Griffin Offers Conservancy 104-Acre Gift : Parks: The entertainer proposes giving the land to the Santa Monica Mountains group. He joins other celebrities whom a new tax law might help.

Merv Griffin is the latest celebrity to offer a gift of parkland to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, joining a string of wealthy entertainers whose charitable instincts may soon be rewarded by a recent change in tax laws.

The conservancy’s board is scheduled to vote tonight on taking the 104 acres in Benedict Canyon south of Mulholland Drive, next to Griffin’s planned development of six estate homes.

If the gift is accepted, Griffin will join the ranks of celebrity donors Jack Nicholson--who two weeks ago gave 60 acres of parkland in Coldwater Canyon above Sherman Oaks--and Barbra Streisand, who last month deeded her lavish Malibu estate to the conservancy to use as an environmental research and conference center.

Although these luminaries have not publicly discussed the tax considerations, their gifts have followed close behind a key tax law change that was meant to encourage the philanthropic impulse. In August, Congress changed the tax code, effective with the ’93 tax year, to boost deductions for charitable gifts, such as artworks and real estate, that have gone up in market value over time.

The change “has opened up an area that was virtually closed to us,” said Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the conservancy, a state agency that preserves open space and wildlife habitat in the Santa Monicas and in the hills and ranges encircling the San Fernando Valley.

“We’ve had a lot of inquiries about this . . . from a lot of potential donors,” Edmiston said.

The flurry of activity “makes all kinds of sense to me,” remarked Robert Giannangeli, public affairs officer for the IRS. The change occurred because Congress was “getting a lot of complaints from charities and such, saying people weren’t donating and the best way to get them donating” was to change the law.

Before the change, donors generally could deduct the full market value of the land from their taxable income. Much of the deduction, however, was recaptured through the “Alternative Minimum Tax”--a computation meant to keep wealthy individuals from using legal deductions to escape taxation altogether.

The rich donor had to count the appreciated value of the land as income in calculating his Alternative Minimum Tax. Thus, if land purchased 15 years ago for $200,000 was now worth $2 million, the donor had to count the $1.8 million in appreciation as income in figuring his Alternative Minimum Tax.

With the change, however, the appreciated value is not counted as income under the Alternative Minimum Tax. The result is a potential for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in extra tax savings for the wealthy who donate their land.

The incentive to donate was made more attractive still by an increase in the tax rate for those in the highest income bracket.

Of Griffin’s proposed gift of 104 acres, 59.4 acres must be preserved as a condition of his development approval from the city of Los Angeles. The other 44.3 acres are, in essence, a pure gift and probably will “at least be eligible for appropriate deduction on his taxes,” Edmiston said.

But an executive who works for Griffin said tax considerations were inconsequential in the decision to offer the land.

Michael Eyre, vice president with the Griffin Group, Griffin’s investment management company, said donating the entire 104 acres had long been under consideration. “The thought . . . was that that was a good use for those acres,” which “would be difficult to develop” anyway.

As has been the case with the Streisand gift in Ramirez Canyon in Malibu, the Griffin donation has stirred deep concern among neighbors that public use will overwhelm narrow mountain roads and generally disturb the serenity of their canyon retreat. The property had not been a top priority for the agency.

“I am not going to tell you this is the most pristine or critical area,” said Edmiston. But “most of our constituency probably believes that open space of any stripe . . . ought to be preserved.” The land is “free, we’re not buying it” and in taking it “we’re not doing any special favors for Merv Griffin.”

John Diaz, chief of land acquisition for the conservancy, voiced more enthusiasm, calling the Griffin parcel “the showcase piece of all the properties we’re acquiring” in the Benedict Canyon area.

Those acquisitions are part of an effort to preserve a continuous swath of wildlife habitat between Griffith Park on the east to Topanga State Park on the west.