GOVERNING BY CRISIS

I’m a private pilot and the best thing that can be said after a flight is that it’s uneventful. I wish that could be said about government today.



It’s been decades in the making, but I see more of it locally than in the past; it’s governing through crisis. There are crises that are unexpected that we must manage, but a good government has plans for those, like evacuation plans if you live in a hurricane zone, or communication systems, or prepared fire departments and staffed police forces. You plan for the crisis that you know will eventually come.

Today though, we have leaders creating crises to force action. The legislature recently voted on a resolution calling for the closure of Seneca Meadows landfill. No one particularly likes landfills, and many are working to decrease the amount of garbage we produce. The county is trying to cut the pounds per person in Tompkins from almost three pounds per day to just over one pound per day.

That still leaves us with a lot of garbage that must go somewhere. When asked where it should go, activists for closing Seneca dismiss that reality and admit that closing the landfill would force the state to make expensive choices that will be paid by you. They are recommending we create a crisis, so we then must solve it. If Seneca were to close, there are only a few solutions on where to put the garbage, all of which will be either unacceptable or worse for the environment. We could build a new landfill, but who wants that in their town? We could burn the garbage for power like Sweden does; I don’t see a lot of support for that. Or we can truck the waste to landfills farther away, maybe out of state, using more gas and boosting the cost of disposal. Under its current contract, Tompkins doesn’t dump at Seneca Meadows, but that could change, and if Seneca closes, the competition for space at the landfill we do use, will be dramatically increased.

We see this creation of a crisis in energy as well. We are increasing demand by forcing the electrification of homes and cars, but we are not bringing new sources of energy on-line as we ramp up use. New York is forcing the closure of “peaker-plants” that come online in times of high demand. It also shut down the 2000-Megawatt Indian Point Nuclear plant that provided about 25% of New York City’s power, without anything to replace it. The City is now predicted to have a shortage of power in just two years. New York Independent System Operator predicts NYC will be more than 400 Megawatts short of its needs in 2025, forcing blackouts.

This could rectify itself if the hydro plants from Canada are brought online, but even then, if we continue to force electrification without having the generation in place, it will take us decades to ramp up supply to meet demand. Almost half our power in NY comes from fossil fuels now; Niagara Falls produces much of the rest. Your leaders in Albany know this and yet, by creating a crisis, they are hoping this will spur New Yorkers to action. So far it hasn’t worked. These policies are partly to blame for the increases in NYSEG bills, but you wouldn’t know that from the elected senators, assembly members, and governor pushing these policies. They instead blame NYSEG or the war in Ukraine, anything except their policies that have cut supply and their plans that require a massive and expensive buildout of the electrical grid. Those expenses will be paid through your NYSEG bill. 

In New York state we see this approach with finances too. The state elected officials who voted for this year’s budget voted to withhold federal money for Medicaid, FMAP, leaving an almost $1.5 million hole in our Tompkins County budget. Another crisis that we will have to solve locally either through cuts in service or tax increases.

Crises bring pain, pain to you the taxpayer, your families, the companies you work for or have created. The democratic leaders in the Senate, Assembly, and Governor’s mansion all know this. They know that cutting the supply of electricity will cause higher prices for you and eventual blackouts. They know closing a landfill will raise prices for you to get rid of your garbage. They know withholding federal money from counties will cause your property taxes to go up. Instead of planning to avert a crisis, they prefer to make it painful for you to live in New York State.   

The pilots of New York State seem determined to make this trip eventful.