Typically, the rankings showing New York’s unfriendliness to business focus on the taxes people pay to live and work in New York.

In the case of a Lakewood business owner, the state’s unfriendliness to business comes in being unable to get a straight answer for three years over a slice of land for which the state hasn’t had any use for 30 years. When the answer finally comes, there is a price tag that no one disclosed earlier in the process.

That’s what drove attorney Lori Thierfeldt to file a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Mayville.

Reconstruction of Route 394 in the late 1980s resulted in unused land the state controlled through a jurisdictional right of way. The property owner of 341-343 E. Fairmount Ave. at the time was given free use of the right of way to access his property, never paying a fee in exchange for maintaining the area. When the state right of way was discovered, the state offered to release the land to Chautauqua County, but the county never had an ownership interest in the property — meaning the land should be released to Thierfeldt as the new owner of the property. Instead, the state is asking Thierfeldt to pay $2,700 the first year and additional amounts in the future to use the jurisdictional right of way to access her property even though she has continued the previous property owners’ maintenance of the right of way.

It will be up to state Supreme Court Justice Grace Hanlon to adjudicate Thierfeldt’s claim — but even if Thierfeldt has to pay the fee, the state Transportation Department has worked overtime to drag this process out unnecessarily. In doing so it has wasted countless hours of Thiefeldt’s time, made it unnecessarily difficult to redevelop a property on one of the south county’s busiest commercial corridors and, according to court documents, been unable to give a straight answer to a seemingly simple question over who should own land the state had no interest in for more than three decades.

State agencies have to be reminded of one guiding principle when it comes to dealing with the public — even though your checks are signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, the money comes from taxpaying John Q. Public.

State jobs are public service, but some state employees seem to think it’s the other way around.