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Today, U.S. Representatives Brittany Pettersen (D-CO) and John Duarte (R-CA) introduced bipartisan legislation to permanently authorize Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) funding; being called the Permanently Authorizing PILT Act of 202.

PILT provides payments across U.S. counties (including 56 of Colorado’s counties) and other local governments with non-taxable federal land within their borders to offset their lost property tax revenue. This critical program must currently be reauthorized every year, creating the potential for disruption in payments to counties that support essential local government services like education, law enforcement, emergency services, transportation infrastructure, and health care.

Rep. Brittany Pettersen and Representative Brittany Pettersen and USDA Under Secretary for Rural Development Xochitl Torres Small at the rural development meeting at Guidestone on March 16, 2023. Photo by Jan Wondra

“Many communities in Colorado, especially in the rural parts of my district, rely on PILT funding for the essential government services we all rely on, like good public schools and well-funded emergency services,” said Pettersen.

“Colorado has beautiful National Parks, National Forests, and other public lands, and the counties that house them shouldn’t have any less of an opportunity to generate revenue for their residents,” she added. “My bill with Congressman Duarte is a commonsense measure to provide counties and local governments with the sustained funding and predictability they need.”

“In my home state of California, every county contains some portion of federal land that local governments are unable to tax to fund the essential services that they provide on them. As a remedy, the PILT program provides payments to all but one California county to offset their service costs but unfortunately, the program is subject to reauthorization every year without a guarantee of funding,” said Duarte. “This bipartisan bill with Congresswoman Pettersen will ensure a reliable stream of revenue to these counties by making the program a permanent fixture of our appropriations process.”

“Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILT) are vital to federal lands counties,” said National Association of Counties Executive Director Matthew Chase. “Even though counties are unable to collect property taxes from federal lands, we are still required to provide necessary services to residents and visitors, such as search and rescue operations, law enforcement, emergency medical services, infrastructure maintenance, and wildfire risk reduction. County governments need the certainty of a permanent commitment to PILT from Congress. We applaud Representatives Pettersen and Duarte for introducing the bipartisan Permanently Authorizing PILT Act and urge Congress to swiftly pass it.”

“As a county with approximately 80 percent federally-managed public lands, Chaffee County relies on Payments in lieu of Taxes (PILT) funds to help fill our resource gap. Permanently authorizing PILT will provide the assurance we need to efficiently plan our budgets and program uses for PILT funding. We applaud Congresswoman Pettersen’s efforts to make PILT predictable and reliable,” said Chaffee County Commissioner Keith Baker.

“In that all services in our county are funded by property taxes and approximately 60 percent of our property is in the Federal government’s hands, we are at a disadvantage when in comes to funding essential services in our county. In order to fill the gap in funding, we rely on PILT money to augment the money we receive from our taxpayers. Having certainty in our PILT funding would enhance our ability to budget for the services that we, as a county must provide,” said Park County Commissioner Dick Elsner.

The Department of Interior makes PILT payments to more than 1,850 counties in 49 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Counties have used these payments for more than 40 years to fund essential county services. Currently, PILT is a discretionary program that is subject to the annual appropriations process. Without predictable mandatory funding, counties will never have the true assurance of the federal revenue that they receive.

The Permanently Authorizing PILT Act of 2023 will address this by ensuring PILT is a mandatory funding effort by the federal government, giving local governments a reliable funding stream to support critical local infrastructure and services.