Floor Statement- PILT Amendment to the Interior Appropriations Bill

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I support the PILT amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill, which increases payments to counties in lieu of taxes. I have worked closely with my good friend and colleague, Senator ABRAHAM, in crafting this amendment, and I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the Senator from Michigan for his efforts in this regard. Senator ABRAHAM has consistently shown a sensitivity to and an understanding of the needs of rural Americans, especially those living in communities surrounded by public lands.

Most of my colleagues understand, by now, that 70 percent of my home state is either owned or controlled by the federal government. I believe that Utah's public lands stand out for their grandeur and unique beauty. Many of our Senate colleagues and staff members have visited these areas to hike, fish, ski, or mountain bike.

No one loves these public lands more than the citizens who live among them. But, for the local citizens, these lands can be both a blessing and a curse. For a number of Utah counties, as much as 90 percent of their lands are federally owned, which means they cannot generate tax revenue from these lands.

Where once public lands were a source of jobs and opportunity for rural America, these lands have increasingly been restricted to single-use activities, such as hiking, biking, or river running. Utah certainly provides excellent opportunities for these types of activities, and we welcome visitors from all over the world.
But, we shouldn't forget, Mr. President, that these visitors come with needs: they need roads to travel on, someone to put out their fires, law enforcement to keep them safe, someone to collect their trash, someone to come find them when they are lost, and someone to transport them to safety when they are hurt. Mr. President, the obligation to fulfill these needs falls on local county governments. With every new wilderness area, monument, or recreation area, county revenues shrink along with taxable economic activity; yet the influx of needy visitors increases.

The services counties provide are not money makers. To the contrary, they exact a tremendous cost on rural governments. The puny revenue local governments raise with their stunted tax base will never cover the costs of providing primary services to visitors over the entire area of their county. For this reason, Congress implemented the Payments in Lieu of Taxes program-known as PILT-which compensates rural counties for some of these services.

The problem is that this program has been funded at less than half the authorized level, and this has caused serious hardship for our counties. This amendment, we hope, will be the first installment in an overall plan to bring the PILT program to full funding. With small increases to PILT every year, our counties will eventually be made whole. We are not talking about a huge amount of money. We are talking $15 million in FY 2000. Last year Senator ABRAHAM and I were able to raise funding for PILT to $124 million, but this amount was cut back to $120 million in Conference. I hope that this year, we can maintain a strong increase in PILT funding.

If your child gets lost in Arches National Park, it will be a Grand County search and rescue team that will mobilize to find him. If you fall and break your ankle on the trail in Dixie National Forest, it will be a Garfield County helicopter and paramedics who will get you off the mountain and to the hospital. When you leave Zion National Park, it will be a Washington county solid waste truck that picks up your garbage. If someone should start a fire while camping in the Wasatch National Forest, the Wasatch County firefighters will be there to put it out.

Our rural governments do all this whether we pay them or not. But it is obviously unfair not to compensate them for it. Mr. President, I believe we should stop treating our rural governments as though they were unpaid chambermaids to the rest of the nation. Our rural areas don't mind providing services to tourists who come to enjoy public lands, but they deserve to be justly compensated by the owners of the land, the taxpayers, for the basic services they provide.

I urge my colleagues to support the PILT amendment.