New York: Economics of having a state land logging ban written into the Constitution!
The Adirondack and Catskill parks are preserves of both public and
private lands, where public lands are protected by the NYS
Constitution, which bans their lease, logging or development. The
remainder of the parks is private land, governed by zoning codes
designed to conserve forests and wetlands, preserve wildlife and
protect water quality. The state pays full local property taxes on
about 3 million acres of Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserve
spread across more than 100 rural towns in 16 counties.
The
Legislature made a commitment to do so in 1886, when it created the
Adirondack Forest Preserve. It made a similar commitment in the
Catskill Park. The governor’s budget proposes that the Legislature
break both commitments. State tax payments are intended as
compensation for the prohibition against commercial use of the Forest
Preserve, and in recognition of the services provided by local
taxpayers (police, fire, courts, etc.). Late last week, the Common
Ground Alliance of the Adirondacks sent a letter bearing the signature
of 90 local government officials and leaders from not-for-profit
organizations and local businesses, who said the governor’s tax cap
would be a disaster for the local economy. Catskill leaders echoed
their concerns, saying they agreed with the letter. The group released
that letter to the public today.
The letter points out the following
concerns: The state has a century-old legal obligation, dating back to
1886, to pay full property taxes on its Forest Preserve lands to the
communities that host them. The state just spent a small fortune on
Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo’s successful defense of the state’s current
tax payment system for Forest Preserve lands (Dillenburg v NYS, 2007).
Capping state tax payments would create a double standard for
landowners that would become impossible for local officials to manage.
Because the distribution of Forest Preserve lands is uneven from town
to town and school district to school district, the cap would have a
disproportionate impact, unfairly harming some taxpayers much more
than others. http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2009/01/locals-oppose-govs-forest-preserve-tax.html
— Posted to http://forestpolicyresearch.com via gmail to posterous and
also to forestpolicyresearch@yahoogroups.com
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Posted via email from Deane’s posterous
I’m afraid you’ve got this all wrong.
You wrote “State tax payments are intended as compensation for the prohibition against commercial use of the Forest Preserve, and in recognition of the services provided by local
taxpayers (police, fire, courts, etc.)” That may suit your political agenda, but that’s not the history. The tax payments are in lieu of private taxes that would have been paid on the land had it not been owned by the state.
Don’t get your panties in a bunch over that either – the loggers took all the marketable timber and then once the land was no longer of value to them (or anyone else for that matter) they didn’t bother to pay their taxes so the land reverted to the state – that’s how the whole thing started, by a criminal, non-tax paying, logging industry.
And another thing – the zoning codes are not only designed to “conserve forests and wetlands, preserve wildlife and protect water quality.” They are also designed (in the 1970s) to protect the local tourism industry and foster economic development.