Valley County Will Receive PILT Funding To Provide Vital Services Across Montana

The Department of the Interior has announced more than 1,900 state and local governments around the country will receive a total of $621.2 million in Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) funding for 2024. Valley County is expected to receive $984,349 of the total $43,301,694 secured in Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILT) funds to support critical law enforcement, firefighting, and infrastructure priorities across Montana.

This compares to $1,335,959 in 2023. Valley County has over 1.1 million acres of federal land so receives a substantial PILT payment yearly. Because local governments cannot tax federal lands, annual PILT payments help to defray the costs associated with maintaining important community services.

PILT payments are made for tax-exempt federal lands administered by the Department’s bureaus including the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, National Park Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In addition, PILT payments cover federal lands administered by the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Utah Reclamation Mitigation and Conservation Commission. Payments are calculated based on the number of acres of federal land within each county or jurisdiction and the population of that county or jurisdiction.?

“The Biden-Harris administration is committed to boosting local communities,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget Joan Mooney. “PILT payments help local governments carry out vital services, such as firefighting and police protection, construction of public schools and roads, and search-and-rescue operations. We are grateful for our ongoing partnerships with local jurisdictions across the country who help the Interior Department fulfill our mission on behalf of the American public.”

The Department collects more than $22.2 billion in revenue annually from commercial activities on public lands. A portion of those revenues is shared with states and counties. The balance is deposited into the U.S. Treasury, which in turn pays for a broad array of federal activities, including PILT funding.

Individual payments may vary from year to year as a result of changes in acreage data, which are updated annually by the federal agency administering the land; prior-year federal revenue-sharing payments reported annually by the governor of each state; and inflationary adjustments using the Consumer Price Index and population data, which are updated using information from the U.S. Census Bureau.