Flathead County gets $3M-plus federal payment

Flathead County will receive a $3.114 million payment from the federal government under a program that compensates local governments for nontaxable federal land.

Flathead County is one of about 1,900 local governments throughout the country that will get a total of $529.3 million this year.

Some 72% — or 2.44 million acres of the 3.36 million acres of land in Flathead County — is federally owned.

Each year the county earmarks $500,000 of the payment-in-lieu money to the road department, and this will continue with the latest allocation as well, county Finance Director Amy Dexter said.

Dexter said the county has budgeted $2.6 million in payment-in-lieu funding, including $1 million to the savings fund for a new detention facility and $1.1 million toward the North Building being converted into county office space in the former CenturyLink building. The remaining money will go into the county’s cash balance, she added.

Flathead County has used its payment-in-lieu-of-taxes for a number of building projects through the years, including the restoration of the historic main courthouse, renovation of Courthouse West, conversion of the old county jail into the county attorney offices and construction of the South Campus Building.

The funding formula computes payments based on the number of acres of federal entitlement land within each county or jurisdiction and the population of each jurisdiction.

According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, Montana will receive $36.2 million, with the largest allocation going to Flathead County. Other counties to receive sizable allocations include Lewis and Clark and Ravalli counties, which are each getting $2.75 million, and Missoula County, which will receive $2.22 million.

PILT payments are made annually for tax-exempt federal lands administered by Department of the Interior agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Reclamation, the Interior Department said in a press release. Additionally, the payments cover federal lands administered by the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Since PILT payments began in 1977, the Interior Department has distributed more than $10.2 billion to states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The department collects more than $10.3 billion in revenue annually from commercial activities on public lands, such as oil and gas leasing, livestock grazing, and timber harvesting. A portion of the revenue is shared with states and counties. The balance is deposited in the U.S. Treasury, which in turn pays for a broad array of federal activities, the department said.