Adrienne Sanders

asanders@lohud.com

Religious groups' land bypassed for taxation has nearly doubled to $26 billion from 1999

Only 29% of New Yorkers say they attend worship services weekly.

One in every 120 pieces of land in Ramapo is a clergy residence.

Rochester has the third-highest number of properties with religious tax exemptions in the state

New Yorkers are spending less of their time in traditional houses of worship, but their financial support for those spiritual centers is stronger than ever — at least judging by their tax bills.

Statewide, the value of religious groups' land bypassed for taxation has nearly doubled from $14 billion to $26 billion between 1999 and 2015, a USA Today Network analysis has found.

That figure still only covers basic nonprofit religious exemptions. Religious schools and clergy residences remove tens of millions more from municipal tax bases each year.

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► DATABASE: 2015 NYS property tax exemptions

► TAXED OFF: The entire investigation

► Notable tax-exempt land in New York

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“We have seen the growth of value of property off the tax rolls explode in the past decade. When a property comes off the tax rolls, it simply shifts a higher tax burden onto the shoulders of the remaining taxpayers,” said state Sen. John Bonacic, R-Sullivan County, noting that state residents already pay some of the highest property-tax bills in the nation.

New York ranks among the bottom 10 states in overall religiosity in the country, according to a 2016 Pew Research poll. Only 29 percent of New Yorkers say they attend worship services weekly.

However, New Yorkers who are part of a spiritual flock are increasingly opening new houses of worship and religious schools in small towns and suburbs, pulling properties there off the tax rolls. Older religious groups, even those with emptying pews, often keep their tax-exempt holdings as long as they can, further eroding the tax base.

“God only made so much land and he’s not making more. So, if you’re not paying taxes on it, why not hold onto it?” said Michael West, senior attorney at the New York Council of Nonprofits.

Those that do sell properties, such as the Catholic Church, and others that effectively abandon buildings, often pass them along to other ecclesiastical groups (notably Seventh-day Adventist, Pentacostal and other evangelical congregations) — keeping the properties off the tax rolls.

For example, Buffalo and Rochester, former hubs of statewide commerce and culture whose populations have fallen sharply in the last 60 years, still have the second- and third-highest number of properties with religious tax exemptions in the state, respectively.

The cities with the highest number of tax-exempt religious nonprofit properties in the state with the number of exempt parcels and their estimated value:

New York City: 5,889 worth $12 billion. Buffalo: 842 worth $172 million. Rochester: 568 worth $141 million. Ramapo: 523 worth $265 million

Exponential growth: Ramapo

Nowhere is the expansion of religious exemptions as pronounced as in Ramapo, a Rockland County town that is home to a rapidly growing Orthodox Jewish population.

"You could feasibly have a situation where there are no properties on the tax rolls," West said of Ramapo. "If you do the math and extrapolate it out, there's only so much land."

To illustrate the point, in 2015, in Ramapo:

The number of religious exempt parcels more than tripled from 150 in 1999 to 523 in 2015.

The total value of those properties increased 165 percent in the same 16 years.

Ramapo ranked second in New York state in the number of parcels with nonprofit educational exemptions. Those 349 (up from 232) properties were worth $537 million (up from $164 million), a 226 percent value increase since 1999.

Ramapo had the highest number of tax-exempt clergy residences of any town or city in the state aside from New York City in 2015. The 250 parcels were worth $123 million, or nearly $500,000 per property. That makes one in every 120 pieces of land in Ramapo a clergy residence.

Those figures reveal remarkable growth — an increase of 54 percent from 162 in 1999. And those parcels' value tripled from $42 million to $123 million over 16 years. This counters state trends: clergy residences dropped 7 percent around the state in the last 16 years, to 3,910 properties worth $2 billion.

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Elmira, a former manufacturing hub in Chemung County, also ranked in the top five New York municipalities, with 82 exempt residences for clergy valued at $24 million or $294,000 each. Westchester County has 219 parcels worth $249 million, or more than a $1.1 million per clergy residence. Putnam has the lowest in the state, just one exempt residence worth $276,000.

The value of religious tax exemptions in Westchester’s cities has been climbing for the last 16 years, in step with the county’s real estate prices. However, the exempt property count has declined slightly, in contrast to Ramapo.

“Catholic and other churches have closed and consolidated,” in White Plains and other Westchester cities. “It can’t be more opposite to what is happening in Ramapo,” White Plains Tax Assessor Lloyd Tasch said.

For example, the three Westchester municipalities with the highest number of non-profit religious exemptions between 1999-2015 include:

Yonkers’ religious exempt property value increased more than 60 percent to $435 million, ranking it fourth in the state. It lost eight parcels, dipping to 203.

Mount Vernon’s exempt property value more than doubled to $163 million. Its parcel count decreased slightly to 124 from 126.

Greenburgh’s value jumped 85 percent, to $283 million. The number of parcels dipped by two to 104.

The story is similar around the state. Patterson is a Putnam County town where the Jehovah's Witnesses' Watchtower Bible and Tract Society has more than 700 acres of tax-exempt land. The town’s nonprofit religious tax exempt property value increased 29 percent, to $155 million, though the number of parcels decreased by three to 25.

In the city of Poughkeepsie, religious tax-exempt property rose 32 percent, to $118 million, on 134 properties, roughly the same number it had 16 years ago.

And in New York's Southern Tier, Binghamton’s value of religious exempt property increased 50 percent, to $122 million, with the number of properties increasing 14 percent to 223.

“In some of those cities — Binghamton, Rochester and Buffalo especially — population has been in a pretty significant decline, and property values too,” said Doug Sauer, chief executive officer of the New York Council of Nonprofits. “I think there has been a growth of evangelical churches (buying or taking over previously owned churches) and reinvesting in the properties, storefront kind of stuff, causing those property values to go up."

Should faith-based groups receive tax breaks?

New York has exempted property owned by churches and used for religious purposes since 1799.

These tax breaks are widely regarded both as a way to limit government meddling in the freedom that religious organizations enjoy under the First Amendment, and as a nod to religion’s contributions to society.

West, the lawyer from the New York Council of Nonprofits, notes that those benefits may be limited.

“Nonprofits provide vital services for the communities that they’re in," he said. "Faith-based organizations provide vital services for the members of that faith.”

Others question religious groups’ societal merits.

“We can argue (that) scientific institutions, charities, schools are a net benefit for society, but is this true with religion?” said University of Tampa Professor Ryan Cragun, who specializes in the sociology of religion. “Until we ask questions, no one is going to consider challenging it. We need to stop and have this conversation. Are they actually beneficial?”

Nationally, Cragun conducted a study in 2012 that found that “states subsidize religions to the tune of about $26.2 billion per year by not requiring religious institutions to pay property taxes for property worth about $600 billion. This subsidy is of particular interest because property taxes pay for services such as firefighting and police, which religious institutions use the same as corporations and private citizens.”

Cragun argues that nonprofits, religious or not, should only be tax exempt if they serve a purpose that would otherwise be fulfilled by the government.

Easy to secure a religious tax exemption

Groups seeking tax breaks must provide documentation to their local assessor indicating that they qualify, and renew their applications each year. Several assessors told The Journal News/lohud that this is not particularly onerous.

“With a little bit of ingenuity, anybody could file for an exemption under those four categories (religious, education, clergy residence, charity),” said David Briggs, executive director for the state Assessors' Association.

And, once an exemption is granted, it is exceptionally hard to revoke it, assessors said. The burden of proof, at first, falls to the nonprofit to prove it needs the property to further its mission.

“If you’re going to deny them, you have to do it the first year. The biggest thing is doing the homework before you grant the exemption the first time,” said Curt Schoeberl, the Shawangunk town tax assessor.

Politicians are usually loath to pick on religious groups, and courts have generally favored them, Cragun said. But one case is pending in state Supreme Court.

In August, a tax assessor in the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda revoked the $5,000 property-tax exemption of the Holy Protection Orthodox Church. Residents complained that the storefront church was empty except for its annual popular souvlaki stand at the town’s Canalfest.

“I’ve never known a faith-based organization to be stripped of its exemption,” West said. “I’m surprised to hear of even one.”

Rockland is the epicenter

Rockland County, about 30 miles north New York City, is the smallest county in the state by area and, with an estimated 2015 population of 326,037, is among the most densely populated.

Religious tax exemptions in the county more than doubled in the last 16 years. The county has the largest Jewish population per capita of any U.S. county, with 31.4 percent, or 90,000 Jewish residents, according to the state.

The value of tax-exempt property for non-profit religious institutions in the county increased 126 percent, to $678 million, between 1999-2015. The number of exempt properties also more than doubled, to 736.

More than half of those exemptions occurred in Ramapo — Rockland’s fast-growing and most populous town.

The burden of ballooning exemptions in Ramapo

Religious groups’ appetite for exemptions is increasingly burdening taxpaying homeowners in the town. If those residents sell their houses to the ever-growing number of tax exempt entities, and move away, those remaining will shoulder the cost.

“There is no stopping it at this point,” said Tasch, a Ramapo resident and member of Ramapo’s Board of Assessment Review, in addition to serving as White Plains' assessor. “The biggest problem is what is eventually going to happen to people paying taxes. Will it get to the point where you are literally forced out?”

Linda Segal, a Ramapo resident who has considered moving, said of religious groups, “I don’t think it’s fair that I have to cover their expenses.”

State Assemblyman Ken Zebrowski, D-New City, said constituents frequently voice their concerns about high property taxes.

‘It’s incumbent upon us as elected officials to look at that issue and see what we’re going to do so that residents aren’t driven out of their homes,” he said.

Said Tasch: “As soon as I retire, I’m getting the heck out.”

How to stop the exemptions

How does a town with a struggling school district and escalating poverty manage an ever-rising mountain of exemption requests?

One application at a time.

“The exemption-review process is one of the most difficult jobs I had at the town because of the sheer number of exemptions we had to review every year,” said Scott Shedler, Ramapo’s tax assessor for 20 years.

Now the assessor in neighboring Clarkstown, he added: “My grievance process is probably the tightest in the state.”

In 2015, roughly 240 non-profit religious institutions, private schools and charities that were rejected by the Ramapo assessor’s office filed grievances with the town's Board of Assessment Review to get (or stay) off the tax rolls.

That board ultimately granted full or partial exemptions to 160, most of which fixed filing errors, Tasch said. The town returned roughly 80 — or one-third — of those properties to the tax rolls by the end of 2015. But, by July 1, when the town completed its 2016 final assessment roll, more than two dozen of those secured property-tax breaks. Those nonprofits may have fixed their paperwork and reapplied, or settled with the Town Board after suing for the exemption.

“In White Plains, we spend little to no time on this (religious tax-exemption applications)," said Tasch. "In Ramapo, it takes days.”

Courts make it tougher

Until recently, Ramapo officials denied exemption requests from nonprofits that did not have proper certificates of occupancy. In Ramapo, where housing development is dense and widespread zoning violations are well documented, public officials considered this an important check on public safety and a way to manage ever-swelling property tax breaks.

More than 50 percent of the real estate value in Kaser, a village in Ramapo, is exempt. The town bypassed tax revenue on property worth $15 million in 2016. Of the 383 total parcels in the village, 101 are wholly exempt.

In March, the state Supreme Court’s Appellate Division ruled that a charitable group in Kaser was eligible for a property-tax exemption despite allegations its property violated village zoning. This decision overturned a state judge who had sided with Ramapo’s move to deny an exemption for defying local codes by putting four families and an office in a house zoned for two families.

“I was very disappointed with the decision,” said Shedler, chairman of the legislative committee for the state Assessors’ Association. “I thought it was wrong.”

Shedler is working with Zebrowski to craft a bill that would tie exemptions to zoning laws. Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee, D-Pearl River, is also consulting with Shedler on this issue.

Zebrowski put it this way: “If you’re receiving a tax benefit, then you should be following the law.”

Twitter: @ASKSanders