from the bigdumbHoosier Archive - 07.16.2001
Re-PILT
In the previous edition of bigdumbHoosier, Don't Cut PILT, I wrote about the importance of maintaining payments to local governmental units in compensation for land held by the federal government for parks, forests, monuments and by the BLM. These federal lands are exempt from local property tax, and in some parts of the west account for over 80% of the land area. The current administration had proposed cutting fifty million dollars from this fund.
PILT is a good idea, because public lands benefit the whole nation, especially urban and suburban areas. Therefore those areas ought to contribute funds to ensure that rural communities aren't unfairly burdened.
I also mentioned that real estate withdrawn from local US Fish and Wildlife Refuges do not qualify under the "Payment in Lieu of Taxes" (PILT) program. Tim Bodeen, project director for the Grand Kankakee Marsh National Wildlife Refuge, wrote an e-mail pointing out that USF&W Refuges do have a system for addressing this issue. It's called "Refuge Revenue Sharing". PILT and Refuge Revenue Sharing are separate systems, funded from different sources, with different formulas for determining the federal payment. Presently, at least, these systems are on separate lines in the budgetary process. The formula for calculation of Refuge Revenue sharing can be found by following a link provided at the end of this article.
The Bush administration didn't propose cuts for the Refuge Revenue Sharing program. The cuts proposed for PILT have not, so far, been adopted by Congress. In fact, both houses of Congress proposed increases in funding for the Refuge Revenue Sharing program, and Sen. Craig Thomas (R. Wyo.) is sponsoring a bill that would not only restore PILT funding to 200 million dollars as in the House bill, but would increase it to 220 million dollars. On July 9, the AP reported that the proposed increase has cleared the appropriations committee and will be debated in the full Senate.
While PILT and Refuge Revenue Sharing differ in their particulars, they serve a similar purpose. These payments should not be viewed as welfare. Forests, parks, refuges and other public lands contribute much to the quality of life in the communities where they are located, but they incur costs as well. County Commissioner Randy Johnson recently testified before the House Resources committee about the experiences of his bailiwick, Emery County Utah. There probably aren't too many issues that Mr. Johnson and I would agree about, but he makes some valid points in his testimony.
Johnson says Emery County is the size of Connecticut, but with a population of just 11,000. Interstate 70 bisects the county, and hundreds of thousands of travelers go through this sparsely populated area annually. I've driven through it myself; the country around the San Rafael Swell is the stuff of western legend. It's beautiful and unspoiled, but it's rough, potentially dangerous country too. Johnson says that the costs the county incurs for searches, rescues, ambulance trips and other emergency services are more than PILT currently pays. Johnson says the majority of these services are incurred by non-residents. Helping Emery County cover these costs is not welfare, it's just fair.
In my next bigdumbHoosier, I promise to get into some lighter fare. Tax policy isn't very much fun to read about, but if you care about the environment you need to be aware of the motivations of your opposition. Sometimes there's a valid issue under what appears to be anti-environmental rhetoric, and those valid issues need to be addressed. If you don't care about the environment, you'd better start caring. It doesn't care a whit about you.
links for further reading
Refuge Revenue Sharing Act From the Digest of Federal Resource Laws of Interest to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
