Sandoval County will receive $2.9 million from the U.S. Department of the Interior to upgrade essential services.
On June 26, the department announced New Mexico will receive Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) for 2024. Thirty-one other local governments, in addition to Sandoval County, will receive a portion of the total $49.8 Million funding in PILT.
Sandoval County Manager Wayne Johnson says the PILT funding will spread around the county to help improve vital community services.
“It goes to everything from debt service, to our firefighting, to law enforcement, to the clerk’s office to just general operations of the county. It goes to pay salaries, it goes to pay for capital because we have county capital funds as well, it goes to pay for firefighting, it goes to pay for keeping the lights on and maintaining the buildings and buying, it goes to debt service,” Johnson said.
What are PILT payments?
The federal government gives money to local governments because states are not allowed to collect property taxes on federal land. The money can be used to help local governments pay for vital services like schools, maintenance, first responders and security.
PILT funds are given to local governments depending on how many acres of federal land are within each jurisdiction and the size of the population in that area. According to the Department of the Interior, Sandoval County has 908,563 acres of land worth $2.9 million in PILT funds.
“Sandoval County in New Mexico and all the western states have large swaths of federal land. Whether that’s forest service, whether it’s military, like White Sands, or whether it’s tribal, BLM, BIA, there’s a lot of three letter acronym groups involved in this, but it’s all federal land,” Johnson said.
For more information about PILT visit https://www.doi.gov/pilt