Wind Farm Fails to Pay Local Property Taxes.

LOWVILLE — Nearly a month after the Maple Ridge Wind Farm regained Empire Zone certification, local taxing jurisdictions are still awaiting the balance of last year's annual payment.

And the municipalities plan to resume legal action against Flat Rock Windpower, the company under which Maple Ridge was developed, if the $6.7 million isn't released soon.

"They've demonstrated a level of arrogance that I've not seen in commercial transactions dealing with taxing jurisdictions," Lewis County Attorney Richard J. Graham said. "They are behaving as if they can do whatever they want with what is truly taxpayers' money. And the taxing jurisdictions simply will not stand for it."

Flat Rock last summer was decertified from the state Empire Zone program after being targeted as a "shirt-changer," or a company reincorporated as a different entity that claimed it created jobs when, in reality, it transferred employees from one entity to the other.