Senator O'Mara's weekly column 'From the Capitol' -- for the week of October 12, 2026 -- "Ratepayers (and taxpayers) can't afford a 'POWER' check"
There's a long, extensive list of priorities to address that, if done right and we get started on them now, could begin to provide real and meaningful short- and long-term relief to overburdened New Yorkers. A one-time, here-today-gone-tomorrow POWER check isn't on that list.
Senator O'Mara offers his weekly perspective on many of the key challenges and issues facing the Legislature, as well as on legislative actions, local initiatives, state programs and policies, and more. Stop back every Monday for Senator O'Mara's latest column...
Governor Hochul is in the process of sending out taxpayer-funded energy rebates, so-called "POWER" checks, of up to $200 to more than 8 million New Yorkers.
A $100 or $200 POWER check. That's the governor's answer to the skyrocketing utility bills that have made life miserable for thousands upon thousands of New York ratepayers over the past several years.
Specifically, Governor Hochul and the all-Democrat majorities in the state Legislature included $1 billion in this year's state budget to fund this one-time "Protecting Our Wallets Energy Rebate (POWER)" giveaway to provide $200 to joint filers with incomes under $150,000 and $150 to joint filers with incomes between $150,000 and $300,000. Single filers with incomes under $150,000 will receive $100. The POWER checks started going out in the mail in late September.
"Relief is on the way," the governor proclaimed. Really?
The Albany-based Empire Center for Public Policy recently noted that "a household using 800 kWh per month saw estimated electricity expenditures rise to $2,722 during the past 12 months." New York's average residential electricity price in July was nearly 65 percent above the national average. The state's price rose 14 percent from July 2025, nearly three times the national year-over-year increase of 4.9 percent.
Empire Center President Zilvinas Silenas said, "The so-called $200 energy rebate check does not even cover the electricity price increase. Also, why is it called a rebate? This isn't a situation where energy companies are refunding ratepayers. The state is merely taking $200 from people who pay taxes and giving it to people who pay electricity bills -- largely the same people."
He also makes the point, rightly, that a POWER check won't make a bit of difference for any ratepayer.
"Ultimately it doesn't solve anything," Silenas said. "It doesn't even cover the increase for a year. And my question is, well, what about next year? What about the year after next? Are we going to be doing these rebates? So that's definitely ultimately a doomed policy, which of course has nothing to do with the upcoming election."
His final point, of course, is delivered tongue in cheek. POWER checks are purely about the upcoming election -- a blatant attempt to buy off ratepayers' anger. It's taxpayer-funded electioneering and to claim otherwise is dishonest. To add insult to ratepayers, Hochul is even sending these checks to households, like many who rent, that don't pay the utility bill, not to the landlord footing these increases. Remember what it was called last year? In the fall of 2025, Governor Hochul sent out so-called "Inflation Refund" checks of up to $400 to over 8 million New Yorkers. That one cost taxpayers over $2 billion.
They keep tossing out a billion dollars of taxpayers' money in giveaways like it's nothing. And you wonder why New York State has an affordability crisis. You wonder why taxpayers and businesses are leaving in droves. It's a joke -- a nightmare of a joke. I know many, many people whose monthly utility bill has gone up by over $200 a month, some have tripled and quadrupled. A two-hundred-dollar rebate check, paid for by their own taxes, should insult New Yorkers. In today's economic reality, $200 won't get any family anywhere.
Governor Hochul and Albany Democrats keep talking about ratepayers and taxpayers needing a break. They sure do. In a state recognized as one of the least affordable places to live in America, New York's taxpayers and families deserve a break from high taxes, out of control government spending, relentless state mandates, and unending government handouts and other costly gimmicks like this one.
How about the state taking less money out of your pocket to begin with?
The Wall Street Journal once summed up rebate check gimmicks this way: "Call it the Albany way: Raise taxes, then redistribute the money to buy votes."
Exactly. No New Yorker is going to send their POWER check back to the state, nor should they, but rest assured it's going to be received knowing full well its bottom line, to buy votes, and I guess it will remain to be seen if it earns any lasting feelings of goodwill toward high-taxing, big-spending, unaffordable New York -- a state that can already boast of hundreds of thousands of former residents who now make up the largest population loss in the nation.
For all those who could truly use a break from everything New York State throws at them, if this governor and her team of advisers think $100 or $200 could even begin to address or ease this state's energy affordability crisis, in any lasting or meaningful way, they're even more out of touch than most New Yorkers already think they are.
So, Governor Hochul's sending out POWER checks.
This state needs to focus on fundamental priorities that have been neglected almost to the point of no return.
Address one of the highest state and local tax burdens in the nation.
Address true and meaningful mandate relief, particularly in the arena of Medicaid, for local governments, school districts, and property taxpayers.
Address out-of-control state spending, which has skyrocketed from $168 billion to $277 billion in the seven years of all-Democrat control of Albany. That's a $109 billion or 65% increase, far outpacing inflation.
Address a current lineup of energy mandates that any straightforward cost-benefit analysis will tell you will only serve to make New York State more unaffordable than ever before. A good start would be to approve legislation (S6412) I sponsor, the "Ratepayer Disclosure and Transparency Act" to require utilities to spell out for ratepayers, on their monthly utility bills, the various NYSERDA-imposed surcharges that go to fund green energy programs. Current law prohibits your utility provider from itemizing these. I also sponsor legislation (S8461A) that would return the nearly $3 billion in surcharges the utilities have collected from ratepayers for NYSERDA, which sits unspent in their coffers -- triple the amount of Hochul's so-called relief.
In short, there's a long, extensive list of priorities to address that, if done right and we get started on them now, could begin to provide real and meaningful short- and long-term relief to overburdened New Yorkers.
A one-time, here-today-gone-tomorrow POWER check isn't on that list. It won't empower a single New Yorker. They might as well shred it up in one of those wind turbines the extreme, far-left Albany Democrats are looking to erect on every upstate hilltop they can find.
Comments