Recommended Reading, November 9, 2025

Robert Cox

09 Nov 2025 — 10 min read

Grok AI

DUBLIN, IRELAND (November 9, 2025) — In a welcome, long-sought result (by me and many of my readers anyway!), Westchester Power is ceasing operations this month and all customers will be returned to Con Edison or NYSEG, signaling the death rattle of Sustainable Westchester and it’s Green Tyranny.

This is not about “green electricity” it’s about coercive, deceptive fanatics and their elected enablers saddling largely unaware, often older or ESL rate-payers with higher electric bills through a duplicitous and unreliable opt-out process that violates the U.S. Constitution.

In the United States, automatically switching electricity customers to a non-profit provider via an opt-out system is flatly unconstitutional. It violates the Takings Clause by seizing existing private contracts without compensation, breaches the Contracts Clause by impairing many thousands of valid agreements, offends substantive due process by stripping the liberty to choose one’s own supplier, and—should the non-profit engage in advocacy—triggers the First Amendment’s ban on compelled speech under Janus. No state has ever survived a serious court challenge when attempting a blanket auto-switch.

Sustainable Westchester, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit running Westchester County’s Westchester Power CCA program, actively engages in advocacy. It openly positions itself as a hub for “effective advocacy” on clean energy, environmental justice, and climate resilience, regularly lobbying state legislators in Albany for bills like the NY Heat Act and CCA expansions. Staff and interns conduct community campaigns, rally municipal support, and push statewide climate policies. This advocacy triggers First Amendment compelled-speech concerns under Janus v. AFSCME (2018) for any customer automatically enrolled via opt-out, because their electricity payments directly fund political speech without affirmative consent.

In the early days, founder Mike Gordon admitted publicly that the real reason Sustainable Westchester required opt-out only was when they had tried an opt-in program it failed, only about 30% of rate-payers opted-in, too low a number he said to gain the critical mass needed to compete in the ESCO market. Gordon and others convinced the New York State Public Service Commission to create the ironically named Community Choice Energy Aggregation (CCA) program.

Sustainable Westchester and its enablers have always justified “opt-out only” on the grounds that anyone can exit Westchester Power at anytime without penalty.

To opt-out a rate-payer first need know they were opted-in and, if they opted-out, they would remain permanently opted-out. That would depend on Sustainable Westchester taking care of that when they had a clear conflict of interest between informing rate-payers how to opt-out and their business model which is (was) predicated on rate-payers not knowing they were opted-in and controlling the opt-out process which (is) was confusing and unreliable.

This is the significance of the PSC Denial Letters.

After a long-standing inquiry triggered by my efforts to have the PSC explain to me (and my readers) how a Westchester Power municipal contract could be valid if the underlying “enabling legislation” was determined to be null, void, and unenforceable.

That issue came up because in 2023, I filed an ethics complaint against Noam Bramson and Sara Kaye, both members of the New Rochelle City Council who voted on legislation benefiting Sustainable Westchester while serving on the Board of Directors of Sustainable Westchester. On December 1, the New Rochelle Board of Ethics sustained my allegations that Bramson and Kaye were prohibited from even being in the room when council votes on Sustainable Westchester occurred let alone casting votes given their clear conflicts of interest.

When City Manager Kathleen Gill attempted to convene an Executive Session on December 5, to discuss the ethics finding and the implication that all contracts with Westchester Power and Sustainable Westchester were null, void, and unenforceable, Bramson and Kaye refused to leave the room, obstructed the meeting and, in Bramson’s case stood over a seated Gill berating her in a loud, belligerent and menacing manner. Unable to convene the meeting, Gill hired an outside counsel from Harris Beach to write a legal opinion later that month which was shared with a newly seated council in February. Kaye remained but was excluded from participating in further discussions or voted involving Sustainable Westchester. Bramson was no longer Mayor. He was Executive Director of Sustainable Westchester.

It only emerged months later, based on my FOIL of Bramson and Kaye emails, that on the night he and Kaye obstructed the Executive Session, he was secretly on the payroll of Sustainable Westchester while Mayor. He had failed to disclose an $18,000 contract with Sustainable Westchester that ran from October 15 to December 15, 2023. Kaye was the only other person in the room on December 5 who knew about Bramson’s secret payments because she sat on the Sustainable Westchester hiring committee that offered Bramson the secret contract. She remained silent at the meeting and also refused to leave the room.

These ethics and disclosure violations metastasized so that in February 2024 I filed a new ethics complaint, this time against the incoming Mayor, Yadira Ramos-Herbert for voting on a resolution benefiting Sustainable Westchester while sitting on a different but power committee, the Sustainable Westchester Committee of Electeds which sets (set) prices for Westchester Power contracts impacting over 100,000 rate-payers and elected trustees of Sustainable Westchester’s Board of Directors. As the Ramos-Herbert complaint was nearly identical to my sustained Bramson-Kaye ethics complaint it was no surprise that on March 22, 2024, the ethics board approved a decision sustaining my ethics complaint against Ramos-Herbert. Except in her case, as she was on the Committee of Electeds, which includes every Mayor and Town Supervisor in the consortium, the implication of an adverse ruling was that every contract with Sustainable Westchester and Westchester Power with every municipality was null, void and unenforceable. Westchester Power would be shutdown. Bramson, Ramos-Herbert, ethics board member David Blumenthal, and others conspired to improperly provide attorney Stanley Bernstein confidential records from the ethics committee. Bernstein then re-wrote the opinion to reverse the previously agreed finding against Ramos-Herbert to exonerate her, thereby protecting Bramson and Sustainable Westchester.

A long and loud complaint was made by me to the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office which opened an investigation that has since expanded over the past 18 month to include all manner of corruption, many civil servants, elected officials and outside vendors to include no-bid contracts, bribery and kickback schemes, sexual assault allegations, insurance fraud and more. Subpoenas were issued months ago and numerous city employees have been questioned by DA investigators and lawyers.

It was in this context that I reached out to the Public Service Commission.

Back to those who make the argument that Westchester Power was somehow OK because rate-payers could opt-out.

Setting aside the Constitutional issues, and criminal issues, the non-profit and its staff routinely made materially false statements both about the program (pricing, benefits, opt-out process, and more) and in the PSC filings (about their required outreach efforts, use of required templates and forms, dates of events, attendance at events, social media and press outreach and more).

They were lying about everything, all the time, to everyone, from day one. What changed, as the PSC told me after I sent them the Harris Beach legal opinion, is that Sustainable Westchester (i.e., Executive Director Noam Bramson) never notified the PSC that the Sustainable Westchester and Westchester Power contracts with New Rochelle had been determined to be null, void, and unenforceable.

My reporting and the PSC inquiry both found many, many examples of false, misleading or inaccurate information being promulgated by Sustainable Westchester and its board members and staff, including Bramson, in both capacities.

SEE: Three Reasons Why Sustainable Westchester Should be Indicted for Criminal Fraud

PSC Rejection Letters: Village of Ardsley, Town of Bedford, Village of Croton-on-Hudson, Village of Dobbs Ferry, Town of Greenburgh, Village of Hastings-on-Hudson, Village of Irvington, Village of Larchmont, Town of Mamaroneck, City of New Rochelle, Town of New Castle, Town of North Salem, Town of Ossining, Village of Ossining, City of Peekskill, Village of Pelham, Village of Pleasantville, Town of Pound Ridge, Village of Rye Brook, City of Rye, Village of Sleepy Hollow, Village of Tarrytown, Village of Tuckahoe, City of White Plains and City of Yonkers.

Had Sustainable Westchester fully-informed rate-payers with accurate information about the Westchester Program, done the opt-out notices properly, done more of them, and actually opted-out rate-payers who asked to do so, there would still be the Constitutional and criminal issues to overcome.

It would be nice if the PSC would say all this but they told me early on, they “speak through their decisions”. The PSC Rejection Letters do not say that Sustainable Westchester is a criminal enterprise that routinely, over many years, refused to follow CCA requirements. They don’t have to, they strangled Sustainable Westchester with red tape.

Whatever it takes, right?

Westchester Power Customers Fed Misinformation, Denied Opt-Out Rights in Ethics and Regulatory Collapse

Sustainable Westchester Pulls Plug on Power Program in Official Letter to Municipalities

Sustainable Westchester Shutting Down Westchester Power; Customers Will Be Restored to Con Ed, NYSEG

Flowers Park RFP on Wednesday’s Council Agenda

Bob Young is the “master developer” behind the Flowers Park RFP. The bid was rigged by Yadira & Co., a criminal act. Courts and the State Comptroller can invalidate biased solicitations. New York municipal officials starting with Will Melendez and Yadira Ramos Herbert can be criminally charged for rigging a bid (Penal Law § 496 (corrupting government, Class B/C felony), § 195 (official misconduct), and § 200 (bribery). Violations lead to felony prosecution, prison, fines, and disqualification from office.

Yadira & Co. Gaslighting on New Rochelle’s Flowers Park (an 8-Part Series)

Yadira & Co. Gaslighting on New Rochelle’s Flowers Park – Part IX

A Gaslighting Sidebar: Shane Osinloye’s Sanctimonious Lecture on Flowers Park

New Rochelle Man Hit with $2.7 mm Judgement as Court Decries “Gamesmanship”

Phil Colasuonno was not happy to not squirm free from what is now a $2.7 mm IRS tax debt so he took my Facebook Page to paint himself as the victim (of the IRS and me)