Borough receives $1.5 million from BLM

MAT-SU -- The Mat-Su Borough recently received more than $1.5 million from the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in return for non-taxable federal lands.

The BLM, last week, distributed more than $13 million to municipalities within Alaska under the PILT, or Payment in Lieu of Taxes Act. According to information from the BLM, 27 Alaska governments will receive payments based primarily on acreage entitlements.

The amount sent out this year varies from the just over $1 million paid out to the borough by the BLM last year. BLM information states that the variance can be attributed to population changes and adjustments for annual inflation.

The payments are allocated according to a formula in the PILT Act that includes population and the amount of federal land within an affected county or borough. These payments are in addition to other federal revenues, such as livestock grazing and timber harvesting, that the federal government transfers to the counties.

PILT payments are distributed to offset the loss of tax revenue as a result of having tax-exempt federal lands within the borough's jurisdiction.

The annual PILT payments are made for tax-exempt federal lands administered by the BLM, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, including all agencies of the Interior department, the U.S. Forest Service -- part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- and for federal water projects and some military installations.