Pataki Strikes Down Local Land Tax Vote

On Friday Gov. George E. Pataki vetoed a bill that would have allowed East Hampton Town to vote in November on a plan to build a dedicated fund for farmland, open space, and historic preservation through a 2-percent tax on higher-priced real estate sales.

Supporters of the transfer tax were stunned and openly critical of the Governor's decision, calling it "indefensible," "disturbing," and a "fraud." Their comments this week showed the anatomy of a hard-won victory and a crushing defeat.

The Governor for his part characterized the legislation in his veto message as "laudable in its purposes but significant in its flaws."

"A Sad Day"

The tax, supporters estimated, could have raised $20 million over a 10-year period. Now they worry the community preservation fund may never come to pass and that East Hampton may never get a chance to decide for itself if it should.

"That a local bill which means so much to the East End of Long Island should be controlled by people who don't live here . . . it's a sad day indeed," Town Supervisor Cathy Lester said after hearing the news at the Town Board meeting Friday morning.

"He sent the message that when the community works from the bottom up and tries to do something reasonable and intelligent, he knows best, he knows better," Kevin McDonald, the vice president of the Group for the South Fork, said this week of Mr. Pataki.

Farmers Objected

Among the bill's flaws, the Governor said, were that it failed to include other East End towns and to exempt farmer-to-farmer transfers and sales for the purpose of preservation.

When a planned exemption for such transfers didn't make it into the Assembly bill and was removed from the Senate bill in the final hour, the State Farm Bureau, which had been silent on the legislation before, sent the Governor a letter of opposition on behalf of its 27,000 farm family members.

That, combined with the "non-support of the real estate people," was the reason for the Governor's veto, said State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle.

"Obviously it gave the Governor something to hang his hat on. It provided him with a rationale for vetoing the bill, but he probably would have anyway," Mr. LaValle added. The State Senator introduced the legislation in the State Senate with the farmer exemption in it, and he filed a separate bill to include the exemption after it was taken out.

Mr. LaValle asked the Governor to sign this bill throughout the night before the session closed, "but lo and behold, the Governor wouldn't give us a message of necessity for this," the Senator said this week.

"The bill," the Governor's message says, ". . . inexplicably lacks provisions for the protection of farmers."

Twelve-Year Try

Advocates for the transfer tax, too, saw this omission as a flaw, but not a fatal one; they planned to correct it at the beginning of the next legislative session.

"My feeling is, it's more likely the bill was vetoed to benefit the real estate industry," State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said.

The State Board of Realtors had lobbied particularly hard against this legislation and had managed to bring it to its knees time and again over the past 12 years. The bill this year, which included only East Hampton to be developed much more like a resort zone with a restaurant and shops," he said, referring to a pending application from Perry B. Duryea & Sons.

"The property on Fort Pond Bay should be zoned resort," Mr. Hammerle suggested, adding, "It sticks out like a sore thumb." Rezoning would eliminate the chance that a car ferry could ever dock there.

While the town cannot prohibit ferries from coming into town waters, as New York Fast Ferry did twice in the past month with brief cruises around Lake Montauk and Fort Pond Bay, it does prohibit them from docking.

Parking Restrictions?

The town, in fact, has limited ability to regulate offshore vessels even in town waters, and certainly cannot regulate a ferry's route. But where the town can exercise a level of control is on shore - an accompanying article touches on its possible jurisdiction over gambling vessels in harbors - through zoning rules, and through speed limitations for larger craft.

The town could put a cap on landings per day based on the passenger capacity of the boat, and have a hand in determining that capacity by creating special parking restrictions on ferry operations.

The code mandates one space per four passengers for charter and excursion boats; ferry parking might be more along the lines of one space per three, or two spaces for every five passengers, Ms. Liquori suggested.

Numeric Formula

Mr. Forsberg said he feared the town was trying to "wind me down to nothing."

"I've never had a better year and I've never parked a car on the street yet," he said. The Viking Fleet owns its own parking lots.

Mr. Whalen said the number of passengers using the service might be calculated by multiplying a boat's capacity by the number of trips it makes each day.

A ferry that could hold 100 passengers and lands six times each day would then require 120 parking spaces. Added to current waterfront zone restrictions and the ban on harbors, that would automatically restrict where a service could be set up.

This, Mr. Whalen believes, would make the regulations fairly easy to enforce.

At The Fish Factory

Councilman Thomas Knobel, however, pointed out that such a rule could spur Cross Sound Ferry, which has been looking for a terminal site on the South Fork for years, to revive a mid-1980s plan to bring a ferry to the old fish factory site at Promised Land for service to New London.

"We're setting it up for the Napeague fish factory to be a ferry site," Mr. Knobel cautioned. "Parking standards could be met at the Napeague site."

The fish factory, now the site of an aquaculture business, is in Napeague State Park. Should the state ever agree to lease land to a ferry company, the proposal would probably be exempt from town zoning regulations. "Conventional wisdom says the state is not subject to our zoning," Mr. Whalen said.

Speed Limit Suggested

"We could possibly catch them on the [Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan], which says no ferries at that site," Supervisor Lester suggested. The waterfront plan has not yet been heard and adopted, but is complete.

Russell Stein, a former town attorney who now represents Stop the Ferry, suggested a number of possible regulations to be included in ferry legislation.

Among them: placing a 15-mile-per-hour speed limit on vessels over 100 gross tons in town waters. That suggestion might stem plans for a fast ferry or hydrofoil.

Ms. Liquori suggested also that the town define "ferry terminal" and include limitations on them in the Town Code. Ferry terminals now fall under the general category of "transportation terminal."

Impact On Traffic

"We could conceivably live with a limited passenger service," Ms. Liquori said, but she asked the Town Board to consider whether it wants to create a number of special-permit standards for such ferries, which would be subject to Planning Board approval.

Another concern the town will take into account in drafting a local law is the impact on roads from ferry-generated traffic. The board will continue discussions on ferry legislation at its 10 a.m. work session in Town Hall Tuesday.