County officials from across the West traveled to Washington, D.C. late last week to lobby Congress for an increase in FY97 Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILT) funding. Nine commissioners and supervisors, and a county treasurer campaigned from office to office to make Congress aware of the need to continue the increase in funding for the program.
Counties were successful in convincing congressional appropriators to increase funding by $12 million for FY96 and would like to keep up the momentum. During the three-day effort, officials encouraged House and Senate appropriators to increase PILT from its current $113 million to $150 million for FY97.
“We are extremely pleased that we were able to come away from Capitol Hill with a sense that members of the House and Senate appropriations committees have a sincere interest in PILT,” said Montrose County (Colo.) Commissioner Cindy Bowen.
In addition to Bowen, other officials who participated in the PILT “fly-in” were Dennis Brinker, Jackson County, Colo.; Commissioner Louise Liston, Garfield County, Utah; Joan Frey, Klickitat County, Wash.; Commissioner Dave Schmidt, Linn County, Ore.; John Bishop, Malheur County, Ore.; Commissioner George Enneking, Idaho County, Idaho; Supervisor Larry Layton, Navajo County, Ariz.; and Treasurer Jan Porter from Catron County, N.M.
The PILT Program was created in 1976. Until this year, the program had not seen an increase in its original funding level of $105 million for two decades.
In April, Congress gave counties an extra $12 million to help them offset rising costs for services for this current fiscal year. The funds are used by counties in 49 states to reduce the burden of local taxpayers from costs incurred by providing services on public lands such as solid waste disposal, law enforcement, search and rescue, and fire fighting.
“Our demand for services continues to rise,” said Bowen. “We need this increase to reduce the burden on local taxpayers.”
Most congressional staff told the officials that the PILT Program had been quite fortunate to have received an increase when so many other programs were being cut, and that to hold the line for FY97 should be considered a victory.
“We’ve got to continue the pressure on Congress to receive our fair share, this is a major underfunded mandate that must addressed,” stated Liston.
Some of the officials also met with the editorial board of Governing magazine to discuss issues related to PILT, public lands, devolution and the general state of counties. The hour-long meeting covered a broad range of policy and funding questions, and proved to be quite informative for the all the participants.