Blackout Inquiry Continues with Hearings Thursday

New York, NY —

Con Edison's response to the nine day power outage in Queens will be the subject of two high profile public hearings today. WNYC's Bob Hennelly has this report.

Con Ed CEO Kevin Burke will face tough questioning from Assembly Energy Committee Chair Paul Tonko as well the Chair of the Public Service Commission William Flynn. Assemblyman Tonko has been a long standing critic of the state's push for utility deregullation.

The proceedings will start at 11am at LaGuardia College in Queens and the public is invited to be part of the audience. Then, tonight at 6pm it will be the public's turn to vent at the first of two public hearings held by the state's Public Service Commission at PS 234 in Astoria.

The PSC is specifically looking for testimony from Queens residents and business owners effected by the outage to critique Con Ed's response. The regulators want to know if Con Ed customers were able to reach the utility when they phoned in to report their outage.

Queens residents testified before the city council earlier that it took several days to reach the utility. For WNYC I am Bob Hennelly