Bill seeks payment for untaxed land

BOISE – Unless the federal government boosts local reimbursement for lost tax revenue on public lands, some Western lawmakers want to give Uncle Sam’s property to the affected counties.

“If the government can’t be a good neighbor, it has no business being in the neighborhood,” U.S. Rep. Butch Otter, R-Idaho, said after introducing his bill this week to increase spending on the federal “Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes” (PILT) program.

Under a 1976 law, cash payments are made by the U.S. Department of Interior to compensate local governments for tax-exempt federal land. The money, intended to offset losses to the private property tax base, is generally used by counties to pay for firefighting, law enforcement, schools and other services.

Western lawmakers have long said that rural communities with large tracts of federal land have not received the amount of money they’re due under the law. During a news conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, a bipartisan group of Western members of Congress claimed that over the last decade, rural communities have been shortchanged $1.1 billion.

“Either give our counties in the West the land or fully fund PILT to try and make up for it,” said Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah.

Environmentalists and Western land policy experts say it’s unlikely a Republican-dominated Congress would increase funding for a program President Bush wants to cut.

“We agree some counties have an unfair financial burden because they contain an overwhelming amount of federal land, but there’s no need to make ridiculous proposals,” said Sean Cosgrove of the Sierra Club’s Washington, D.C., legislative office.

Others figure the idea isn’t that far-fetched.

“The idea is to finally get the land back on the tax rolls,” said Idaho Association of Counties Director Dan Chadwick. “I’m not sure it’s going to ever happen, but we appreciate the shot across the bow.”

Otter’s legislation, co-sponsored by fellow Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson, would give counties parcels of federal land equal in value to the difference between the PILT payments appropriated by Congress and the full amount authorized by law. National parks, wilderness areas and federal wildlife refuges would be exempt from the conveyances.

“But your favorite fishing hole, your family camping spot and that place you got the six-point bull elk is all up for grabs under this bill,” said Linn Kincannon of the Idaho Conservation League.

Another PILT reform bill, sponsored by Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., would up spending levels but wouldn’t convey federal lands to counties.

“Any suggestion of transferring land is going to be resisted,” said John Freemuth at the Andrus Center for Public Policy at Boise State University. “But higher funding for PILT is something that local county commissioners, school boards and environmental groups seem to agree on, even if the Bush administration is not helping matters much.”

President Bush’s budget for the next fiscal year seeks to cut PILT funding to less than $200 million, down from the $224 million that Congress appropriated for the current year. The Western Caucus, a coalition representing GOP members of the U.S. House from Western states, says funding the program to the extent authorized by law would cost $331 million.