Recent newspaper reports of well-known national big-box retailers demanding huge reductions in their real property assessed values by Chautauqua County towns is not a new phenomenon.

In 1998, then County Executive Mark Thomas and the Chautauqua County legislature saw these huge corporations “strong arming” town governments into granting huge tax assessment reductions that were not warranted. In response, the County Legislature passed Resolution 216-98 making it possible for the County, on a case-by-case basis, to assist our towns to fend off big corporate demands for assessment reductions of $1,000,000 or more.

Why get the County involved when real estate assessments are the responsibility of the town assessors? Often the County’s real property tax rate is as big or bigger than the town’s tax rate.

In other words, the County often has as much or more to lose by a $1,000,000 assessment reduction by, for example, Walmart, Target or Home Depot, as the town does, yet the town alone bears the cost of paying lawyers and appraisers to defend the assessment amount.

The huge national and international real estate owners, however, can often get a law firm to challenge the town’s assessment on a contingent fee basis. If the law firm gets a reduction for its big-box client, the firm will take a percentage of the tax savings as its fee. If the law firm fails to get an assessment reduction, the big-box client owes nothing. This win-win strategy by huge corporate real estate owners led to the 1998 action by the Chautauqua County government.

If and when the County decides to partner with a town on a $1,000,000 or more assessment reduction case, the ability of huge corporations to “strong arm” the town assessor is much reduced.

It is offensive that a big-box corporate store will invest $4,000,000 in the real estate alone and then immediately swear that it is only worth $1,000,000 for real estate tax purposes, not the 3 or 4 million dollars the town assessor has the property assessed for.

Some of the current assessment reduction demands would have a massive store with a massive parking lot assessed for less than a number of single family homes in our community.

So who cares if a Walmart or Target or Home Depot “strong arms” a town into a $1,000,000 or more tax assessment reduction saving the huge corporation about $50,000 or so a year?

First of all, reducing the real property tax assessment of Walmart, Target or Home Depot does not reduce the total amount of town, school or County property taxes.

The $50,000, for example, not paid by a huge national corporation is then paid by the rest of us. Homeowners and small local businesses in the town and throughout the County pay more taxes so that Walmart, Target or Home Depot can pay less.

It is also offensive to think how little a $50,000 property tax savings means to a Walmart, Target or Home Depot. $50,000 would equal about one full-time store employee with benefits.

When one thinks of the big box stores’ demands on town law enforcement alone, “strong arming” a town for a $50,000 savings should be embarrassing to the huge national corporation.

Sometimes it appears that our local police are in such routine service to these big-box stores that the stores may create dedicated parking spaces for the local police.

The best answer we currently have available to fight off unjust tax assessment reduction demands by huge national corporations is to have our $300,000,000 a year County government partner with towns to make sure these big-box stores pay their legitimate fair share of town, County and school taxes.

Fred Larson is a former Chautauqua County attorney from 1998 to 2005, graduated from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs as well as Yale Law School and served as a Chautauqua County legislator from 1986-1993, 2014, and beginning again in 2024.