The Monroe County Legislature has voted against funding a study to examine the feasibility of a public takeover of Rochester Gas & Electric.

At Tuesday night's meeting, 17 members voted against the proposal, while 12 voted in favor of it. If the measure had been approved it would have provided $1 million toward funding the study in addition to $500,000 that has been guaranteed by the city of Rochester.

The grassroots organization Metro Justice has been calling for county legislators to provide more funding for conducting the study and provide oversight. A public town hall meeting was held last month in an effort to convince county legislators to move forward with the study.

According to Metro Justice, three Democrats joined the Republican members of the legislature in voting against the proposal. The organization says the three Democrats who opposed the measure cited concerns about the procedure and not the merits of the proposal.

Metro Justice issued a statement on Wednesday saying in part:

"We find it disappointing that the minutiae of bureaucratic procedure is more important to these three Democrats than acting on the RG&E crisis, or pursuing real solutions to climate change. Despite their objections that the process moved too fast, finding a solution to the RG&E crisis cannot come fast enough for many Monroe County residents, who face shut offs and concerns about the accelerating climate crisis. Furthermore, our campaign had been discussing and advocating for proposals to conduct a study with County Legislators for nearly a year. We worked with our allies among the County Legislature to bring funding the study to a vote because it was past time for our elected officials to at least be on public record about their stance."

Many have expressed frustrations with RG&E, arguing alleged poor customer service, down power lines and expensive or misbilling. The Public Service Commission fined RG&E/NYSEG earlier this year for "failing to meet reliability and customer service targets."

Also last month, the state Public Service Commission approved a rate hike that RG&E/NYSEG had proposed; however, the increase was roughly half of what the companies originally asked for.

RG&E has firmly pushed back on the proposal to turn the company into a public utility.

“Service and reliability will be compromised while putting taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars by significantly raising rates,” said RG&E’s head of communications, Alexis Arnold. “[It will jeopardize] needed grid improvements and [halt] any transition to clean energy.”