What about the Finch, Pruyn land deal?

As we report today, the state’s decision to halt all new land purchases in the Adirondack Park leaves local green groups holding some pretty big bags.

The Adirondack Nature Conservancy is sitting on nearly 70,000 acres of the Finch, Pruyn lands, not to mention $80 million in debt.

Annual carrying costs for all that acreage: roughly $3 million.

Some of that is offset by timber harvesting and other revenues, but it’s still a massive and unexpected drain.

Critics of these deals say the moratorium is a common sense decision given a budget deficit that totals more than $60 billion over the next five years.

State Senator Betty Little says it also offers a chance to re-evaluate whether the state needs more forest preserve land, especially at a time when Governor David Paterson is slashing stewardship money and staff.

Supporters say one of the landmark conservation deals in the Northeast in the last half-century is at risk of slipping away.

One fascinating wrinkle here is the extraordinary, back-of-the-napkin way that these deals get done.

The Nature Conservancy bought these lands — 161,000 acres — without a contract with New York state, with little more than a handshake.

Here’s Joe Martens, head of the Open Space Institute, which helped finance the Finch deal, speaking to the Associated Press.

“It leaves a lot of us high and dry,” Joe Martens of the Open Space Institute said. The group has spent $11 million on some 4,000 acres in 20 parcels bought from 2005 to 2008 with approvals by the DEC to take them.

“We did not sign contracts. Until September of ’08, we felt we didn’t need contracts,” Martens said.

So what do you think? Is the state right to divert its dedicated Environmental Protection Fund to help pay for things like healthcare and education?

Or should Governor Paterson and the legislature pay up for deals that were begun on the basis of a gentleman’s agreement?

Opinions welcome below.