Nonetheless, Mr. Vallone said the city's 911 response capabilities should be more robust considering the amount of surcharges that have been collected from cellphone users.
This means that the law's success has caused the green energy sector to grow explosively; the amount of the surcharge has more than quadrupled since 2009.
The fee is 85percentt of the combined amount of the surcharge and administrative costs that the company currently bears, Joe Chandler, a BellSouth spokesman, said.
The amounts of the surcharges are to be set by the agency at a later date, she said, adding that the surcharges do not become part of the legal regulated rent and the appliance does not become a required service.
Each household was interviewed whether he/she would be willing to contribute the biodiversity conservation fund a certain amount of money every month as surcharge on his/her household water bills for the next three years.
The Public Employees Federation, the second-largest union of state workers, produced a flier urging people to call Albany lawmakers and demand that any tax deal generate the same amount of money as the expiring tax surcharge.
But a European Union official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal had not yet been formally approved, said the two sides had agreed to a minimum price of 0.56 euros per watt (74 cents), which would base any potential surcharge on the amount of electricity generated by each imported panel.
That's a far cry from the top marginal tax rate on income above that amount of 40.5 percent, which includes a 0.9 percent Medicare surcharge on earned income.
For instance, legislative leaders sold the personal income-tax increase as a surcharge only on the amount of taxable income a family earns above a certain level.
