Huntington Board votes for hearings on LIPA tax settlement

The Huntington Town Board on Tuesday voted to hold two public forums on a proposed settlement by LIPA to lower its taxes for the Northport power plant, a move that delays a final town-board vote by more than a month and casts a shadow of uncertainty over the high-stakes deal. 

LIPA chief executive Tom Falcone on Wednesday indicated that LIPA will move to push the case back to the courts, where the town and the district face $850 million in refund payments to LIPA and drastically reduced taxes for the plant if a judge finds in LIPA's favor. 

“LIPA has no choice but to ask the court to move this decade-old case forward on behalf of our customers,” Falcone said. “The court will determine the fair taxes LIPA customers will pay on the plant based on the law.” A verdict in LIPA's favor could cost all town taxpayers from $10,000 to $25,000 each, LIPA and the district have said. 

The town board's unanimous decision, which follows a 6-1 vote in favor of the deal by the Northport-East Northport School district, pushes a potential vote on the deal to Sept. 29, well beyond LIPA's proposed Aug. 11 deadline. 

The proposed deal would lower LIPA’s taxes for the National Grid-owned plant from a current $86 million to $46 million over seven years, leaving local taxpayers who’ve benefited from the previous payments to make up the difference. The deal also would give the district $14.5 million in direct payments from LIPA over the seven years. The district has proposed cost cuts to reduce the impact on its taxpayers, who would see their taxes increase on a $500,000 home by a total of $2,880 a year by the seventh year of the deal. 

Eugene Cook, the Republican Huntington Town Board member who has led opposition to the LIPA deal, on Tuesday offered a resolution calling for a public hearing on the proposed settlement on Sept. 16 — more than a month after LIPA’s deadline for the deal. But the town board went further, with a second public forum scheduled for Heckscher Park on Aug 10. Town Supervisor Chad Lupinacci offered an amendment that called for a vote at a Town Board meeting scheduled for Sept 29. 

“I’m thrilled because the most important thing is our First Amendment,” Cook said Wednesday morning. “I want everybody to let us know how they feel about this deal. …”

Cook has sued LIPA to block the deal in a case that remains in the courts, and has proposed condemning the plant and taking it over.

Huntington Town Attorney Nicholas Ciappetta said the Sept. 29 board vote shouldn’t be viewed as a knife in the heart of the LIPA settlement, which Lupinacci has publicly supported as “by far the best proposal presented to the town." Brookhaven Town has already settled tax challenges over the Port Jefferson plant, but two Nassau plant tax challenges are stalled.

“I don’t think anyone should draw any assumptions either way,” Ciappetta said of the proposed Northport settlement and the town’s vote, noting that the LIPA case has “gone on for 10 years and now we have a firm date to vote on a settlement. We didn’t have that before last night.”

Cook and others say the plant has considerably more value than LIPA asserts given its direct natural-gas pipeline, its dual-fuel capability and its size — it’s Long Island’s largest at more than 1,500 megawatts.

Falcone noted that the plant, “once a workhorse facility for Long Island, is over 50 years old and rapidly declining in usage and value. It simply costs too much to operate, and the current taxes are no longer sustainable as we transition to clean fuels to meet Long Island’s energy future.”

At the Huntington board meeting, council members also approved a measure to retain Manhattan-based Mercury Public Affairs for public outreach tied to the LIPA tax case. Councilman Mark Cuthbertson said the contract was needed "given the importance of this issue and limits on the ways a public forum could be conducted" during the pandemic.

Mercury is also a consultant to a group of citizens in Wainscott who are opposing a cable through the hamlet to connect a LIPA-contracted wind farm to the electric grid.

LIPA's Falcone said the authority may reconsider its decision to seek a verdict in the tax case if a majority of the town board “change their mind in a public vote before further developments in the litigation." 

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.com,deborah.morris@newsday.comMHarringtonNews,

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.