We've said all along that, in an economic crisis, everyone has to expect cuts and share the pain. We continue to believe that.
But, when Gov. Paterson goes beyond that and refuses to make full tax payments to communities that rely on them to help provide services to their residents, that is not sharing. That is abandonment. Yet that is what he intends to do.
We all know Paterson has valiantly deduced solutions to an inherited disaster in the face of stinging criticism. No one wants to lose anything he or she is accustomed to having, even in an emergency, but Paterson knows we all must lose now.
His decision to freeze tax payments at current levels on all lands the state owns is not the same thing as cutting a service. It is nothing more than a transfer of disaster from his bailiwick to others'. That is hardly finding a way out of the maze. It is merely dragging more in with him.
What Paterson decided to do is to cap tax payments to local governments on land the state owns.
For example, in the Adirondack Park, the state owns 3 million acres. The state agreed by law in 1886 that ownership of those lands requires paying local taxes on them. Otherwise, state ownership would be an onerous burden to municipalities that, like the state, rely on taxes in order to provide vital services for people who live there.
Some towns in the Adirondack Parke comprise 94 percent state land. Many are more than 50 percent. That much state land would be an onerous burden to municipalities that, like the state, rely on taxes in order to provide vital services.
We put the highest premium on these lands and impose the strictest controls over them in order to protect them. Yet, if the state didn't pay what it owes, it would be rendering those lands a 3 million-acre burden on a very small tax base.
What good is having beautiful land in your midst if you aren't allowed to develop it or build on it, if it brings in no fair tax revenue and if it is only a drain on your resources?
One hundred and four Adirondack municipalities are being cruelly and unfairly required to do more than their share. Along with the pragmatic consequences of lost revenue, the hypocrisy of the state rigidly requiring tax payment from all of us while denying the same obligation for itself is shocking. If individuals decline to settle up with the state, they can expect fines and perhaps prison. For itself, the state simply turns its back on its duty and leaves the towns to somehow make up the difference. The state's response to the crisis is to abandon its municipalities.
This decision can still be reversed, and representatives of vulnerable communities will be pressing hard for legal equity. We must all join in that entreaty.
The decision is not only unduly harsh, it is immoral and illegal.
