Tooele County received a check last week from the federal government for $3.16 million.
The $3,166,293 check was the federal government’s annual Payment In Lieu of Taxes, a federal program that compensates counties for non-taxable federal lands in their jurisdiction.
The check was $133,707 short of the $3.3 million budgeted by Tooele County for 2015, but the county has been assured that the balance of the funds have been allocated and will be distributed in October, according to Tooele County Commission Chairman Wade Bitner.
“We are grateful for the money,” he said. “But PILT money is discretionary spending by Congress and could go away at any time. We should not count on that money to come in automatically every year.”
Ideally, PILT money collected in one year would not be spent until the following year, according to Bitner.
“We can’t do that this year because the budget was written with that money as revenue to cover current year expenses,” he said. “We can start working towards spending PILT money the year after it is received when we build next year’s budget.”
This year’s PILT payment has been split 75/25, with $2,374,720 deposited into the county’s general fund and $291,573 into the municipal services fund.
Federal statutes allow counties to use PILT money for any governmental purpose. A 2010 performance audit of county municipal service funds by the Utah State Office of the Legislative Auditor General suggested that PILT money should be used for municipal services or roads.
PILT distribution to counties is calculated by the Department of the Interior using a formula provided by statute that includes the amount of eligible federal lands — primarily Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service land — and the population of the county.
Tooele County received the highest PILT payment of all 29 Utah counties in 2015. Box Elder County, with $2.8 million, was second.
Tooele County, with 2,059,548 PILT eligible acres, ranks number six on the list of counties by total PILT acres. San Juan County, with 3,059,797 acres, is number one.
The county’s PILT payment works out to $1.54 per PILT acre.
Throw in military bases and other federal lands not included in the PILT program, and the federal government owns a total of 3,626,819 acres in Tooele County, or 82 percent of the county, according to a state report.
That drops the PILT payment to an average of 87 cents per federal acre.
The federal government first started paying PILT to counties in 1977 through annual allocations.
In 2008 the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act funded PILT through 2012. When that act expired, PILT was reauthorized for 2013 through the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act, a transportation-funding bill.
In January 2014 a jolt was sent throughout counties when the 2014 federal spending bill approved by Congress did not include PILT.
However, Congress funded PILT for 2014 in the annual Farm Bill that they passed in February 2014.
Congress, using a combination of the National Defense Reauthorization Act and the Continuing Appropriations Act, funded PILT for 2015.
“President Obama has proposed to fully fund the PILT program, and we encourage Congress to take the required action to make sure this important program continues,” said Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, in a press release announcing the 2015 PILT payments.