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Conservation Update

May 13, 2008

ADK, Other Groups Ask to Join in Tax Payment Case

The Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK), in partnership with a coalition of Adirondack and conservation organizations, is seeking permission to join in the state’s legal defense of its tax payments to Forest Preserve communities in the Adirondack and Catskills.

Last fall, a state Supreme Court justice ordered the state to stop paying taxes on all of its lands. A Town Supervisor from Chautauqua County had sued the state because it would not pay taxes on state-owned forest lands in his town, even though it was making payments to other towns with similar forest lands.

Supreme Court Justice Timothy Walker immediately stayed his own order pending appeals, but the ruling has caused uncertainty and apprehension for local governments and property owners in the Adirondacks and Catskills Parks.

The decision prompted calls for a moratorium on additional state land purchases in the Adirondacks until the case is resolved. ADK believes a moratorium would be premature, because the portion of the decision that applies to Forest Preserve tax payments is likely to be overturned. Moreover, Adirondack and Catskill municipalities will continue to get tax payments from the state while the case makes its way through the courts. A moratorium would also tie the state’s hands at a time when it has a rare opportunity to protect tens of thousands of Adirondack acres and open those lands to public recreation.

Under the common law principle of sovereign immunity, no municipality has the right to tax the state unless the state gives its consent. In 1886, the year after the Legislature created the Forest Preserve, it agreed to allow Forest Preserve communities to collect taxes on these properties. In 2006, New York paid an estimated $80 million on its land in the Adirondack and Catskill Parks. 

Over the years, the Legislature has expanded the taxing authority to state properties outside of the Adirondacks and Catskills, but some non-Forest Preserve state properties are taxed while others are not. While the courts should try to correct this inequity, it was inappropriate for the Supreme Court to include Forest Preserve lands in this case.

The case, known as Dillenburg v. New York State, is expected to come before the Appellate Division’s 4th Department in Rochester in September. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is defending the state, and the groups filed their “friend of the court” brief in an effort to assist the attorney general.

The coalition also includes the Adirondack Council, the Open Space Conservancy, the Adirondack Landowners Association, the Residents’ Committee to Protect the Adirondacks, the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, and Audubon New York.  The organizations are being represented by Marc S. Gerstman of Albany, former chief counsel for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The groups urged the Appellate Division panel to overrule the lower court and uphold the tax payments on Forest Preserve land. Those payments have received broad-based public support and have been upheld by New York's courts over the past 122 years. The payments provide a benefit to all New Yorkers by ensuring the sustainability of the Forest Preserve without placing an undue burden on the people of the Adirondacks and Catskills.


Click here to read the coalition's press release.