Last week, at the foot of a staircase at the state Capitol, a group of Hudson Valley utility customers joined a rally for a publicly owned power company. Flanked by progressive state senators and assembly members, they shouted "People power now! People power now!"
The rally - and the chant - were instigated by supporters of a bill called the Hudson Valley Power Authority Act. It’s an ambitious piece of legislation. If passed, it would authorize the creation of a new utility corporation called the Hudson Valley Power Authority, which would replace Central Hudson Gas and Electric.
Central Hudson is a private company that handles utilities for over 300,000 customers across parts of eight counties, from just south of Newburgh to just north of Catskill. In this hypothetical new scenario, the Hudson Valley Power Authority would either buy out Central Hudson – or, if they resisted a sale, seize the company via eminent domain. The new utility would be publicly owned. And because it would have no imperative to earn profits, supporters claim it would dramatically cut costs for customers.
Assembly Member Sarahana Shrestha, a Democratic Socialist who represents New York’s 103rd district, is a cosponsor of the Hudson Valley Power Authority Act. "The way investor-owned utilities are set up and authorized to make profits is a scam!" she told me in a recent interview at the state capitol.
Under the current for-profit system, she says, customers - or “rate-payers,” in the parlance of utility policy - are the main way Central Hudson covers its costs and pays dividends to employees and shareholders. They’ve got a vested interest in driving up profits, which means, according to Shrestha, they’ve also got a vested interest in keeping rates high.
"Investor-owned utilities maximize profits by overspending on capital infrastructure," she said. "And once they expand the unnecessary capital infrastructure, we keep paying for it forever."
In recent years, the relationship between Central Hudson and its customers has been rocky. In 2025, over a quarter of the company’s rate-payers reported being “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with their service. A 2024 report from the New York State Department of Public Service showed Central Hudson had a higher complaint rate than other New York utility companies.
And there’s lingering resentment amongst rate-payers for an incident in 2021 when Central Hudson botched the rollout of a new billing system. Thousands of people were over-charged, and tens of thousands had sudden, unexpected withdrawals automatically taken from their banks. The New York Public Service Commission later found that the company was aware of defects in the system and failed to correct them.
Under the new, publicly-owned Hudson Valley Power Authority, Shrestha says all those problems would go away.
"When you have public ownership, you can have transparency, accountability, low rates, and infrastructure designed based on needs, instead of what maximizes profits. And you can also have community participation. So we have all these provisions that are not possible under the for-profit model."
Shrestha and her fellow supporters - including state Sen. Michelle Hinchey - claim the Hudson Valley Power Authority would save rate-payers some $15 million overnight. It wouldn’t have to pay the taxes that Central Hudson currently pays - the cost of which, Shrestha says, gets passed on to customers. And because they wouldn’t need to turn a profit, their main priority would be setting rates at a level people can afford. The HVPA would also be focused on moving the power grid off of fossil fuels - something Shrestha says would face less resistance in a nonprofit organization. For two years, she's been traveling around the Hudson Valley, holding town halls, trying to build support for the idea. Among frustrated Central Hudson rate-payers, it’s popular.
At Central Hudson itself? Not so much.
"First of all, Central Hudson is not for sale," said Joe Jenkins, the company's director of media relations. "We don't believe that a government takeover of a utility is in the best interest of rate payers. There's a number of reasons why we have concerns for that."
For one thing, Jenkins doesn’t buy Shrestha’s argument that a takeover of Central Hudson would save people money. In fact, he argues, it would cause rates to go up. "Were the government to come and take us over, there would be a significant cost associated with this. Billions of dollars that would have to be shouldered on the backs of our customers, of our ratepayers, of our taxpayers."
Those billions of dollars Jenkins is talking about are a reference to the value Central Hudson puts on its company: $7 billion, to be exact (though, again, they say they’re not for sale). Shrestha says that number is unrealistic. A feasibility study commissioned by Hudson Valley Power Authority supporters calculated the fair market value of Central Hudson at $3.5 billion dollars. "And they're coming back with, you know, 200% of that number," she says, laughing. "Which is sort of the same pattern you see when they ask for rate increases. They always ask for 200% expecting to get 100%. So I'm like, why is this surprising?"
Jenkins also says the Hudson Valley Power Authority would cost communities in the long run, because it would subtract some $60 million in property tax revenue that Central Hudson currently pays. Shrestha dismisses that argument as well, on the grounds that the new publicly owned company would make “payment in lieu of taxes” – or a PILOT. "It's done elsewhere, where the publicly-owned utility just pays the same amount of what the taxes would be. And when it's a pilot, it's usually negotiated between the localities and the and the payer."
It’s that word – "negotiated" – that Jenkins says is the problem. "PILOT payments are not the same as straight line formulaic tax payments that a business entity makes. Pilots can be renegotiated, and PILOTS can be adjusted as time goes on. As a tax-paying entity, Central Hudson is required to pay those taxes year in and year out. PILOTS have the potential to put budgeting processes for our local municipalities, our local fire districts, our local school districts into chaos."
I asked Jenkins about Central Hudson’s reputation when it comes to customer satisfaction. He acknowledged that the billing system rollout didn’t go well, but says the company is now over-performing when it comes to sending out accurate bills. "Now, that's not to say that we didn't rattle the trust of our customers. We recognize that, and we need to do everything in our power to restore that trust."
The Hudson Valley Power Authority proposal has other opponents beyond Central Hudson. One of their most significant adversaries is IBEW Local 320 - the labor union that represents many Central Hudson workers. They’re part of a group called Protect Our Power, which has been fighting Shrestha’s bill.
Steve Carroll is the president of Local 320. He told me that he and his members want to do their work, and they want to get paid. They’re worried that a company that’s publicly owned - or what he called “municipalized” - is going to be dependent on state financing, which means they’re going to make contractors deal with a bunch of red tape. That, he says, risks less work and less pay for union members, and slower progress when it comes to building out and maintaining the power grid.
"A privately owned utility has a lot more benefits to the communities than a municipalized one," said Carroll. "With the municipalized, government owned [utility], everything goes to a budget, and everything needs to be approved before it gets spent.
Shrestha, again, disagrees. "People often confuse state authorities with state agencies that are funded by the state budget."
The Hudson Valley Power Authority, she says, wouldn’t be government owned. It would be run by a state-appointed board of trustees, which she claims would be able to operate quickly and without red tape, with oversight from an observatory group that would include rate-payers and union members.
That last bit is part of Shrestha’s pitch to skeptical labor leaders: the union would have seats on both the board of trustees and the observatory. "So, actually, the union will be the party that has the most representation."
So far, that argument hasn’t swayed Steve Carroll and the IBEW. He told me he’s happy with his current relationship with leadership at Central Hudson, where he says he and the CEO have an “open-door policy.” And he thinks having a seat on the board of trustees at the hypothetical new company would actually give him less influence. "I don't necessarily see the incentive of how you're going to give me better representation by putting me on a board, having one voice out of 13 people."
Many business leaders around the Hudson Valley have also come out against the bill, including John Cooney, executive director of the Construction Industry Council of Westchester and the Hudson Valley. He sees the Hudson Valley Power Authority as the utility equivalent of a state-run highway. State management might keep toll prices relatively low, he says. But that means the roads aren’t always maintained as well as they could be. And with utilities, Cooney told me, the stakes are much higher. "People get used to driving over potholes and they tolerate it well. In this instance, a pothole is someone's power outage. You can't tolerate it."
The Hudson Valley Power Authority Act is currently in committee, so it’s not likely to pass before tomorrow’s legislative deadline for the current session. But Shrestha told me she’s not focused on that right now. "I haven't worried or paid too much attention to where the bill is in Albany, because the first thing we need to do is build support in the Central Hudson territory."
To that end, she’ll be holding a town hall in Catskill on June 11.
