Cuomo, de Blasio want Con Ed out

NEW YORK (FOX 5 NY) - Two major power failures from Con Edison in eight days and Mayor de Blasio says the company is shedding no light on what it’s going to do to fix the problems going forward.

“To begin with I think we need a full investigation, because this should not be happening, and they should not be unaccountable and then second, I think it’s time to think about other options,” says de Blasio.

Con Ed is a private, investor-owned utility. The Mayor is now saying maybe it’s time to change that.

“They don’t have the accountability of a public sector entity, but they’re regulated in a way that sort of makes them public,” de Blasio said. “It’s a weird mix. I think it’s a bad mix right now because the accountability is off.”

Accountability is exactly what tens of thousands of New York City residents are demanding, as well. On Friday, Con Ed claimed it was ready for the weekend’s heat wave.

It wasn’t.

More than 50,000 customers lost electricity in Brooklyn and Queens Sunday evening and about 30,000 of which were taken offline deliberately by Con Ed. The power company says it was done to prevent an even bigger outage.

What’s worse is a lot of people were still in the dark Tuesday morning.

Several businesses were also feeling the burn.

The power outages forced many in Brooklyn and Queens to close their doors for days. Not working means notgetting paid.

The Mayor’s suggestion that Con Ed could be replaced is similar to what Gov. Andrew Cuomo originally said last week.

An equipment failure on July 13 left more than 70,000 customers on Manhattan’s West Side without power for about five hours.

Now, with yet another unexplained outage, Cuomo is making the same point again.

“This is a franchise that’s not granted by God, it’s granted by the city, and you can change a utility company if they don’t preform,” said Cuomo.