|
|
"I now represent very high net worth individuals to reduce estate taxes at death and to get their assets into the hands of the people they want to have them."
He said he does much international estate planning. "It's very, very interesting stuff that globalization is making more difficult," he said.
His familiarity with tax laws is a natural fit for his conservation efforts, but he has been surprised by the level of commitment required. "When I was elected head of Weantinoge, I didn't quite understand the amount of time it would require," he said as he sat in the spacious kitchen of his hilltop home in South Kent, "but land trusts like Weantinoge are so critical to the quality of life in Connecticut and very complex issues are in play."
He is willing to carve time out of an "extremely busy law practice" to try to deal with those issues. "Once land is developed," he said, "it can't go back to the way it was. How do we manage change? People need new homes-how do we design for them? And how do we preserve the natural environment around those homes? I have really been surprised that everything is more complicated, more interactive than I thought it would be and needs to be done more professionally."
He noted that Weantinoge, the oldest land trust in the state, with headquarters in New Milford, is different from other area land trusts because it is regional, covering 25 towns and preserving more than 7,000 acres. Slightly more than half of that land is under easements, he said, while the rest is owned outright by the land trust.
"The reason we are different from other land trusts is that we can do things they can't," he asserted. "We have a professional staff-a talented, well-known executive director in Tom McGowan, and a brilliant ecologist named Harry White. Harry knows his stuff and is passionate about forestry."
Having paid staff gives Weantinoge the potential to respond quickly to opportunities, he said. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone who wanted to make a gift would begin in January?" he said. "Because land is so valuable and owners want to retain their rights, it takes months and months of negotiations. If local land trusts are approached at the end of November they can't handle the volume or complexity [in a timely fashion for tax purposes]. We can work on several things at one time."
Mr. Novogrod said that the rapidly escalating value of land affects Weantinoge and other land trusts. Many landowners now opt not to donate or sell land, but instead offer conservation easements that give away development rights to the land. The latter option has tax benefits for the landowner while preserving private ownership.
Last year a law authored by Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT), substantially enhanced the tax benefits of giving conservation easements. The law extended the carry-forward period for tax deductions for voluntary conservation agreements from five to 15 years and raised the cap on deductions from 30 percent of a donor's adjusted gross income to 50 percent-and to 100 percent for qualifying farmers and ranchers. This allows farmers and other modest-income landowners to get a much larger benefit for donating development rights to their land.
This temporary window of opportunity was to close this December, but Sen. Baucus this winter introduced a bill to make the law permanent. The Bush Administration announced soon after that the permanent bill is included in its FY 2008 budget proposal as part of the President's Cooperative Conservation Task Force.
While it is hoped that this law will stimulate more giving, it will also result in more work for land trusts. "Some times we can raise the money and can buy a parcel of land," Mr. Novogrod said, "but the whole environment has changed rapidly, Every thing is more valuable and the importance people place on giving land away leads to increased negotiation. The negotiations are more protracted and there are important tax ramifications. The IRS is looking more carefully at such donations so there is more record keeping to justify the tax deductions."
He said that the increasing fragmentation of land in Western Connecticut is further challenging land trusts. "In the old days, you could hope for hundreds of acres [in one donation]; now we get a 25-acre easement and we are thrilled. We've got to work hard to protect acreage, but if we can put together enough small parcels, we may be able to stay some development."
Weantinoge adds between 300 and 500 acres to its land bank every year. Small parcels can serve big purposes, however, especially when they form critical links between acreage that is already preserved. Environmental studies have shown that many species-especially some birds-require unbroken forestland or open meadowlands to maintain their nesting sites and small parcels can be critical in preventing further fragmentation. Still, it can take as much work to save a small parcel as a large one and the IRS is even more inclined to monitor such donations. "The IRS is coming down on smaller easements and these are the things we have to struggle with," he said.
Indeed, increased government scrutiny of land trust practices is leading to formalized standards for trusts. The Land Trust Alliance, a national conservation organization representing almost 2,000 local and regional land trusts, began work in 2004 to establish accreditation criteria. In February, the LTA board of directors approved bylaws and articles of incorporation and appointed its first slate of commissioners.
"There is increased emphasis on land trust practices and we want to be among the first to be accredited," said Mr. Novogrod.
That will be no simple process and many land trusts are nervous about the consequences. "It will require an audit of our current practices," he explained, "and will involve a whole litany of things we will have to account for, but we want to be in the forefront."
With the increased financial and fiduciary pressures on land trusts, Mr. Novogrod sees the need for more cooperation among the various groups. "Connecticut is one of the few states where there is a plethora of land trusts," he said. "It's not often that you find a state where every town has its own trust. That is all right as long as nothing falls through the cracks but there needs to be more cooperation. There is no need to compete because we are all doing God's work."
Such cooperation could have obvious benefits, he said. "I am talking about really working together," he continued. "We could be dealing with gifts that straddle two towns. Two land trusts could put their pocketbooks together to make it happen."
He said three land trusts are already talking about just such a circumstance. "Right now there is a piece of land on the market," he said. "It will go for millions and millions and millions and the land trusts are talking about doing something together. I think you will see greater cooperation and mergers of land trusts in the future."
He agreed that local land trusts have the benefit of immediacy in their towns and that groups such as the Kent Land Trust are part of the social fabric of their communities.
"My solution [for preserving that local impact] is to use the Boy Scout model," he said. "The Scouts are an national organization, but they have local councils. We could have a countywide land trust, but with a local Kent council, for instance. They would do the same things they are doing now-have a local point of view, but be part of a larger thing. The point would be to have greater cooperation in financing, thinking and strategy."
He said he wants to make Weantinoge "more than a holder of land and easements."
"I want to make our role more vital and richer," he said. "I see us as a resource for all the land trusts and the people. I want to forge a relationship with the Yale Forestry School in Norfolk and I hope to have seminars there. Harry and I hope to create a Weantinoge Journal that will be written in a way that people can get information."
He said that when he became president, he reorganized committees and appointed a "new ideas" committee. "Board meetings are essentially reactive," he said. "We address issues that are already issues. I wanted a forum for off-the-wall ideas, that could let loose the shackles and look at big ideas."
He said one of the ideas the group had looked at was affordable housing, recognizing the inevitable effect on the cost of housing of taking desirable land out of the market. "It's an issue that we are well aware of," he said, "There was no consensus about our responsibility to confront that. One answer is that it is not our mission and our first responsibility is to our mission. I don't want to sound cold about it because the issue posed is human and interesting, but it is something the state and local governments will have to grapple with."
Mr. Novogrod said that money is a concern for all land trusts. "Because of rising land costs, general inflation and increased costs for paying staff, we need more money," he said. He said efforts are being made to increase Weantinoge's endowment and that fund-raising is now an important part of the group's efforts. The group's next fund-raiser will be a July 21 invitation-only gala on board member Ann Bass' South Kent property.
In addition, when landowners give an easement, they are asked for cash donations. "You can't get around the costs," he said, "and people understand that."
In tapping John Novogrod to be its new leader Weantinoge chose a man with a broad range of interests and abilities to bring to the task. He is a graduate of Harvard and Yale Law School, but his first love was not the law. "When I entered Harvard, I was an American history major," he recounted. "That semester has influenced me until today. I was looking at the course offerings and I saw a course taught by a young professor named Henry Kissenger. I could tell it was an upper level course by the number, but I begged him to let me in. It was really tough because I was in with juniors and seniors, but it instilled a love in me of international law policy making that is still an interest of mine."
When he completed Harvard, he went on to Yale Law School, where he took courses in international relations. His thesis at Yale, written in 1966 and 1967 with classmate Roger Hull, morphed into a book, "Law and Vietnam," published in 1968.
The thesis earned top marks and a recommendation from their professor that it be published, Mr. Novogrod reported. It also brought the authors recognition from Time magazine, which wrote an article about their efforts.
"The authors started out as neither hawks nor doves," Time reported. "They merely sought to discover the pertinent law on a few of the same problems that the Harvard [students] will be investigating. The results will surprise many people, including lawyers, who sincerely consider the war not only immoral but illegal as well."
"It was right in the middle of the legal debate about [U.S. involvement in] Vietnam," remembered Mr. Novogrod. "We concluded it was legal."
Mr. Novogrod was soon to be involved in the war effort himself. "The draft was going hot and heavy," he said. "I called the draft board and learned I would be drafted as soon as I graduated. So I went to talk to a Navy recruiter and the following fall went to Navy OCS in Newport [R.I.]." He later attended the Navy Justice School and, as a young lieutenant, was assigned to the Judge Advocate's Officer at the Pentagon.
"I was a young lawyer doing what I loved," he said. "My first assignment was to write the briefing book for the Vietnam peace talks. [Deputy Secretary of Defense] Cy Vance knew nothing about the war and someone had to it put down on paper for the negotiators."
Mr. Novogrod had to be put on the fast track for top-secret security clearance to get access to the materials he needed. He and a colleague "wrote about 500 pages in three weeks," working from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. every day.
While he enjoyed his military service, he was back in New York by 1971, working on Wall Street. His busy legal career does not consume all his attention, however. He is a trustee of the IB Fund Board of the International Baccalaureate Organization; serves on the boards of the Planned Development Alliance of Northwest Connecticut, The Rudolph Rupert Medical Foundation and the Lorne Weil Charitable Foundation. He also serves on the planned giving advisory boards of The Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library and Yale Law School.
In his spare time, he studies Russian. "It is the same class they offer at Columbia," he said, "but I have private tutoring. I'm absolutely captivated by the language. It is a whole new alphabet, which is one of the hardest things. But my speaking is getting better and my teacher and I spend part of each lesson just talking."
He also revisits his old interests in international relations through participation in such things as the Army War College, where private individuals are allowed to participate during the final week. "It was a fabulous experience," he reported enthusiastically. "The first rule is 'no attribution,' so everyone can speak freely and candidly. The discussion was so free-wheeling."
Energized by the experience, he wrote to the major general who ran the school thanking him for the opportunity and was, in turn, invited to attend a National Strategic Decision-making Seminar in April of this year. "It was just amazing. I loved it," he declared. "So I wrote another letter and I have been invited back next year."
In the time left over from these endeavors, Mr. Novogrod and his wife, Nancy, editor in chief of Travel & Leisure magazine, enjoy the home they purchased in 2001 in South Kent. Prior to that they were weekend residents of Woodbury, where they had maintained a residence since 1981.
The Novogrods love Northwestern Connecticut, but Mr. Novogrod concedes that they are not good at relaxing while they are here. "We both work while we are here," he said. "It was 8 o'clock last night before I even got to ride my bike."
The Novogrods are parents to two grown children. James, a graduate of Taft and Wesleyan, has gone into television, while Caroline, who graduated from Taft and Brown, followed her father's fascination with international relations and who now works for a research and consulting firm.
Completing the household is a charming little Dachshund named Lulu. "Lulu is the brains of the operation," said her fond owner.
