By Dan Miner<br><a href="mailto:minerd@gnnewspaper.com">E-mail Dan</a>
George Maziarz stormed Lewiston Town Hall Monday with the support of the town’s four volunteer fire companies alleging a history of lies and political games when it comes to the New York Power Authority relicensing process.
At the core of Maziarz’s criticisms were the discounts to power rates town residents have received. For the first several months of the discounts last year, the fire companies received those discounts as well.
Then they stopped.
Then National Grid ordered the companies to pay them back.
“I find it terribly coincidental that the fire companies’ power discount was cut off right after town elections last year,” said Maziarz, a Republican state senator from Newfane, in an accompanying press release — a thinly veiled shot at Supervisor Fred Newlin. “Furthermore, the town received both money and low-cost power from (the power authority), so one would think there would be other ways to help the fire companies if town leaders really wanted to.”
Maziarz began by addressing the board as a whole before quickly zeroing in on Newlin, which led to several tense exchanges and an obvious mutual dislike. Maziarz also held several impromptu press conferences, both before his comments to the board and afterward with the fire companies as a backdrop.
Maziarz argued that the relicensing settlement was bad for Lewiston and that the town wouldn’t release figures on how much they’re spending on Hodgson Russ, the firm the town hired as negotiations continue with the power authority.
“If I sound angry, it’s because I am,” Maziarz said. Later, he added, “This may have been a pretty good agreement for some of the entities. For the Town of Lewiston, it was a disaster.”
He also urged the board to vote down the set of protocols which would govern the way the Host Communities Standing Committee operates and which contains a complicated arbitration procedure if projects aren’t unanimously approved. The board later became the second entity, behind the Niagara County Legislature, to unanimously vote down the protocols.
Newlin responded to the criticisms with a lengthy explanation of his own, several times telling Maziarz to sit back down after the senator shot back to the microphone to rebut a point.
He called Maziarz’s presence a “thinly veiled political attack,” and wondered aloud if it was because his name has been mentioned as a possible Democratic competitor for Maziarz’s seat.
He said he agreed with several of Maziarz’s points, among them that the Niagara Power Coalition has spent too much on lawyer fees and that the protocols were bad.
But as a whole, Newlin painted a different portrait of the town’s financial gains from the relicensing settlement. The power discounts save town residents over $2 million annually, while nearly $1 million in capital improvement money goes toward infrastructure problems.
He referenced Massena, NY, a town that underwent a similar relicensing process several years ago, and said that Lewiston’s benefits dwarfed Massena’s. He said power authority officials warned him if he asked for too much in power discounts they’d have to strip away the low-cost hydropower of some area businesses.
He also noted Maziarz’s absence during the final stages of negotiation of the contract in 2005 and asked why he hadn’t staged similar events in the Town of Niagara, which also contracts outside lawyers for relicensing settlement matters.
Before and after the meeting, firefighters said they had been given the impression from Newlin that they’d receive power discounts and money from the relicensing settlement.
Jonathan Schultz, chief of Upper Mountain Fire Company, said that money could pay for new equipment to help in the case of an emergency at the Niagara Power Project.
“It would enhance the services all the companies provide,” he said.
Newlin said during his rebuttal that National Grid made the error of giving the companies discounts, and laughed off the notion that he controlled their billing procedures.
Eventually, the board approved a motion by Newlin to urge the state to consider changing the law to tax state authorities, which he said would be a tremendous boost to the town’s tax base and help the fire companies.
