Some thoughts about paying for the Adirondack Park

Here are two basic questions that no one has ever answered to my satisfaction:

1. What does it cost communities to be surrounded by the Adirondack Park?

2. What does the state do to compensate those communities?

Let me wrestle with both of these questions one at a time.

Critics of the Park, the state’s land purchases, and the Adirondack Park Agency say the first is a no-brainer: It costs a lot.

Communities lose the ability to develop, grow, and expand their economies. Investors and entrepreneurs are driven off by heavy regulation and APA bureaucracy.

Maybe so.

But when I compare communities inside the Park with rural towns outside the blue line, I’m not sure I can see a distinction.

Is Malone measurably more successful at attracting new investors and new citizens, when compared with Saranac Lake?

Is Tupper Lake doing better or worse than Lowville? And is the Park with all its rules the difference?

And how do you factor in the apparent economic benefits?

During the real estate boom, land values rose far more dramatically inside the Blue Line, at least in part because zoning rules made private land there more attractive.

There is also an arguable tourism and marketing advantage in being part of a gorgeous, protected area.

The bottom line? Yes, a lot of communities are struggling inside the Park.

But I’d like to see a really thorough study that quantifies how much of that is the Park’s fault.

Which leads us to question two:

2. What does the state do to compensate Adirondack communities?

Obviously, the Adirondack Park’s communities already get a certain amount of goodies for being inside the blue line.

The state pays full property taxes — roughly $70 million a year — on all its forest land, even though it demands almost no services.

(Most large private landowners receive tax breaks and don’t pay as much.)

This money amounts to a payment of roughly $466 annually for every man, woman and child in the Park.

Taxpayers from across the state have also paid hundreds of millions of dollars developing tourism attractions in Johnsburg, Lake Placid, Newcomb, Paul Smiths, Wilmington, and elsewhere.

It’s also arguable that the state chose to locate half a dozen prisons in the Park as a way to shore up employment.

The problem with all this “compensation” is that it has never been measured, or tied rationally to the state’s social contract with Park residents.

As a consequence, when the state begins closing prisons, or threatens to withhold property tax payments, Park residents feel cheated.

But they can’t point to a distinct breach of trust.

So here’s my (entirely presumptuous) suggestion:

As a follow-up to their compelling APRAP study, the Adirondack Association of Towns and Villages should wrestle with these questions.

What are the pros and cons of being inside the Park and what is the net cost?

And what is the fairest way to compensate communities that are shouldering the main burden of protecting this gorgeous resource?

The goal should be more honest, equitable and reliable social contract between the handful of New Yorkers who live within the Park and the 19 million New Yorkers who live outside.