Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called the slow progress by New York State’s power companies to turn the lights back on for customers "unacceptable” and threatened to revoke their franchise licenses Monday, according to the Albany Times Union.
As of late Monday afternoon, more than 400,000 New Yorkers were still without power after last week’s storm, and many did not know when their electricity would return.
"They will be held accountable," Cuomo said of the power companies, according to the paper.
Cuomo also added that the electric giants "should have been communicative" during the outages, according to Newsday.
"People should be getting information," he said. "It's one thing if you can't get the power back on."
In a letter addressed to the big six power companies in New York on Nov. 1, Cuomo accused the companies’ heads of failing to “keep the public’s trust,” by not giving cutomers proper estimations of when their power could be turned back on, and for that “they must answer.”
“It goes without saying that such failures would warrant the removal of the management responsible for such colossal misjudgments,” wrote Cuomo.
As of Monday morning, 156,800 Con-Ed customers were still without electricity out of an estimated 950,000 affected: 3,500 out in Manhattan, 40,800 in Queens, 22,800 in Brooklyn, 15,000 in Staten Island and 6,700 in the Bronx, according to the Times Union.
In Westchester County, Con-Ed still had 68,000 customers without power. Cuomo has also been critical of the Long Island Power Authority, and it’s service record, before and after the storm, as well as its financial behavior.
As of 6 p.m. Monday, the governor's office said that 142,017 Con-Ed customers in New York City were still without power, a small sign of progress.
