Richie Kessel continues to stonewall Street Corner Conservative’s Freedom of Information Request for Kessel’s “schedule and/or calendar kept and compiled on a daily basis” from September 24, 2008 through and including February 13, 2009. To release this information would be very easy. Street Corner Conservative has been informed that Kessel keeps his calendar on a “At a Glance” monthly desk pad that is 22” by 17”. Three such calendars are kept: one for his secretary, one for Kessel and one for Kessel’s home. To comply with the FOIL request would entail making copies of 5 pages of his 2008-2009 monthly calendar desk pad.

Kessel refuses to release the 5 pages because he knows it would reveal that he spends most of his time on Long Island pursuing his personal political agenda. Just last Thursday, March 19, Kessel held another NYPA press conference on Long Island, this one at West Babylon. Long Island’s load constitutes just 2% of NYPA’s electrical power, but Kessel spends 98% of his time on Long Island.

Richie Kessel has hired another Long Island politico to serve as his Special Advisor at NYPA. According to Celeste Hadrick of Newsday, Fran Evans, who has no experience in the electrical power field, worked for Nassau County Legislator Judy Jacobs when she was Presiding Officer and as Huntington’s public information officer. She started on the NYPA Payroll on February 4. According to Map Quest, Fran Evans daily commute from her home in Huntington is nearly 100 miles and takes 2 hours and 20 minutes roundtrip without traffic and weather. NYPA Employees should keep track of Evans attendance record at the NYPA White Plains headquarters. One wonders whether Richie Kessel is assembling a team to run NYPA or a campaign team for Nassau County Executive courtesy of upstate electric customers.

At NYPA’s March 19 Rate Increase hearing in Albany (since it was not held on Long Island Kessel did not attend), Senator George Maziarz of Niagara County testified that Richie Kessel is a liar and a cheat:

“… you have the audacity to steal power from St. Lawrence, and to a lesser extent Niagara, and send it down to the Brookhaven Lab on Long Island? To a federal government facility? You can’t do our projects, but you magically find power to give to Mr. Kessel’s Long Island friends? Disgraceful.

“I called you liars to begin with and now I will call you thieves, robbing Upstate in the middle of the night to make yourselves the heroes of the Paterson Administration and Long Island.

“I call on NYPA to reject this electric rate increase – again, really this hidden tax – on Upstate electricity customers. And I call on Governor Paterson to take a look at how Upstate is having its natural resources pillaged to the benefit of other regions of the state while our economy withers on the vine.

“We’ve been lied to. We’ve been cheated. And we’ve had enough.”

Street Corner Conservative agrees with Senator Maziarz’s analysis. In the near future, Street Corner Conservative will review Democratic Congressman Brian Higgins’ demands to Governor Paterson and Richie Kessel that Richie’s NYPA abuses stop. So, the outrage against Richie Kessel’s abuses are bipartisan and growing.

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