Editorial — Diminishing home rule: State may forbid solar/wind land from being taxed full value

This would amount to yet another state-mandated subsidy for entities proposing solar and wind projects in upstate communities. Many of these companies are foreign owned. So the revenue doesn’t merely leave the cities, counties, hamlets, towns and villages forced to absorb these costs — the money is getting sucked right out of New York state entirely! And this may come with the state Legislature’s blessing to boot.

“On March 1, the Otsego County Board of Representatives stood up for their constituents by voting unanimously to oppose a key provision of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s executive budget. Under Hochul’s proposed change to Real Property Tax Law, local municipalities would lose the right to assess solar and wind projects at full value, in effect forcing local taxpayers to subsidize corporate development in their communities. With artificially low appraisal values, communities would be deprived of important tax revenue needed to sustain public services,” according to a column written by Adrian Kuzminski and published March 10 by the Times Union in Albany. “Without local control, clean energy needed to fight climate change will be extracted from our communities and exported elsewhere. Otsego County will become an energy colony run by distant government agencies and global corporations. Our resources will be taken without our approval and without compensation. The industrialization of our rural landscape will be a net loss to us. The profits generated will leave the community. Solar and wind projects may well be necessary, but currently they are not an economic benefit for upstate communities. Quite the opposite: They industrialize large tracts of land and in return offer few jobs and token benefits to residents, who must bear the externalized costs of the environmental impacts on their communities.”

Kuzminski is a member of Sustainable Otsego. This is a nonpartisan political action committee in Central New York focused on sustainable living, economic independence and home rule, the Times Union reported.

This follows a pattern of state authorities reducing the input of rural constituents and their elected representatives over what occurs in their communities regarding renewable energy projects. The Accelerated Renewable Energy Growth and Community Benefit Act, passed in 2020 as part of the 2021 state budget, removed renewable energy projects from the Article 10 process. Under Article 10, two local ad hoc representatives had the opportunity to consider proposed solar and wind projects as members of each New York State Board on Electric Generation Siting and the Environment.

The act created the Office of Renewable Energy Siting under the Department of State. While the Public Service Department still oversees the Article 10 process, the Office of Renewable Energy Siting now reviews renewable energy projects generating at least 25 megawatts of power. Community input has been greatly diminished when it comes to solar and wind.

And now the outsider corporations proposing renewable energy projects get to siphon even more resources out of upstate municipalities. Taxing bodies will suffer because they won’t receive the full value of property being used for solar and wind farms.

Local officials must make their voices heard and call for this provision to be eliminated from the proposed state budget. Legislators look to have it approved by April 1, so time is of the essence. Home rule is crucial to democracy, and it must be protected vigorously in this case.