This week, I'm proud to announce my fight for a significant source of funding for rural New Mexico counties was successful. PILT - or Payment in Lieu of Taxes - is vital for counties across the West, but funding for the program was left out of a major budget bill earlier this year.
I've been working with a bipartisan group of Western senators to reinstate PILT, and this week, we are able to announce that funding has been included in the Farm Bill at our request. This is a major victory for New Mexico counties that were worried about their budgets, and it's a big relief for families with school children and all residents who count on emergency services and road improvements.
Through PILT, the federal government compensates local governments for hosting nontaxable public land, such as land managed by the Bureau of Land Management or national parks and forests. It's a critical source of revenue for almost every county in New Mexico, which use the funding to provide services like schools, roads and emergency protection.
Below is a map of federal lands in New Mexico:
New Mexico counties received $34 million through the program in 2013 alone as shown by this interactive map of PILT funding.
New Mexico is proud to host many unique and valuable federal lands like our military bases and national monuments - land that brings revenue to our state through tourism and resource development. But it is important for the federal government to be a good neighbor to the counties that host these lands. Unfortunately, the federal government has not made PILT funding permanent - the program expired at the end of last year with no plan to reinstate it - so I went to work with a bipartisan coalition of senators from across the West to find a practical solution.
A number of counties in New Mexico have been very concerned about the future of PILT and have written to me about its importance:
"The PILT program is a critical source of funding to ensure that we are able to provide our residents with the basic services with regard to infrastructure and public safety." -- Cibola County
"PILT has become a critical component of local government budgets." -- San Juan County
" The PILT program is essential to the health and well being of Hidalgo County." -- Hidalgo County
"This funding ensures that Counties remain able to provide necessary basic services ranging from fire suppression to law enforcement activities." -- Lincoln County
"These funds have been put to use on both annual and long-term projects that benefit our citizens, other New Mexicans and guests to our County." -- Sandoval County
We fought to add one year of PILT funding in the Farm Bill, so local governments won't see a gap in their budgets. The Farm Bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives this week, and I look forward to voting for the bill next week and sending it to the president to be signed into law very soon.
Our work on PILT isn't over. We still have to find a permanent source of funding. Recently, I won a commitment from the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman to work with me on finding reliable PILT funding for the future. She will be a strong ally as we work on this together. As she put it, this is an issue of fairness.
All New Mexicans deserve consistent services, and local governments need to be able to count on the funding for long-term planning.
As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I'm going to keep working to educate my colleagues about the program so we can build on the bipartisan progress we made this week.
Photo of The Gila National Forest by Flickr Member JimyJOp.
