ALBANY — The way New York calculates property value for renewable energy installations is legal again — the state legislature has approved a bill that shores up a section of state law that sets guidelines for how the value of solar and wind facilities should be calculated by local governments when negotiating alternative tax agreements.
The fix comes to a portion of state real property tax law, section 575-b, which has been subject to some criticism from upstate communities and was ruled illegal by a state court in March.
Between 2021 and 2022, the terms of the section have been amended to give more power to the state Department of Taxation and Finance to set statewide terms for how towns, villages, cities and counties can negotiate PILOT, or payment in lieu of taxes, agreements with the renewable sites.
Solar and wind companies frequently negotiate PILOT agreements with host communities to set reliable terms for how they’ll contribute to the local tax base. PILOT agreements, when successfully negotiated, can take into consideration current and expected revenues and expenses for a property, long-term trends and other agreements for local investment, and take the property out of the variable property tax system that can change as the years progress.
The court ruled in March that the legislature had failed to give enough guidance to the state DTF on how to regulate renewable valuations, but a temporary stay kept the existing law in place while the legislature worked on a fix.
Upstate communities have complained about the terms of this state law, arguing it takes local control away from their local elected officials by assigning bureaucrats in Albany to set the broad terms of agreements. Proponents of the system say it sets standard, predictable terms for a rapidly-growing industry, and prevents local communities from stonewalling necessary development with unreasonable negotiations. It was a team of five Schoharie County towns, and two taxpayers from that county, who sued the DTF, arguing that state laws regarding rulemaking hadn’t been followed in crafting that section of the tax code.
The bill passed by the legislature on Monday was written by Micah C. Lasher, D-Manhattan. It clarifies that the cost of decommissioning and long-term management of solar and wind facilities should be considered as an expense when calculating the value of the facility, and that federal investments or tax credits cannot be counted as revenue for the same purposes. Finally, it clarifies that the state Department of Taxation and Finance’s model, most recently published in 2025, is the standard to be used.
Some upstate politicians railed against the bill on the floor of the Assembly Monday. Upper Hudson Valley Assemblyman Chris Tague, R-Schoharie, a former dairy farmer and once a leading candidate Congress in NY-21’s unrealized special election, said the whole renewable energy buildout has been a quiet land-grab by downstate billionaires. Tague said that time and time again, projects are brought to communities and negotiated along terms they aren’t able to meaningfully influence, and local residents often feel like their towns are being ‘taken over’ by fields of solar panels or towers of windmills.
“What’s even more of a concern is we are putting projects up everywhere — and of course, they want to put them on the best productive growing fields we have in rural upstate New York,” Tague said. “And you know what the kicker is? Not one single person in any of those communities is benefiting from these projects. That is the shame of the whole thing.”
Tague said he has seen dozens of properties bought up by downstate investors, either before or after they are licensed to renewable developers, and the neighbors on land not requested or who don’t agree to license or sell it see the character of their neighborhoods change.
Lasher, in an interview, said he didn’t see the arguments posed on Monday as core to the fix the bill was offering, which was continuing the clear will of the legislature to set a consistent valuation model.
“The legislature, five years ago, made the judgment that it was in the public interest to have a consistent appraisal methodology, and that’s this,” he said. “This bill, I certainly understand the impluse to use debate on this bill to relitigate that policy question, but that’s not fundamentally what this bill was about.”
Lasher said the court decision from March seems to have created some uncertainty in the renewable energy market in New York, directly contravening the goal of the law as passed in 2020 establishing the DTF’s power to create a statewide model.
The bill passed the state Senate on June 10, and now goes on to the Governor’s office for final approval.