Jeff Bingaman United States Senator from New Mexico

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman today continued to push for a proposal that would provide an increase of millions of dollars in payments to New Mexico counties.

Bingaman is urging the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is currently in the process of writing an emergency supplemental spending bill, to include a provision to expand and extend the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act and to fully fund the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) initiative.  The Secure Rural Schools program supports counties that rely economically on national forest lands and PILT compensates counties that have extensive federal land that cannot be a source of property taxes. 

In a letter to Senate appropriators, Bingaman and a bipartisan group of more than 20 Senators stressed the importance of the programs to states like New Mexico. 

"The PILT program supports more than 1,900 counties in 49 States across the country, and the county payments program, and funding for it, is vital to the survival of over 775 rural counties and 4,400 schools near national forests in 42 states across the country.  A number of counties and schools around the country have already sent out hundreds of pink slips notifying employees of layoffs that will become permanent if the county payments program is not reauthorize," the letter states. 

The Senate last year overwhelmingly approved language authored by Bingaman and others reauthorizing and funding the Secure Rural Schools program (County Payments), including a more equitable distribution of funds that would benefit New Mexico, and fully-funding PILT.  Unfortunately, only one year of funding for the county payments program was enacted in the final version of last year's emergency supplemental bill.  One year of funding also was included the Senate-passed version of the previous emergency supplement passed earlier this year, but was not included in the final version of the bill.