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Show PlLT hearings to survey U.S. county payment problem ! B)' Helene C. Monbirg I Vernal Express ij Washington, D.C. I Correspondent j foe uarinSs have been set on July 12 in I aitiineT Interior Commiee to ex-'i ex-'i whirh il6 W"ole amut of problems ' PaymP.aVe deve'oped over the Bram, D"lleu"of-taxes PILT) pro- saiSlSKogovsek'D-Col' plo tKly the committee planned to an aDn. , Problems associated with 1 CvVek court decision last year' "eywiliK3 But now il aPPears said. much broader scoped, he miaLu uing t0 Mo Uda11 Just a after the t , has set the hearing for that Mo l. Uly 4 recess. I'm not sure troader ,,WSyet the hearings will be 1ewil" janfor the interim bill, but 'ervie; ogovsek said here n an in-ttie in-ttie Pr "n June 23. He was talking to WplJ!!St off the House floor, ie HoUS(, , S6en Uda11' chairman of not ke! enor Committee. Udall bills about Kogovsek's PILT 9 "There are problems with the Senate compromise worked out in the supplemental appropriations bill. And there is the long-term problem of funding. fun-ding. I want to see PILT put on some type of automatic funding mechanism, so that we don't have to go to Sid Yates on bended knee and beg for PILT payments each year. That's bull feathers. We have both a short-term and long-term problem with PILT," Kogovsek stated, Rep. Sidney R. Yates, D-Ill., is chairman of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee. A key witness at the July 12 hearings will be Don Chase, County Commissioner Commis-sioner of Box Elder County, Ut ah, who has been very active in the whole PILT controversy for several years, according accor-ding to Kogovsek's staff. Others who will testify will include County Commissioners Com-missioners from Colorado, California, Oregon and probably Idaho, his staff and the committee staff said. Kogovsek and his staff are trying to get away from the concept that Kogovsek is sponsoring PILT legislation legisla-tion developed solely by the National Association of Counties (NACO). Mike Lopez, Kogovsek's natural resources aide, said the whole idea of providing a trust fund to assure automatic PILT payments to public land counties annually an-nually which is the thrust of Kogovsek's main PILT bill "originated in Ray's office in Pueblo with the county commissioners from Pueblo and Mesa Counties, Harry Bowes and Jim Evans of Colorado Counties, Inc., and several others. It originated from our own county commissioners," com-missioners," Lopez insisted. Nevertheless, Never-theless, Kogovsek generally has hewed hew-ed very closely to the NACO line on PILT, and while Lopez was out ill recently, Attorney Gerry Greene of NACO worked part-time in Kogovsek's office tracking the PILT legislation. There are three problems with the PILT program, which began in 1976, with the enactment of the PILT act sponsored by then-Rep. Frank E. Evans, D-Colo. One is that the measure needs technical revisions. Secondly, there is no assurance what the PILT payments will be as Yates has insisted that mineral leasing receipts be deducted from the PILT payments for many counties, leaving them very little from the PILT program pro-gram annually. The whole idea of PILT is to compensate local governments, govern-ments, commonly counties in the West, for the non-taxable public lands that they have within their borders that belong to the United States. Finally, under the compromise worked out in the Senate to assure townships in some parts of the country coun-try get PILT payments in line with a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision last year, it appears that where states elect to make distribution of PILT payments, the states will take out for administrative costs of the distribution in addition to the amount already deducted by Bureau of Land Management. Manage-ment. Some local governments are upset over that concept, which they perceive in the Senate compromise. |