https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/News-Briefs-12754313.php
News Briefs
Published 9:32 pm, Wednesday, March 14, 2018
Ex-Black Liberation member paroled
ALBANY — A former member of a 1970s black radical group who was convicted of fatally shooting two New York City police officers has been granted parole.
State prison system officials say the parole board this week approved 70-year-old Herman Bell's release. It was Bell's eighth parole hearing since being imprisoned for the 1971 killings of officers Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones.
Bell and two other members of the Black Liberation Army were convicted of luring the officers to a Harlem housing complex with a bogus 911 call and killing them.
Jones was shot once and died instantly. Piagentini was shot 22 times.
Bell was sentenced in 1979 to 25 years to life. He says he's a changed man.
Officials said Wednesday the earliest Bell can be released from Shawangunk Prison in Ulster County is April 17.
— Associated Press
State reviewing nor'easter response
ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo says an investigation has been launched into the preparations and response of the state's seven major utility companies to the two early March nor'easters that knocked out power to nearly 600,000 homes and businesses.
The Democrat announced Wednesday that the Public Service Commission notified the utilities that a probe is underway.
Most of the outages were in the lower Hudson Valley and northern New York City suburbs. Two utilities in particular, Con Edison and NYSEG, were slammed by local officials and customers for long delays in restoring power in the wake of the March 2 and March 7 snow storms.
Some customers went without power for as long as 10 days.
PSC officials say utilities that don't follow their response plans can face state sanctions.
— Associated Press
"Price floor" would aid dairy farmers
WATERTOWN — U.S. Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is proposing a new "price floor" policy to help dairy farmers continue to operate amid low milk prices.
The price floor would be set at $23.34 per hundredweight and would adjust over time for inflation. If milk prices drop below the price floor, the federal government would pay farmers 45 percent of the difference between the floor and the current milk price.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the current statistical uniform milk price in the Northeast Marketing Area is $14.88 per hundredweight.
"New York is blessed with more than 4,000 dairy farms, and even more hardworking men and women who wake up before the sun comes up every single day, to produce the milk we need to stay healthy," said Gillibrand said in a statement. "Historically low milk prices are creating a crisis for our farmers and dairy communities, and Congress needs to fix this problem now. My new bill, the Dairy Farm Sustainability Act, guarantees a minimum price for dairy farmers, to ensure that our farmers don't go bankrupt every time prices drop."
The money to pay for the program would come out of the U.S. Treasury.
The senator's price floor proposal would work alongside the Margin Protection Program, which provides farmers with financial assistance when the margin — the difference between milk prices and feed costs — falls below their selected level of coverage.
But some local dairy farmers are unsure whether Sen. Gillibrand's newest proposal will even scratch the surface when it comes to helping farmers who are facing financial troubles.
John D. Peck, who owns Peck Homestead Farm in Carthage, argued that the farming industry does not need another federally-subsidized insurance program to help farmers. The problem, he said, is in the federal milk pricing system. As production costs increase, low milk prices stay the same.
"The federal order system is broken, archaic and does not reflect consumer demands and cost of production," Peck said. "That is where our problem lies."
Gillibrand said she agreed that the pricing problem exists and that a fix could be addressed in the upcoming farm bill.
The senator is a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
— Watertown Daily Times
