ALBANY -- Anthony Charles Cinelli made quite a name for himself in the 1970s, selling cut-rate gas and lottery tickets at his station on Altamont Avenue in Rotterdam. He was good at self-promotion, such as the time he sold gas at 36 cents a gallon to celebrate his 36th birthday.
But in the mid-1980s, he went to jail for state sales tax fraud, and was billed $1 million by the state to cover cleanup of his station's leaking underground tanks. After closing in the mid-'90s, the crumbling business became the town's biggest eyesore.
Then Cinelli made more money from his station by leasing it. After that business failed last year -- with Cinelli and his tenant defaulting on a hefty mortgage -- it was sold and reopened under a new owner.
Cinelli has retired to a palatial home just north of Daytona Beach. And the state? It got repaid nothing for cleaning up his mess.
There are plenty of polluters like Cinelli: businesses ranging from oil giant Exxon Mobil and regional gas station chains to a few unlucky homeowners that owe the cash-strapped state tens of millions of dollars spent to clean up after petroleum spills. The trail of unpaid debts stretches back years.
When the state set up its Oil Spill Compensation Fund in 1977 to cover the cost of emergency cleanups, it expected …
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