Local companies might want to start thinking twice about doing business with Westchester County – given County Executive Andrew Spano’s respect for legally binding contracts.

Spano has called on 69 heating-oil companies that serve his county to renegotiate the deals they inked with customers who locked in prices over the summer.

Prices back then ranged as high as $4.50 a gallon. They’ve since fallen to below $3 a gallon – which could cost consumers who feared even higher prices thousands of extra dollars this winter.

It’s hard not to sympathize with homeowners who basically gambled and lost.

But Spano surely wouldn’t be making the same urgent plea if homeowners had locked in a low price – and oil had gone up more.

Nor should he now. As Spano himself noted, “Oil companies paid higher prices for the oil also” when they pre-purchased it to fill orders.

Oil-price volatility of the sort seen over the past year causes problems for everybody. What a pity that Spano seeks to exploit the pain.