RIDGWAY — An online app unveiled in Elk County on Tuesday is the latest tool enlisted in a growing push to change how rural governments are paid for public lands they cannot tax.
The app’s creator, Elk County IT/GIS director Jim Abbey, in addressing Tuesday’s meeting of the Elk County Commissioners, said only 23 percent of land in Elk County — or 126,548 of a total 533,724 acres — is generating local taxes at market value.
Much of the remainder is tax exempt land belonging to state and federal owners who instead make “payments in-lieu of taxes (PILT),” often at much lower rates.
In 2014, Elk County received $127,137 in PILT money on 111,966 federally owned acres, translating to roughly $1 per acre for the year, according the U.S. Department of the Interior’s website. A year earlier, in 2013, 111,959 federally-owned acres earned the county $74,688. In 2012, that same acreage earned $58,582 total at roughly 52 cents per acre, for the year.
In response, a growing movement to reform PILT systems is gaining momentum in northcentral Pennsylvania, where vast expanses of land represent no local tax revenue, instead belonging to state and federal land owners and forest, game land or park systems.
The Potter County Commissioners have also joined the fray along with the State Land Tax Fairness Coalition, which calls for an increase in PILT payments on state-owned land to local school districts, counties and municipalities. The group also advocates a sharing of the revenue derived from oil and gas leases and timber sales on state forest land with the same three taxing bodies.
In hoping to convince Harrisburg and Washington of the need for change, Elk County’s commissioners on Tuesday said they requested a visual aid.
Abbey delivered the website application unveiled Tuesday. It consists of an interactive, color-coded map showing the extent of the county’s tax free zones by municipality. Commissioner Jan Kemmer called the illustration “an eye opener.”
Commissioner Dan Freeburg hopes state lawmakers will feel the same, saying the board plans to show the map to legislators while urging change in calculations of state PILT shares.
State Rep. Martin Causer, R-Turtlepoint, is already on board, having reintroduced legislation last month that would increase payments in-lieu-of-taxes on state-owned forest and game lands from $3.60 per acre to $6 per acre. Causer also wants 20 percent of total revenue collected from the sale of timber, oil and natural gas on most state-owned lands to be deposited into a restricted fund for disbursement to local governments across the Commonwealth.
“Our region is already struggling economically, and that struggle is compounded by the volume of state-owned lands here,” Causer said in a statement last year. “The amount the state currently pays in PILT, and even what it would pay under my legislation, is a small fraction of what the land would generate if it was still on the tax rolls.”
Causer said state PILT rates were last increased from $1.20 per acre to the current $3.60 per acre in 2006.
“This would be a permanent solution,” Freeburg said of PILT reform Tuesday, while referring in part to the uncertain future of state impact fees collected on Marcellus Shale gas wells drilled in the county.
“We’re looking for stability,” he added.
The app highlighting Elk County’s “tax inequity” as officials call it, will be available through the county’s website beginning today.
Also on Tuesday, the board approved an agreement authorizing the county to administer Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding for Ridgway Borough.
The funding is available through the state for a host of local housing, development and poverty initiatives.
Elk County CDBG coordinator Tracy Gerber said the state is newly requiring counties to administer applications for CDBG funding for boroughs and townships with populations of under 10,000.
Ridgway Borough is home to roughly 5,000 residents.
Gerber said the administrative agreement will not effect the borough’s CDBG award amounts and that borough and county entitlements through the program will remain separate.
A public hearing on the change is scheduled for 4 p.m. March 25 in the courthouse annex building in Ridgway.
The commissioners on Tuesday also named Julie Cavalline to provide nursing duties at the Elk County Prison at a rate of $19.57 per hour, and Ridgway Borough Councilman J.R. Geitner to the Elk County Planning Commission to replace Heather Mader.
The commissioners will next meet in conference room number two of the courthouse annex at 10 a.m. April 7.
