Sep. 27--It's one of the great paradoxes in the Buffalo Niagara region: Why can't an area that generates vast amounts of incredibly cheap electricity get a bigger economic jolt from such a valuable resource?

Here's the short answer: The state and the New York Power Authority have done a lousy job managing what should be an incredibly powerful economic development tool.

Want proof? Consider this: Just three Buffalo Niagara region companies-- Occidental Chemical Corp., Olin Corp. and BOC Gases--get a whopping 200 megawatts of cheap hydropower between them--11 percent of all the electricity doled out to New York companies under a smattering of economic development programs.

And what do we get in return for these subsidies, worth more than $60 million a year to those three companies? About 750 good-paying jobs.

No wonder Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster says there needs to be a "substantial revamp" in the way cheap hydropower is doled out to businesses in New York.

And it's not just Western New York companies getting outsized power grants. Alcoa's plant in Massena gets more than twice that amount of power --478 megawatts--for its 900 jobs--a subsidy valued at more than $150,000 per job under a contract that runs for another 30 years.

"Something's broken," Dyster says. "The worst thing that can happen . . . is to keep doing what we've been doing in the past."

There's no better time than now to do something about it. Most of the legislative authority behind the nine different power programs is about to expire. So, too, are many of the contracts to provide vast amounts of cheap power to participants in the highly lucrative replacement and expansion power programs.

The state Assembly and Senate held a pair of meetings last week in the Buffalo Niagara region to discuss the way low-cost power is doled out and how to do it better. Yet there's no guarantee that the State Legislature will find the political will to take action on an issue they've preferred to duck in recent years, despite three reports in the last eight years that found huge flaws in the current programs.

The most recent came out last week from the Citizens Budget Commission, a New York City-based think tank that recommended that the state essentially scrap all of the existing power programs and start over.

For starters, the job of handing out upwards of $500 million a year in cheap power to worthy businesses should go to the state's main economic development agency, Empire State Development, not the New York Power Authority, says Elizabeth Lynam, the commission's deputy research director.