The Adirondack Council

News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Monday, April 28, 2003

For more information contact: John F. Sheehan
518-432-1770 (office)
518-441-1340 (cell)
518-489-4186 (home)

ALBANY, NY – The Adirondack Council today thanked Senate and Assembly leaders for negotiating a substantial improvement to the Environmental Protection Fund portion of the proposed state budget, eliminating provisions that would have destroyed the fund’s integrity.

The NYS Legislature is expected to approve the new plan this week. On Monday, April 28, the Legislature proposed to remove the state employee salaries and other day-to-day expenses proposed by Governor George Pataki in Environmental Protection Fund (EPF) portion of his 2003-04 spending plan.

Pataki had wanted to add $33 million-worth of routine state expenses to the list of obligations that must be paid for by the Environmental Protection Fund (EPF) each year. The Adirondack Council and other environmental groups have objected in past years to the addition of salaries and other non-environmental expenses being added to the EPF. The EPF was created in 1993 for capital projects only, such as land acquisition, landfill closure, municipal recycling projects and parks.

“We are very pleased that Speaker Silver and Majority Leader Bruno have chosen to remove the day-to-day expenses from the EPF spending plan,” said Adirondack Council Executive Director Brian L. Houseal. “The EPF is the only reliable source of environmental capital projects funding New Yorkers have. Salaries and operational spending tend to grow and grow. Soon, there would be nothing left of the EPF for capital projects in future years.”

Houseal added that the Legislature’s plan for the EPF includes the same overall appropriation of $125 million proposed by the Governor for next fiscal year. It also includes the same $30-million appropriation that the Governor proposed for open space conservation (land purchases and conservation easements). Each year, the EPF receives $125 million from the state’s Real Estate Transfer Tax and other smaller sources.

“It is unfortunate that an additional raid on the EPF’s fund balance is part of this budget, but in a fiscal crisis such as the one the state is experiencing, Legislators must make difficult choices,” he said.

“We hasten to point out, however, that this will be the second year in a row in which substantial amounts of money were raided from the EPF,” Houseal said. “If you add the $235 million diverted last year to the $53 million expected to be raided this year, the two-year total comes to $288 million. During that same period, the Legislature appropriated only $250 million from the EPF for the environmental purposes for which the fund was created.

“The basic truth is that the need for statewide environmental funding far exceeds what the state has allocated over the past several years,” Houseal said. “We expect the Governor and Legislature to provide more than $125 million for environmental projects in the 2004-05 budget.”

The Adirondack Council is an 18,000-member, privately funded, not-for-profit organization dedicated to protecting and enhancing the natural character and human communities of the Adirondack Park through research, education, advocacy and legal action.