County gets PILT payments

Flathead County has received just over $2.2 million from the federal government under a long-running program that compensates local governments for nontaxable federal land.

Montana's slice of the payments-in-lieu-of-taxes pie is nearly $27 million this year, of which Flathead's allocation is the largest. Other counties with sizable amounts of federal land include Ravalli County, which received $1.95 million; and Lewis and Clark County, at $2.2 million.

Some 70 percent of the 5,088 square miles of land in Flathead County, or 2.4 million acres, is federally owned.

Each year the county earmarks $500,000 of the payments-in-lieu money to the road department, and that will continue this year, county Finance Director Sandy Carlson said. The rest of Flathead's allocation will be used for the South Campus Building under construction south of the courthouse.

The payments-in-lieu program is reserved for rural local governments that contain non-taxable federal lands to provide vital services such as public safety, housing, social services and transportation. These jurisdictions provide significant support for national parks, wildlife refuges and recreation areas throughout the year.

In recent years Flathead County has used the federal money for projects such as the $2.6 million courthouse renovation, construction of a parking lot next to the Earl Bennett Building and renovation of the old jail building that currently is underway.

Some payments-in-lieu money also was used to buy the building that now houses the Montana State University Extension Service and 4-H program.

Congress appropriated $404.6 million for payments to counties for the 2015 program. The president's fiscal year 2016 budget proposes to extend mandatory full funding at $452 million for the program for another year while a sustainable long-term funding solution is developed for the program, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The Interior Department collects about $14 billion in revenue annually from commercial activities on federal lands, such as oil and gas leasing, livestock grazing and timber harvesting.

A portion of that revenues is shared with states and counties in the form of revenue-sharing payments.