To the Editorial Team: The cost of electricity has risen dramatically over the past few years, eating into the budgets of families as well as businesses. Some people may be forced to make the tough choice between paying a power bill or buying groceries. The current rise in oil prices and the build-out of AI data centers will exacerbate this trend if something is not done.

In NY-19, our congressman, Josh Riley, has taken some major steps to curb the price of electricity. Riley introduced legislation called the Weatherization Enhancement and Readiness Act that would help families lower utility bills by making houses more weather-tight. Another of his initiatives would prohibit utility executives from receiving bonuses when they raise rates faster than inflation. Riley’s No Taxes on Utility Bills Act would allow consumers to deduct taxes and state-mandated surcharges that are included on gas and electric bills. And another bill would bar utility companies from passing along to customers expenses such as lobbying, political donations, private jet travel, entertainment, investor relations and regulatory fines.

Most recently Riley introduced the FAIR Data Act, bipartisan legislation to stop data center projects from driving up energy bills for families and small businesses. Massive data centers demand vast amounts of electricity and serving them will require costly grid upgrades.

Under current rules utilities can pass those costs on to everyday people, rather than the companies driving the demand. This bill would prevent that and require investor-owned utilities to recover the costs of serving large data centers from those facilities — not from everyday people.

These measures may not return electric prices to where they were years ago, but they are fair, reasonable and should put a brake on future increases. That’s one reason why I will vote to re-elect Josh Riley this November. I appreciate the way he reaches across the aisle to bring Republicans and Democrats together on these important issues.

Margaret Seiler

Claryville