N.Y. Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D), who heads a committee that ...

any replacement. Brodsky, chmn. of the Assembly Corporations, Authorities & Commissions Committee, said the PSC “has walked away from its legal duty to ensure adequate telephone service in this state.” He added that the legislature owes it to the public to look into the situation. Brodsky said preliminary data from Verizon indicates it will miss the target for timely outage restorations for the final reporting period that ended Feb. 28, which could result in a $15 million rebate to customers. But a PSC spokesman said the only thing that’s changed is the automatic penalties: “We're not walking away from anything.” The PSC is continuing to monitor Verizon’s performance through quarterly reports and customer complaints. Earlier this year, the PSC said it believed market forces in N.Y. have become strong enough to be the primary driver for good service quality and decided the time had come to test that belief by ending mandatory penalties for Verizon service quality shortfalls. Verizon took issue with Brodsky’s implication that service quality would plummet absent explicit penalties. A spokesman said Verizon has been steadily improving its service quality for the past several years and the latest data shows it may miss the timely outage restoration goal by only a narrow margin. Under the 3- year enforcement program that expired in Feb., Verizon has had to pay $55 million in rebates to its customers. That was the last in a series of service quality enforcement programs going back to 1997. The PSC will issue its report on the final Verizon reporting period later this month.