OP-ED: Let us help Senator O’Mara with his energy bill

Energy affordability requires more than political arithmetic

A OPINION By James J. Bobreski, Candidate for the 58th Senate District

Senator Tom O’Mara is worried about energy costs. So are the rest of us. The difference is that most families cannot solve the problem by blaming “Albany Democrats” every Monday and calling it an energy policy.

In his June 22 column, O’Mara claimed that “just to operate an electric school bus could be $500,000 each.” That would be a remarkable expense – so remarkable that somebody should have checked it.

The problem is that approximately $400,000 is the purchase price of an electric school bus, not its annual operating cost.

NYSERDA estimates that an electric bus may save a school district between $4,000 and $11,000 per year in fuel and maintenance compared with a diesel or gasoline bus. Apparently, O’Mara drove the purchase price through the accounting department and parked it under “annual operations.”

That does not mean the electric-school-bus mandate is perfect. The buses remain expensive. Charging stations, rural routes, winter range and repair training are legitimate concerns. The mandate requires adequate state funding and a practical timetable. But there is an enormous difference between questioning a costly mandate and manufacturing a half-million-dollar annual expense. Either O’Mara confused buying the bus with running it, or he assumed nobody would check. Neither possibility inspires confidence in a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee.

O’Mara’s broader argument uses the same accounting method: every expense originating in Albany belongs to Democrats, while every expense pushed onto New York from Washington disappears.

Enter New York’s Magnificent Seven – Andrew Garbarino, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy, Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis, Elise Stefanik and Claudia Tenney – NYS’s own F Troop, perhaps momentarily distracted while reviewing the latest stock suggestions from the President. Nevertheless, every one of them managed to vote for President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. The House passed it by only four votes, 218-214. New York’s seven Republican votes were more than enough to put it over the finish line – and then they returned home to complain about the consequences.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the law will reduce direct federal spending by approximately $1.1 trillion while increasing the deficit by $3.4 trillion over ten years. New York officials project an almost $13 billion annual impact on the state and its health-care system. SNAP changes could also impose as much as $1.4 billion annually in new costs.

Those expenses do not vanish. They arrive in Albany, county legislatures, hospitals, school districts and household budgets.
Then O’Mara points at the resulting pressure and announces, “Look what the Democrats did.”

That is not fiscal responsibility. It is a political shell game.

The Magnificent Seven galloped to Washington to pass the bill, Then Mr. O’Mara blames Albany when the invoice arrives: post marked Washington, discovered in Albany, while ignoring the hoof prints left on the backs of the taxpayers by the magnificent seven.

O’Mara also speaks as though energy was inexpensive until someone installed a solar panel or wind turbine. Decades of utility mismanagement, aging transmission systems and nuclear construction overruns have disappeared from his ledger – even though ratepayers are still paying for nuclear plants built nearly forty years ago.

A serious energy plan would compare every source by the same standards: construction cost, operating cost, reliability, pollution, waste, water use, transmission, subsidies and decommissioning. Such a plan would maintain reliable generation, expand hydropower, modernize the grid, develop storage and stop utilities from treating customers as bottomless checking accounts.
Energy is a necessity, not a luxury.

New Yorkers deserve more than exaggerated electric bus expenses, partisan slogans and selective accounting.

Before taxpayers buy what Senator O’Mara is selling, they should check whether the advertised operating expense is really the price of the entire bus.