We get screwed more and more everyday.. What is so special about WNY that we have to pay the highest in everything just for the priveledge of living here? Could it be corruption? Are we just simply funding the corruption of our elected officials and the out of control Authorities in this a state? I think so.

From the Power Authority to the Thruway Authority, we pay so they can play.

But Western New York — where residents pay electric rates 50 percent higher than the national average — sees little of those proceeds beyond the wages and benefits paid to employees at the power plant. In fact, a study commissioned by the authority found 86 percent of the plant’s economic benefit leaves the area.

DAY TWO: GENERATING PROFITS
Niagara plant a huge moneymaker, but region sees little of the payoff

The janitors and clerks earn an average of $52,000 a year, laborers and security guards $57,000, trade apprentices $65,000.

And that’s the cheap help at the New York Power Authority, a Buffalo News investigation has found.

The authority’s 1,600 employees earned an average of more than $82,000 in 2005. One in five made more than $100,000. Executives make $200,000-plus.

Profits generated by the Niagara Power Project

Who earns what at the Power Authority

Power Failure blog by reporter James Heaney

And the Power Authority’s largess doesn’t stop with paychecks.

It doles out a lot of gadgets and gizmos to employees: some 245 cell phones, 274 Blackberries, 303 laptops and 720 credit cards — most of the white-collar staff.

The authority owns its own plane, which is sometimes used like an airborne taxi.

And, in addition to a staff of 15 lawyers who earned an average of about $133,000, the authority spent a lot on outside attorneys in 2005. Some $17,200. Per business day.

How does the authority pay for all this?

In large part because of huge profits generated at the Niagara Power Project in Lewiston.

The plant has long been a big money maker for the authority — its Golden Goose — and never more profitable than the past two years, when it cleared a third of a billion dollars.

But Western New York — where residents pay electric rates 50 percent higher than the national average — sees little of those proceeds beyond the wages and benefits paid to employees at the power plant. In fact, a study commissioned by the authority found 86 percent of the plant’s economic benefit leaves the area.

Niagara profits, The News found, help underwrite a gold-plated bureaucracy and help finance money-losing operations in and around New York City.

They also subsidize electric bills of businesses statewide, most of them operating outside the Buffalo Niagara region. The authority also engages in pork barrel spending that often has thinly veiled political overtones.

“It’s disgusting the way the community’s resources are being exploited by the power brokers in Albany. They’re profiting from their revenue. What about us? We’re getting squat,” said Doug Taylor, a North Tonawanda business owner who has studied the authority’s finances and been active in a coalition involved in the relicensing of the Lewiston plant.

Read the rest here…..