MALONE -- Legislators here recently endorsed creation of a public-power authority to help 21 Franklin and St. Lawrence county municipalities control their electricity.

Robert Best, executive director of the Alliance for Municipal Power, said customers could eventually save between 5 percent and 9 percent by owning and maintaining transmission and distribution lines and power poles.

He said independence would allow the authority to negotiate power rates with the New York Power Authority the same as 54 other municipal-power entities across the state do, rather than remain tied to a foreign-owned utility company.

The towns of Westville, Bombay, Moira and Fort Covington would join with the St. Lawrence County villages of Potsdam and Canton and several townships all the way southwest to Fowler, south of Gouverneur.

Best said the alliance has up to $16 million in financial backing for the idea, depending on how much National Grid fights the formation plans.

It holds a special agreement with the state Public Service Commission to collect stranded fees that are paid by customers locked in to its service contract.

National Grid, based in the United Kingdom, could lose 4,000 customers if the alliance can convince the PSC to let communities out of the agreement established in the mid-1990s when its predecessor, Niagara Mohawk, was on the verge of bankruptcy.

To keep the company going, the state created Power Choice and allowed NiMo to keep its distribution and transmission lines but had to give up its interests in hydropower, Best said.

NiMo agreed, but wanted a bonus because it said it would lose money on the agreement.

The PSC awarded NiMo a five-year deal to collect $104 million in fees from rate users, beginning in 1998, he said.

Municipalities were also prevented from leaving the power grid during those five years, and customers paid the fees through their monthly bills.

Best said, in the fourth year of the deal, NiMo obtained an extension from the state, carrying the stranded-fees agreement forward to Dec. 31, 2011.

It also continued to prevent municipalities from leaving.

NiMo has since been bought by National Grid, which retained the stranded-fees agreement.

But, Best said, the alliance has already let the state and National Grid know "we intend to leave the system on Jan. 1, 2012."