Assemblymembers grill Con Ed's Burke

Thirteen members of the Assembly have asked the Public Service Commission (PSC) to investigate Con Ed's actions surrounding the western Queens blackout and determine if the utility giant should face significant fines and required to compensate affected customers with greater financial restitution.
After the coalition of Assemblymembers grilled Con Ed CEO Kevin Burke at La Guardia Community College on Thursday, August 3, they drafted a letter to the PSC requesting a prudency hearing to review the actions.
&#8220The decisions and actions in the immediate crisis and in years leading up to it were negligent, grossly negligent, imprudent and endangered the reliability, safety and effectiveness of the system,” the letter states.
&#8220We need to penalize them severely enough to make an impression so this won't happen again,” Assemblymember Michael Gianaris said.
Testifying before the Assemblymembers, Burke reiterated that he believed the $350 for perishables to residents and $7,000 to businesses was a &#8220reasonable” number and said the company did not expect to change the policy.
Meanwhile, Gianaris along with Councilmembers Eric Gioia and Peter Vallone Jr. sent a proposal to Burke asking the utility company to include damaged equipment, lost business and wages in the reimbursement as well as give three months of free electricity to affected customers.
However, Con Ed officials maintained that they have waived the $10 million cap on total reimbursements, but did not plan to make any other changes to its plan.
&#8220We are trying to fight, but I don't think they [Con Ed] understand our losses,” said Philippe Flory, who owns Ste. Honore Patisserie on Ditmars Boulevard and lost more than $24,000 during his six days without power. &#8220We are fighting a giant and going nowhere, so we have to move on.”
As of Tuesday, August 8, Con Edison received approximately 18,000 residential and 600 commercial claims for reimbursement. It has already issued 8,100 checks for residential claims totaling $1.8 million (an average of about $220) and 230 commercial checks for approximately $970,000 (an average of $4,220), according to Alfonso Quiroz, a spokesperson for Con Ed.
In addition, the city's Department of Small Business Services (SBS) approved 50 loans with an average amount of $7,250 as of Tuesday, August 8 with the first round of checks scheduled to go out on Wednesday, August 9, according to David Garlick, press secretary for the SBS.
Garlick said that small business owners continued to go to their two temporary offices - the Commerce Bank at 31st Street and Ditmars Boulevard and LaGuardia Community College - to apply for city and federal disaster loans, as well as reimbursements from Con Edison.
Currently, Con Ed still has many crews working to repair the damaged network in western Queens, but complete repair could take several months.
&#8220It's hard to give an exact time, but we are going to move as quickly as possible and still do it safely,” Quiroz said.
Crews are replacing the damaged cables and trying to put them back underground. As they replace the cables, the crews will be able to gradually take the customers who are still on generators off of them, according to Quiroz.
After a week with triple-digit temperatures and sweltering humidity that is being blamed for the death of 12 Queens residents and 24 citywide, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced an investigation into the heat-related fatalities to find out if any other measures could have been taken to prevent these deaths as well as prevent future power outages.