On Tuesday August 4, President Trump signed the Great Outdoors
Act into law. The new law was passed with bi-partisan support and
will provide up to $9.5 billion over five years to fix deferred
maintenance at national parks, wildlife refuges, forests, and
other federal lands, with $6.5 billion earmarked specifically to
the 419 national park units. The Act is expected to create more
than 108,000 new jobs to repair park infrastructure, including
access roads and bridges in adjacent communities.
In addition, the law allocates $900 million a year to the Land
and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) to acquire and preserve land
for public use. This fund is paid for by royalty payments from
offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters. The LWCF was
established in 1964 with an authorization level of $900m, but in
most years Congress has appropriated less than half of this
amount. The LWCF helps fund the four main federal land programs
(National Parks, National Forests, Fish and Wildlife, and Bureau
of Land Management) and provides grants to state and local
governments to acquire land for recreation and conservation.
NACO had concerns with permanent mandatory funding of LWCF
because it is also used by federal lands agencies to purchase
private and state lands to add to the federal estate which
removes those lands from county property tax rolls. While these
lands are generally Payments In-Lieu of Taxes (PILT) eligible,
PILT payments are much less than property tax revenues.
NACO encouraged Congress and the administration to mitigate this
scenario by ensuring new land acquisitions receive the support of
the elected officials within an impacted county, while also
supporting long-term funding for federal lands counties through
the PILT and Secure Rural Schools (SRS) programs. Senators Ron
Wyden (D-Ore.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and
James Risch (R-Idaho) sponsored an amendment to secure ten years
of full, mandatory PILT funding and establish an endowment fund
to make permanent SRS payments to national forest counties, but
the amendment was not considered by the full Senate.
CSAC will continue to support efforts to secure PILT and SRS
funding for rural and forested counties in conjunction with
NACO’s efforts on Public Lands issues.
