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Show Wen Federal Money is Coming President Ford has signed legislation authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to make payments in lieu of real estate taxes to counties and other units of local government govern-ment having certain kinds of federally-owned land within their borders. Land owned by the federal government has historically been exempt from local taxation. The new law would base payments to local units of government on the acreage of certain types of federal land within the unit, on the amount of money paid to the unit from revenue collected from those lands, and on local population. In each case, the local unit would be entitled to the greater amount of money computed by either one of two formulas. The first formula would be computed by multiplying 75 cents by the acres of specified federal lands within the unit. This amount could not exceed a ceiling based on the population of the unit. The ceiling is graduated from $50 per capita for populations of 5,000 and under to $20 per capita for populations of 50,000. One million dollars ($1,000,000) is the maximum any unit could receive under the population limitations. Payments received by the local unit from federal land reve- nues as a result of other statutes would be subtracted from the initial calculation to arrive at the actual amount the local governmental unit was due under this formula. The second formula is computed by multiplying 10 cents by the total number of the specified federal acres within the unit. Under this formula there would be no reduction for revenue shared with the unit but payment would still be limited by the unit population. No payment of under $100 would be made to Counties With Federal Land within Their Borders . . .... fnrmarirm ,11 U , under either formula. Federal acres included in the law are lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Rec- lamation. National Park Service, Serv-ice, Forest Service, and Corps of Engineers. The law does not include federal wildlife refuges, refu-ges, Indian lands or lands included in military bases. It does not include federal lands acquired from states or local units of governments if the lands were not subjected to real estate taxes prior to being acquired by the federal government. gov-ernment. Additional payment is provided pro-vided to local units for National Park lands acquired after December 31, 1970 if the lands were on the tax rolls at the time of acquisition. Such payments are to be 5 of the value of the lands paid to the local unit at 1 per year for five years. Interior onicials noted tnat all their figures at this time are estimates since final figures cannot be computed until state governors in the public land states provide information about the distribution of certain receipts received from the federal land to their local governmental units. This in- T , " uc "jested shortly. They also noted that there can be no payments until ' Congress has appropriated i funds for these in lieu tax ' payments. Given current ' schedules, congressional act- I ion on appropriations would 1 not be likely before late spring, 1977; payments would be made for the fiscal 1977 vear shortly thereafter. |