County

County's PILT payments nearly double last year's

Sept. 25, 2001

Montezuma County will receive a little more than $266,000 this year from the BLM for Payments in Lieu of Taxes.

The PILT monies are given to local governments throughout the United States to offset the loss of tax revenues caused by the presence of tax-exempt federal lands within their boundaries.

This year’s payment is nearly double what the county received in 2000 — $136,136. In total, Colorado received $15,240,782, nearly $5 million more than last year.

The BLM has distributed more than $2.7 billion in PILT payments to local governments since Congress passed the act in 1977.

Over one-third of Montezuma County, or 490,425 acres, is federal land, not including the Ute Mountain Ute tribal lands. The county’s federal land is managed by entities that include the National Park Service, BLM, U.S. Forest Service, and Bureau of Reclamation.

Payments are made for tax-exempt federal lands in the national-park and national-forest systems, federal lands administered by BLM, lands dedicated to federal water-resources development projects, and lands withdrawn from the public domain in other categories.

BLM calculates the payments using the PILT Act formula, based on population and the amount of federal land within an affected county or census area.

These payments are in addition to federal revenues transferred to the counties under other programs, such as income generated from use of federal land for livestock grazing and timber harvesting.

More in-depth information may be obtained from the BLM’s web site at www.blm.gov/pilt.