Municipal Electric and Gas Alliance (MEGA) is a not-for-profit Local Development Corporation that arranges to procure energy on behalf of New York’s public entities. It was initiated in 1998, when Tompkins and Tioga counties set out to give local governments a way to control energy costs, formally established in 2001, and today serves more than 240 municipalities, including 32 counties and many school districts, across the state.
MEGA does not buy or sell energy itself. It aggregates. It combines the electricity and natural gas load of its members in each utility service area, then takes that combined volume to the open market under New York’s public bidding rules. Those bids cover more than 500 million kWh of electricity and 10 million therms of natural gas a year, close to 2% of all the electricity served by competitive suppliers in MEGA’s active territories. At that scale, suppliers compete harder and carry lower sales and service costs, and the difference lands in a member’s budget.
We operate inside a GPO’s model rather than alongside it. Contracted supplier agreements, member enrollment workflows, administrative fee structures, reporting cadences and compliance requirements are standard practice for our team.
Why a Public Entity is Allowed to Buy This Way
New York law lets municipal entities buy cooperatively:
- General Municipal Law §103(3), with County Law §408-a(2), lets political subdivisions, municipal corporations and school districts included, purchase materials or services through any county in the state.
- General Municipal Law §119-o lets municipalities and school districts join together to carry out their respective functions, which includes purchasing gas and electricity.
- For renewable procurements, Article 9 of the Energy Law provides the competitive process, with the same piggybacking provisions applying.
In practice, the county that issues a bid on MEGA’s behalf opens that bid to every municipal entity in the state. A village, a town or a school district can then buy off the resulting award without running its own solicitation, and still meet its own procurement obligations.
