A New York municipal official has said that opt-out municipal aggregation, "wouldn’t be worth all the trouble," if the program was, "just about saving money," The (Westchester) Examiner News reports

"The truth is if this was just about saving money it wouldn’t be worth all the trouble," Suzi Novak, a New Castle Sustainability Advisory Board, told The Examiner News, in discussing the Sustainable Westchester program and touting its renewable component

New Castle is the only municipality that is defaulting municipal aggregation customers to a higher-priced green option under the SW program, which has about half of the projected savings versus the standard product (note that savings are not guaranteed, and the projection of savings could change based on monthly changes in default service rates)

Novak's statement lays bare assertions that municipal aggregations are about saving customers money, and reveals their true purpose -- to compel customers (via customer inertia and an opt-out process) to support pet social policies, such as green energy.

One of the arguments for the opt-out enrollment authority provided to municipal aggregations -- an avenue which violates basic customer protections which is not available to any other market participants -- is that such action is needed for customer savings, because even though significant savings are available through individual choice, customer inertia has led to too few customers availing themselves of such savings

Novak's admission should prompt an immediate reconsideration of this falsehood, as we now see municipal aggregations are not about saving customers money, but about creating a dedicated revenue stream, from customer inertia and conscription, for the favored policies of politicians

See The Examiner News for more

--By Paul Ring