Where I live in Dutchess County, NY, there is a company that tries to pretend they are a public utility, allowing them to do all sorts of things an actual private company wouldn't be able to do, like issuing bonds (well, they get the County to do it for them) to pay for their projects, and those bonds may be 40 years! And then, even people who aren't connected to the water system still pay, at half the rate, for the project (because they MIGHT connect some day). The level of fraud and incompetence in NY is so high, such that any publicly funded project or entity is going to either be fraudulent, or corrupt, and usually both.
Where I live in Dutchess County, NY, there is a company that tries to pretend they are a public utility, allowing them to do all sorts of things an actual private company wouldn't be able to do, like issuing bonds (well, they get the County to do it for them) to pay for their projects, and those bonds may be 40 years! And then, even people who aren't connected to the water system still pay, at half the rate, for the project (because they MIGHT connect some day). The level of fraud and incompetence in NY is so high, such that any publicly funded project or entity is going to either be fraudulent, or corrupt, and usually both.