Bearing Responsibility for the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan
Former member of the Adirondack Park Agency and former chair of its State Land Committee, Dick Booth, offered this advice about the most significant, controversial legal issues facing APA during his time as one of its members (2008-16): prioritize, anticipate, prepare, be transparent, and issue explanatory memoranda placing the matter in legal context and how the contemplated actions complied with the law: the APA Act or the State Land Master Plan. Booth argued that those memos should be publicly accessible.
Advice Ignored: In too many instances, Booth’s advice was ignored. Thus, the public never saw a written legal basis for APA’s sanctioning of a 12 ft. wide motorized snowmobile bridge to be built over the Scenic Cedar River, or for DEC’s decision to grandfather public motorized uses in a Wilderness corridor bordering the Upper Hudson River, or for their joint decision to amend the Master Plan to authorize bicycle trails to be maintained by trucks and heavy machinery in the Essex Chain Primitive area, or for motorized access and a six-car parking lot to be built at the very border of that Primitive area. These decisions were politically expedient, not legally defensible, and certainly not defensible and accessible in writing. Full transparency and good governance? We were hopeful for better results in the next administration.
The next administration, that of Governor Hochul, issued transparency rules to the APA and all state agencies which are also, unfortunately, followed on a selective basis. Witness the 2023 refusal of the Agency executive staff to release, for alleged reasons of confidentiality, past Agency memoranda issued between 1998-2002 concerning a Wild Forest guideline that there be no material increase in the mileage of roads and snowmobile trails open to public motorized uses than existed when the Master Plan was first adopted in 1972. DEC members were not provided this older material, nor was the public, and the resulting decision suffered for the lack of it.
New proposed amendments to the APSLMP: Now, APA has issued new, substantive amendments to the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan, some of which are legally justified and needed, but some of which are questionable, poorly thought out, hastily drafted, and downright confusing as to their compliance with law and regulation. The Agency sent these proposals out for public comment without substantive written memoranda explaining their legal findings and basis and without advance, publicly accessible discussion within the Agency’s State Land Committee which might have resulted in better drafting and less confusion. Dick Booth’s good advice was not followed in this instance, either.
For example, as proposed the existing State Land Master Plan motor vehicle definition, which already includes all types of all-terrain vehicles, would now exclude “wheelchairs, or other power-drive mobility devices” (OPDMD). Wheelchairs are clearly legally authorized and appropriate wherever feet can travel on our Forest Preserve trails, but all classes of OPDMD? While federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines identify all-terrain vehicles (ATV) and golf carts as one of many classes of OPDMDs, Forest Preserve law and regulations have long prohibited ATVs from Wilderness and Wild Forest trails. By excluding any and all classes of OPDMDs from the SLMP Motor Vehicle definition, the proposed amendment creates public confusion and potentially serious legal conflict with strict prohibitions on use of motor vehicles.
Also highly problematic is the new, poorly drafted Accessibility section: “keeping with ADA Title II regulations on mobility devices (CFR § 35.137), wheelchairs are allowed on state lands anywhere that pedestrian access is permitted. The DEC is responsible for interpreting federal regulations and guidance to determine where the use of Other Power Driven Mobility Devices (OPDMDs) may be appropriate.”
The first sentence is correct. Wheelchairs are allowed on State Land anywhere that pedestrian access is permitted. The second sentence is not. It adds confusion and contradicts both the letter and the spirit of the SLMP and DEC regulations which limit use of motor vehicles on the Forest Preserve. DEC is prohibited by the SLMP and by its own regulations from exercising broad discretion to allow ATVs, whether used by persons with disabilities or not, on Wild Forest trails or in any area managed as Wilderness. Also, ADA does not require DEC to fundamentally alter the nature of its programs for accessibility reasons. The use of ATVs on Wild Forest or Wilderness trails would fundamentally alter those programs – and the Forest Preserve’s constitutional protection, recently upheld by our Court of Appeals.
Adirondack Wild will comment on all the proposed State Land Master Plan amendments at upcoming public hearings (October 22, 23, 29) which are required by law. We just wish that APA had taken more time, and, consistent with Dick Booth’s advice, reviewed its proposed SLMP amendments as draft within publicly accessible and transparent meetings of its State Land Committee. Haste makes waste.
The Booth memo: I close with a quote from Dick Booth’s memo about the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan issued, consistent with his insistence on transparency, to both the Agency and to the public. It remains highly relevant today and should be read again by every Agency member and staff member. Booth issued this explanatory memo about the State Land Master Plan on his final day at the APA, June 29, 2016.
This is the way he concluded his memo:
“This memo has urged close attention to the letter of the State Land Master Plan. In closing, I urge that the Adirondack Park Agency pay very careful attention to its spirit as well. The Master Plan forcefully favors the protection of large, wild, remote, high resource value tracts of the Adirondack Park’s Forest Preserve lands from intensive human use, including motorized uses and motorized access. The SLMP does so because it is vitally important that people have meaningful and extensive opportunities to experience nature in its unbridled form without many of the intrusions of the modern world. Protecting those opportunities today is increasingly important and difficult because the world in 2016 is so much more crowded and busier a place than it was in 1972. Protecting and enhancing those opportunities will become ever more significant and ever more challenging as the decades proceed, as new generations arrive, and as technology wears away at more and more of the world’s natural fabric. The members of the Agency, now and far into the future, bear and will bear the responsibility — and must bear the responsibility — of making certain that the Master Plan’s spirit lives and thrives.” – Richard Booth
Photo at top: Richard Booth speaking at the APA as a member of the Agency. Photo provided by David Gibson.