LIPA chief resigns

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Tom Falcone, LIPA’s chief executive officer, has resigned.

Falcone, who submitted a resignation letter Monday, had first joined LIPA in 2014 as chief financial officer and became CEO in 2015. Falcone could not be reach for comment.

Falcone’s resignation comes at a time of uncertainty over the future management of Long Island’s power grid. Under the auspices of New York State, LIPA has been critical of the reliability of its contractor, PSEG Long Island, a division of the publicly traded energy company.

Meanwhile, Christopher Hahn, a vice president of PSEG-LI has touted the results of its partnership with LIPA, including maintaining checks and balances between the two organizations, and more recently, sharing the favorable results of a customer satisfaction survey by J.D. Powers.

PSEG-LI’s contract with LIPA expires in 2025.

State lawmakers in 2022 launched a bipartisan commission on LIPA’s future. It has been holding hearings on models for the structure of the region’s power providers going forward. Among the considerations are  whether LIPA should retain full control over the power grid, or allowing public-private contracts such as the one with PSEG-LI to continue.

In his resignation letter, Falcone talked about LIPA’s accomplishments under his tenure, including fiscal sustainability – noting that the organization scored four credit rating upgrades and a positive outlook for another upgrade – support of clean energy, savings for ratepayers, reducing the number of power outages and more.

“The next leader of LIPA will navigate the clean energy transition while maintaining reliability, affordability, fiscal sustainability, and the expiration of our service provider contract in December 2025,” Falcone said in the letter. “The task ahead is enormously complex and will require the total of a knowledgeable and experienced chief executive and team.”

He closed the letter by saying “[s]erving the great State of New York and our customers across Long Island and the Rockaways has been an honor and a privilege.”