ALBANY - Democrats lashed out at the state Public Service Commission Thursday, calling into question the qualifications of several Pataki appointees on the five-member board in the wake of a blackout that left up to 100,000 New York City residents in the dark.

The commission's newest appointee, Cheryl Buley, is a former public relations executive and the wife of GOP lobbyist Jeff Buley.

He has given thousands of dollars to Republicans over the past several years, according to state Board of Elections records.

“Mrs. Buley is New York's ‘Mike Brown,”' attorney general candidate Sean Patrick Maloney said, referring to the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency who came under fire for his handling of the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“Her experience as vice chairwoman of the New York State Thoroughbred Breeding Fund hardly qualifies her to set utility prices and provide oversight.”

The Public Service Commission is responsible for setting rates and providing oversight over New York's utilities. The panel is appointed by Gov. George Pataki, but is supposed to function as an independent body.

Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said last week after recent blackouts in Queens and Staten Island left up to 100,000 Consolidated Edison customers in the dark, that the utility “failed to heed” a report he wrote in 2000 examining the effects of a 1999 blackout in Manhattan.

Spitzer said “the Public Service Commission's oversight of the utility has been wholly inadequate.”

“Appointment to the PSC of commissioners who have no experience, knowledge or expertise about either energy or telecommunications, the very matters the PSC regulates, are cause for great concern about whether that agency is equipped to handle this difficult crisis,” Spitzer said in testimony before a state Assembly public hearing in New York.

Four of the five current PSC commissioners were appointed by Pataki and all four have contributed to Republican candidates in recent years.

“The Public Service Commission has done an outstanding job ensuring that we have the energy supplies to meet the State's record energy demands,” said Pataki spokesman Peter Constantakes in a written statement. “The (board) and its more than 500 experienced, professional employees are certainly well-qualified to conduct the investigation into the recent power outages to determine exactly what happened and how we can prevent such situations in the future. ”

Maloney, a former aide to President Clinton, said the attorney general's office should be given the power to provide some sort of oversight to the board and investigate utilities.

“Anything would be better than what we've got,” he said.

Neither the PSC or Pataki's office had an immediate response.