City Councilman Dan Garodnick said in an interview with Elizabeth Dwoskin in yesterday's edition of The Village Voice that a bill in the State Senate would reverse the 2009 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals that said the owners of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complexes in Manhattan had improperly deregulated thousands of apartments while taking special tax benefits from the city. The ruling also affected an estimated 40,000 other apartments in similar circumstances, mostly in Manhattan.

According to a May 2, 2011 article in The New York Times by Charles V. Bagli "the proposed legislation would essentially allow landlords to buy their way out of the problem by paying back the tax breaks, enabling them to keep the apartments renting at free-market rates."

"'We need a legislative solution,' said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. 'It's a bill that would generate substantial money for the city, anywhere from $100 million to $300 million. It would allow people to pay back the tax benefits, and free them from back-rent claims and the requirement to go back to rent regulation,'" the article said.

The court said the complexes' owners had improperly turned rent-stabilized apartments into free-market apartments while also participating in the city's J-51 program, which gives tax breaks to landlords who rehabilitate their properties. The ruling affected about 4,400 of the 11,226 apartments at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.

"There is little question that the bill, which was sponsored by Senator Catharine Young, a Republican from Olean in western New York, would benefit landlords. The bill would allow the owners of Stuyvesant Town to repay more than $24 million in tax breaks at 9 percent interest, a total of at least $26.16 million. The landlords would not have to roll back rents or repay what tenant advocates estimate is $200 million in rent overcharges.

Though the bill could provide a windfall for the city, opponents say it would cost tenants far more in additional rent," the article said.

"The improper deregulation began under the complexes' original owners, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and continued after Tishman Speyer, the real estate firm, and a partner bought them for $5.4 billion in 2006. But the rent roll could not support Tishman Speyer's debt. The new owners defaulted and the complex is now controlled by CW Capital, a company representing a group of lenders," the article said.

"The 4,400 units that were deregulated would go to the market, and the current and former occupants would lose their right to recovery for the harm they were caused. It is a total reversal, without any questions. And it would do more than just roll back a court decision It would threaten the long-term affordability of these units," Mr. Garodnick, a tenant at Stuyvesant Town, declared in the Village Voice interview.

"The bill that's pending in Albany would eviscerate the court ruling. It would allow landlords to return their tax breaks and opt out of the J-51 program. That, unfortunately, would deprive tenants of their rights. . .and it would also deprive them of their right to rebates for rent overpayments and also to have their rent adjusted to the legal level. And, if the landlords do not opt of J-51, the bill gives landlords the right to set the rent at 2005 levels, which was the height of real estate market in the city," Mr. Garodnick said.