Electricity bill costs could rise by as much as 39.4 percent in Ithaca, according to rate hikes proposed by the New York State Electric and Gas Corporation.
Residents from across upstate New York convened at the Ithaca Town Hall for NYSEG’s public comment hearing on Wednesday night. NYSEG consumers voiced opposition to the proposed hike of 39.4 percent for natural gas customers and 35 percent for electricity customers.
Throughout the hearing, not one speaker expressed support for the hikes.
“The first thing I noticed when I got back to Ithaca was that I got less electricity than I did when I lived in sub-Saharan Africa,” Aubryn Sidle, a resident of Ulysses, said. She added that her house is equipped with energy-efficient technology, but she still sees her bill increase every year.
As a distributor of electricity and gas, NYSEG is responsible for transmission lines, customer service and billing. The price of electricity and gas itself comes from more than 50 lesser-known suppliers that customers can choose from.
A consistent complaint with NYSEG revolves around its customer service. Now, the corporation plans on axing a customer service center in Northeast Ithaca.
Sebastian Nicholas Desystemizer, owner of Old Steel Bicycle Repair and Recyclery in downtown Ithaca, said that NYSEG is trying to “make sure there's a firewall between the rate-raisers and us,” and that he thought the money might go to data centers.
TeraWulf, an artificial intelligence data center developer, recently secured a long-term lease adjacent to Cayuga Lake.
When there were downed power lines with live wires, Newfield resident Matonna Stallmann said NYSEG took many hours and endangered the lives of firefighters when the live wires broke out into a fire, burning two trees. There were “no apologies and no explanation” from NYSEG — even after a similar situation occurred three times, according to Stallmann.
Consumers also mentioned delays in NYSEG responses, the slow progress in a renewable grid, fraudulent electrical bills and continuous rate increases. They also expressed opposition to NYSEG’s parent company, Spanish corporation Iberdrola.
In an interview with The Sun, Congressman Josh Riley (D-N.Y.) — who spoke at the hearing — said that what NYSEG is attempting to do “should be criminal,” and that NYSEG is taking money out of New York and sending it to Spanish executives “swimming in obscene amounts of profit.”
“Especially when the power goes out when the wind blows,” Riley said.
The Southern Tier congressman added that he introduced the Keep the Lights On Act, which would ban foreign governments and corporations like Iberdrola from owning American utility companies like NYSEG.
State Assemblywoman Anna Kelles (D-N.Y.) also attended the hearing and asked NYSEG to “fix [its] problems first” before asking for any further funds.
“Where is the data collection?” she said. “Where are the efforts to minimize the costs of losses?”
The corporation’s reasoning behind the statewide utility company’s proposed price hikes comes from demands to increase construction on large, renewable capital projects to address aging infrastructure and increase capacity.
Riley said that on the day that NYSEG proposed a $464.4 million statewide rate hike, Iberdrola sent $450 million to its shareholders overseas.
The Spanish utilities giant sent out a total of $1.17 billion in dividends to their shareholders in 2024, records show.
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) also has publicly opposed the hikes, urging the Department of Public Service to find other ways to raise funds without raising rates.
NYSEG is proposing the hikes to the New York State Public Service Commission, which must approve the rate increases in an Oct. 16 meeting. If approved, the hikes will go into effect in early 2026.
Atticus Johnson is a member of the Class of 2028 in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is a senior writer for the News department and can be reached at ajohnson@cornellsun.com.
