Okanogan County received almost $3 million from the U.S. Department of the Interior last week to compensate for nontaxable federal land. The annual Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) go into the general fund and can be used for any expense that would be covered by property taxes, Okanogan County Treasurer Leah Mc Cormack said.
Okanogan County has more federal land than any other county in Washington — 1,564,722 acres, almost half the county’s land base — but Chelan County received a higher payment because the formula takes four variables into account: acreage, population, inflation and prior year revenue-sharing payments, according to Giovanni Rocco, deputy press secretary for Interior. Chelan County received almost $3.5 million this year.
All but 63,000 acres of the federal land in Okanogan County is managed by the U.S. Forest Service. There are small amounts managed by the Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Reclamation.
In 2021, Okanogan County received $2.78 million from the PILT program.
Washington counties received payments of almost $12 million this year. Because it has so little federal land, Thurston County received only $1,340 and Wahkiakum, with just 1 acre, got nothing. The Department of Interior distributed $549.4 million this year to more than 1,900 state and local governments across the country, primarily in western states.
The PILT program began in 1976. The Department of Interior collects more than $12.1 billion in revenue annually from commercial activities on public lands and returns a portion of those revenues to states and counties. Because local governments cannot tax federal lands, the PILT funds help defray the costs of maintaining important community services, according to Interior.
