While Niagara Falls Mayor Vince Anello has already included money expected from the relicensing of the New York State Power Authority in next year's budget, one area developer is hoping to derail the agreement by any means necessary.

Frank Parlato Jr., who owns the One Niagara building at the foot of the Rainbow Bridge as well as other properties in the region, said the deal to allow the Authority to retain control of the Robert Moses Power Plant here for another 50 years constitutes public policy at its worst.

"These people have had control of Niagara's hydroelectric power since 1957, and we're paying some of the highest rates for electricity anywhere in the country," Parlato said. "It's time for the people of Western New York to take back what is theirs."

Last year, the Authority reported profits of more than $500 million, yet customers in only two states -- New Hampshire and Hawaii -- pay more for electric power than their New York counterparts. Customers in 13 states pay less than half of what New Yorkers pay.

And the cost of electricity on the Niagara Frontier is the highest in the state, Parlato said.

Ironically, none of the power generated at the Robert Moses plant is used locally. Instead, it is routed to New York City and sold elsewhere around the country. The city of Buffalo -- first illuminated by Nikola Tesla using electricity generated from the original Niagara power plant on Nov. 16, 1896 -- now relies on high-cost power imported into the region.

The state Power Authority was formed during the height of the Great Depression in 1931, charged with the mission of providing "low-cost power to the people of New York." Consolidating various private power companies, and often using condemnation and eminent domain to seize transmission lines and generating plants, it quickly grew into the largest state-owned power utility in the United States.

When work on the Robert Moses plant began in 1957, eminent domain and condemnation were again employed by the Authority, this time to take land from the Tuscarora Nation of Indians and Niagara University, as well as from Lewiston and Niagara Falls, where the municipalities' tax bases were seriously eroded.

Set up as a not-for-profit corporation, the Authority pays no taxes whatsoever. It also is not technically allowed to turn a profit.

"So they can either reduce the cost of people's power, or they can spend it on high salaries, more patronage jobs and expensive studies," Parlato said. "Guess which they chose."

More than 160 Authority employees make in excess of $100,000 a year, while Authority CEO Timothy S. Carey -- who has apparently never held a private sector job in his life -- rakes in $206,000 a year.

As Reporter contributor Mark Scheer recently noted, the Authority has already spent more than $52 million over the past five years on studies, paperwork and consultants in connection with the relicensing agreement.

That figure represents slightly more than half of what the Authority offered to give the city of Buffalo and Erie County over 50 years under the terms of a settlement agreement that was ultimately rejected by both municipalities.

Niagara County host communities won't reach the $50 million mark in terms of direct cash payments until roughly Year Nine of a 50-year agreement that they have already accepted. Under the terms of that deal, seven Niagara County municipalities and school districts would share about $233 million in cash over 50 years, including a "signing bonus" of $8 million in Year One and $5 million annually through the end of the license agreement.

Politicians throughout the county have busied themselves greedily spending the cash they haven't yet received.

"The outrageous electric rates people are forced to pay here is just another reason for them to go elsewhere," Parlato said. "And it's another reason for new businesses to stay away."

Parlato said that Albany's control of the power plant -- along with its stranglehold on the state park -- has, more than anything else, been responsible for the sad decline of the city.

"Have you ever heard of a city getting 17 million paying visitors a year -- that's 300 visitors for every resident -- and going broke? Albany took our two greatest assets, hydropower and tourism, and diverted the profits to themselves," he said.

Incensed by the $7,000-a-month bills he was receiving from Niagara Mohawk to light the One Niagara building, Parlato took matters into his own hands. Installing a pair of generators powered by spent french fry grease collected from area restaurants, he took the building completely off the power grid on Oct. 21.

"I told them I didn't intend to pay their exorbitant rates, or their usurious interest rates," Parlato said of his bill, which remains in dispute. "Someone's got to stand up to them."

Ultimately, the decision on whether or not the Authority gets a 50-year renewal on its license to operate the Robert Moses plant rests with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington.

But there's a hitch -- the commission must find public consensus among the host communities.

And, while politicians in Niagara County have predictably caved in to the Authority's demands, their counterparts in Buffalo and Erie County have not. In fact, Rep. Brian Higgins has already filed a formal complaint on behalf of those municipalities with the commission.

If enough people complain, the commission will have to defer to Congress to make the decision, a prospect that the robber barons running the Authority want to avoid at all costs.

Higgins, along with Rep. Louise Slaughter and Sens. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, would likely ask some tough questions of the overpaid Authority bureaucrats. And first among them would be why customers living in the shadow of the state's most profitable power plant are paying some of the highest rates in the country for electricity.

Parlato has been meeting with attorneys over the past several weeks, working on a plan of his own to block the relicensing. He said he is not yet certain which particular legal strategy will be employed, but believes that several options are open to him.

"We should have free electricity here, or at least the cheapest in the world," he said.