County gets $3.4 million to offset nontaxable land

Flathead County will receive $3.4 million this year from the federal government under a long-running program that compensates local governments for nontaxable federal land.

The appropriation is roughly $840,000 more than last year’s payment to Flathead County.

Montana’s slice of the payments-in-lieu-of-taxes pie is $40 million, up from $31.8 million last year.

A record $552.8 million will be distributed to more than 1,900 local governments around the United States — the largest amount ever allocated in the federal program’s 40-year history, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said in a press release. Last year’s nationwide distribution of $464.6 million also was a record appropriation.

Flathead County’s payments-in-lieu allocation is the largest among Montana counties. Ravalli County will receive just over $3 million this year; Lewis and Clark County will get $2.8 million; Missoula County will get $2.3 million; and Lincoln County’s allocation is $1.6 million.

About 70 percent of Flathead County’s 2.44 million acres is federally owned.

Each year Flathead County earmarks $500,000 of the payments-in-lieu money to the road department. In recent years the county also has set aside a portion of the payments-in-lieu money for construction of a new jail.

The payments-in-lieu-of-taxes allocation typically is saved for infrastructure projects as needed, Commissioner Pam Holmquist said. The federal money was used to help pay for the South Campus Building and the renovation of the old jail facility that is now the county Attorney’s office complex. Flathead County has used the federal money for projects such as main Courthouse renovation, construction of a parking lot next to the Earl Bennett Building and to help buy the building that houses the Montana State University Extension Service and 4-H program.

Tax-exempt federal lands include those administered by the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest and for federal water projects and some military installations.

Since payments-in-lieu-of-taxes payments began in 1977, the Department of the Interior has distributed nearly $8.5 billion dollars to states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

The department collects in excess of $9.6 billion in revenue annually from commercial use of public lands, such as oil and gas leasing, livestock grazing and timber harvesting, the department said.