Catch 22(0 Volts)

Chutzpah, and by being unable to deliver basic services because of a lack of money for infrastructure improvements give them bonus points for the perverse Catch-22 scenario:

Consolidated Edison asked state regulators for permission yesterday to substantially raise electricity rates next April — by 17 percent for a typical residential customer and by 10.7 percent for a typical business.

Under the proposal, which met with immediate criticism, the total monthly electric bills for the utility’s 3.2 million electricity customers in New York City and most of Westchester County would rise by 11.6 percent in 2008.

Bills would increase by another 3.2 percent in 2009 and by 3.7 percent in 2010.

The rate increase request, the first since 2004, raised hackles among politicians and community advocates who were infuriated by the utility’s sluggish response to a nine-day blackout in western Queens last July that affected some 170,000 people.

. . .

Kevin M. Burke, the chairman and chief executive of Con Edison, defended the rate increase yesterday in a statement that made no mention of the blackout, although it did cite improvements planned for the underground network in Long Island City, Queens, where the blackout began.

. . .

Under the Con Edison proposal, the average monthly bill would increase to $82 from $70 for a typical residential customer and to $2,435 from $2,200 for a typical business.

Con Edison said it planned to spend billions of dollars on improvements over its next three-year rate plan, including $942 million on substations, $899 million on transformers and related equipment and $467 million on new underground primary cables.

Con Edison’s chief financial officer, Robert N. Hoglund, said the company would need an average of nearly $2 billion in new investor capital each year to pay for such improvements. The company needs the increase to obtain such capital, he said. Con Edison has $12 billion in annual revenues.