Gibbons demands administration account for fed funding shortfalls

Suzanne Struglinski

Thursday, June 16, 2005 | 9:36 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., on Wednesday prodded Bush administration officials to account for shortfalls in payments made by the federal government to states that are largely federally owned.

The PILT money is designed to help large swaths of Western states like Nevada where the federal government owns land and there is little tax base to support local services for the people who live there.

President Bush in his budget for the next fiscal year proposed about $200 million for the program known as Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILT, roughly a $26.8 million cut from last year. Interior Department officials have said that far more -- roughly $343 million -- would be needed to "fully fund" the program adequately.

The proposed Bush cuts would equal about a 12 percent cut for Nevada from last year, amounting to roughly $1.6 million less than the $13.5 it received last year.

Nevada lawmakers, and allies in other Western states with federal in-holdings, vowed to restore at least some of the money. The House has approved an Interior spending bill that allocates $242 million. The Senate version allocates $235 million, although the full Senate has not voted on it yet.

Nevada lawmakers have long made the case that PILT payments were falling short.

But in a congressional committee hearing Tuesday, Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department's undersecretary of Natural Resources and Environment said that "in a tight budget environment we make tough decisions about priorities."

Gibbons on Tuesday argued that PILT money is important to rural counties that cannot pay for schools, hospitals and other public services due to a low tax base.

At a meeting of the House Resources subcommittee on forests and forest health, Gibbons pointed to Nevada on a map. The map showed 85 percent of Nevada shaded red, depicting the percentage owned by the federal government.

"It's almost impossible to find the white, which is the private land," Gibbons said. "We have counties up there bigger than some states."

Gibbons sits on the Resources Committee. He is not a member of the forests subcommittee but was allowed to sit in on the meeting to plead his case.

"Nevada has been shortchanged by the federal government long enough," Gibbons said outside the hearing.

Nevada lawmakers have long sought other legislative remedies in Congress to make up for the fact that the federal government owns so much of the state. One of those laws, the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, allows for auctions of federal land in Clark County. Profits remain in Nevada and are used for land programs, as well as school and water programs.

That program has been the subject of controversy lately as profits from the land sales swell into the billions of dollars. The Bush administration has proposed funneling some of the proceeds into federal coffers, while Nevada lawmakers seek to keep the money in the state. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.