With the House of Representatives already planning to look at the issue, the Senate on Oct. 19 approved a measure that could result in more predictable Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) for communities surrounding federal facilities, including many across the Energy Department complex.
The amendment to the Senate’s fiscal 2018 budget package won approval in a 58-41 vote. The House passed the Senate’s version of the 2018 budget resolution Thursday.
Sponsored by New Mexico Democrat Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, the measure would have the Senate fully and permanently fund the PILT program, which helps communities around federal facilities finance schools and infrastructure needs.
In essence, the amendment creates a deficit-neutral reserve fund that gives Congress leeway to rework PILT policy and provide mandatory funding, as long as it doesn’t add to the deficit, a congressional staffer said.
Close to 1,900 counties in 49 states receive PILT funding, according to a press release from Udall. In 2016 alone, the Energy Department paid out $9.5 million just to counties around the Hanford Site in Washington state, a 586-square-mile complex once home to plutonium production for the U.S. nuclear arsenal and now a massive cleanup project.
Congress currently doles out PILT funding via discretionary annual appropriations to local governments that are home to nontaxable federal land within their boundaries.
“Last night’s vote was an important step forward that lays the groundwork for future congressional action to fully fund PILT in 2018 and beyond,” Udall said in the release.
The House of Representatives has called for a full overhaul of the PILT program in its fiscal 2018 Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill. House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) has said PILT payouts are not transparent, and are not interpreted consistently. The House bill also calls for a Comptroller General assessment of the PILT program.
Most of the communities near DOE’s major sites receive PILT money, according to the Energy Communities Alliance, which represents local governments and tribes around sites operated by the Department of Energy and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. New Mexico is home to several of those facilities: the NNSA’s Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories, as well as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant transuranic waste storage site.
The Energy Communities Alliance has said it is not opposed to a fresh look at PILT policy, so long as current PILT agreements are not terminated before additional study is completed.
ECA did not respond to request for additional comment this week.
The congressional staffer who spoke on background called the Senate PILT vote symbolic but nevertheless important. “As you know, the budget is nonbinding, so it’s a statement of policy and puts a marker down that PILT is important and should be part of our mandatory funding,” the staffer said.
The staffer said it is noteworthy that 10 Republicans supported a Democratic amendment that called for full, permanent, and mandatory PILT funding.
