust, unreasonable, unjustly discriminatory or unduly preferential.” (N.Y.S. C.P.S.L., Art. 4, Sec. 65) Landlords who supply heat and hot water and even light in the common hallways obviously CANNOT arbitrarily NOR AT WHIM alter or increase rents already predetermined by contractual leasing cycles and equally important rental market realities. Essentially, NYSEG makes no apologies or explanations when landlords and their tenants are forced to price themselves out of the market and into extinction because of the cost-prohibitive commercial rates that NYSEG applies to the multi-family housing sector. The fact that NYSEG habitually taxes many of our utility bills is also still an issue, since a 1980 amendment to the New York State Tax Law, Section 1105-A, clearly EXEMPTS all residential-use properties from the 8% sales tax charged on energy consumption. NYSEG’s repeated insistence that residential landlords are essentially commercial “resellers” of natural gas and electricity, and thus illogically taxing them as such on residential energy-use consumption, remains a befuddling issue. To add insult to injury, many “Residential-Use Certification” claims remain unprocessed on the NYSEG “queue,” complicating tax refunds owed to many. THE LANDLORD FORUM is pressing for swift processing and fulfillment, and we encourage MEMBER LANDLORDS to file said claims collectively through THE LANDLORD FORUM office for better treatment. Plain and simple, we need relief. We need fairness. We need to be treated as the residential sector we truly are— not the commercial, unfairly taxed, and overly-burdened targets NYSEG makes us out to be at great detriment to our regional economy, our tenants, our livelihood as vital housing providers. We are not Wal-Mart. We are not GE. We don’t ship widgets or nuclear triggers out of our apartments for resale. Plain and simple, we are people with jobs, people who work hard and pay taxes for a living, people pursuing the American Dream while providing roofs over the heads of many others doing just the same. Assemblyman Dinga has pledged to work with us. On the heels of every politician’s promise of upstate economic revitalization, THE LANDLORD FORUM, above all partisanship and politics, will continue in its mission to lobby & engage ALL other elected representatives— regardless of party affiliation— into joining our vocal CALL FOR ACTION.