Town of Arietta v. State Bd. of Equalization and Assessment

• Decision Date: 12 March 1981
• Citation: 438 N.Y.S.2d 13,80 A.D.2d 956
• Parties: In the Matter of the TOWN OF ARIETTA et al., Appellants, v. STATE BOARD OF EQUALIZATION AND ASSESSMENT of the State of New York et al., Respondents. (And Ten Other Proceedings.)
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division

Page 13

438 N.Y.S.2d 13

80 A.D.2d 956

In the Matter of the TOWN OF ARIETTA et al., Appellants, v. STATE BOARD OF EQUALIZATION AND ASSESSMENT of the State of

New York et al., Respondents. (And Ten Other Proceedings.)

Supreme Court, Appellate Division,

Third Department.

March 12, 1981.

Steates & Remmell, Utica (Earle C. Bastow, Utica, of counsel), for appellants.

Robert Abrams, Atty. Gen. (Vernon Stuart, Albany, of counsel), for respondents.

Before MAHONEY, P. J., and MAIN, MIKOLL, YESAWICH and WEISS, JJ.

MEMORANDUM DECISION.

Appeal from an order and judgment of the Supreme Court at Special Term, entered December 14, 1979 in Albany County, which granted respondents' motion to dismiss petitioners' applications, in proceedings pursuant to CPLR article 78, to review determinations of respondent State Board of Equalization and Assessment, and denied petitioners' cross motion for summary judgment.

In these 11 article 78 proceedings, the petitioners are the Towns of Arietta, Benson and Lake Pleasant, all located in Hamilton County, and their respective supervisors, who petition both individually and in their official capacities. Seeking judgments directing respondent State Board of Equalization and Assessment (hereinafter SBEA) to establish full transition assessments for the towns in accordance with the terms and procedures set forth in section 545 of the Real Property Tax Law, petitioners contend that SBEA failed to comply with the statute's procedures with the result that the towns' total effective assessments for the years 1968 through 1978 were improperly decreased.

First enacted in 1960 (L.1960, ch. 871, § 1), section 545 provides a procedure for the taxation of, inter alia, State-owned wild and forest lands within the petitioning towns whereby the lands are to be assessed at a lower rate than in previous years with transition assessments provided so as to soften the statute's financial impact on the municipalities involved. Calculated by SBEA after the towns submit their assessment rolls, these transition assessments are basically a form of State aid to the towns which is designed to "prevent any loss of taxable assessed valuation on the assessment roll for the first year affected" by the reduction in assessments on the taxable State lands under the statute (Real Property Tax Law, § 545, subd. 1). For each year from 1962 through 1973 the provision requiring the fixing of transition assessments was reenacted by the Legislature in an obvious attempt to forestall the effect which the reduction in the assessed value of the State-owned lands would have upon the towns' real property tax receipts. Nonetheless, as alleged in petitioners' applications for relief in the instant proceedings, SBEA disregarded the plain intent of these repeated reenactments and instead fixed transition assessments which decreased the towns' total effective assessments in relation to the analogous totals for the previous years.

Seeking to avoid these decreases, petitioners annually instituted these article 78 proceedings which were held in abeyance pursuant to stipulations and ultimately placed on the calendar of Supreme Court in Albany County for September of 1979. As noted above, Special Term thereafter denied petitioners' motion for summary judgment and dismissed the petitions, and this appeal followed. We now hold that the order and judgment appealed from should be reversed.

In so ruling, we would initially note that the proceeding relative to the transition assessments for 1968 was previously before this court, and in our decision therein we concluded, inter alia, that petitioners' pleadings were legally sufficient and stated a justiciable cause of action. Under those circumstances, we held that an article 78 proceeding was available to petitioners for a proper interpretation of section 545 and, accordingly, that their petition should not have been dismissed (see Matter of Town of Arietta v. State Bd. of Equalization and Assessment, 37 A.D.2d 431, 326 N.Y.S.2d 325 app. dsmd. 30 N.Y.2d 771, 333 N.Y.S.2d 429, 284 N.E.2d 582). At this juncture, we see no reason to alter this holding, and Special Term's redetermination of the issue was improper and precluded under the doctrine of law of the case (cf. Goldenberg v. City of New York, 43 A.D.2d 861, 351 N.Y.S.2d...