Washington’s Broken Promise Threatens Rural Montana Schools

Earlier this year, public land ownership and use were big topics in the news. The issue divided many Montanans on how best to use and manage these lands. I’m an avid user of public lands and fully support keeping them open to the public, but I also want to shed some light on how they’re funded at the federal level.

The federal government is obligated to pay local jurisdictions some form of property tax on the land it owns. There are complex formulas and programs used to calculate those payments, and each year Congress must appropriate the money in the federal budget before it can be distributed to local areas.

In Beaverhead County, where I live, we have just over 2,000,000 acres of public land. Part of that is the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, which totals 48,787 acres in Beaverhead County. In 2010, the appraised value of that land was $23,988,920. Based on U.S. Code and the required formulas, the tax payment to Beaverhead County should have been $179,917. What the county actually received was $38,501—just over 21% of what was owed.

For fiscal year 2023–24, the total due was $194,059, but the county received only $43,432. Between 2008 and 2024, Beaverhead County has been shorted roughly $2.26 million. A large portion of those funds would have gone to the Lima school system.  Lima is a small town of 220 people in southern Beaverhead County.  They have their own school system with less than 60 students total and approximately 18 in the high school.  The school board is doing all they can to keep the high school open and fear they may have to close it soon due to lack of funds.  This underpayment from the federal government is one of the main culprits of their problems.   

It’s important to remember this isn’t a “tax bill” the county sends to the federal government. The dollars owed are determined by U.S. law and federal formulas. When Congress fails to appropriate the full amount owed for wildlife refuges nationwide, the reduced funds are divided up and sent out to local jurisdictions.

This is a prime example of Washington bureaucracy affecting us personally. At a time when hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are being sent overseas for various programs, this should raise alarm bells. Our federal government is funding education and literacy initiatives in other countries, yet it’s shortchanging the taxpayers who fund those programs and the schools here at home. That kind of fiscal mismanagement shows where the government’s priorities truly lie.

As a fiscal conservative, I fully support cutting waste and eliminating unnecessary programs that have grown over the past few decades. But this is different—this is money legally owed back to local communities and should be made right immediately. For many national wildlife refuge communities, the shortfall might not be noticed, but for rural areas like ours, it’s a major hit to local schools and essential services.

I encourage everyone to reach out to our elected representatives and senators in Washington and let them know you support cutting unnecessary overseas spending while fully funding the programs that are legally owed to local communities. If the federal government is going to own and manage so much land across the United States, then it should also follow the law and pay what it owes to the people who live and work on those lands.  How would you be treated if you only paid a portion of your property taxes each year?

One last thing to consider: with more than 2,000,000 acres of public land, Beaverhead County receives just $0.55 per acre each year in PILT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) —one of the lowest rates in the state. That’s another issue worth revisiting soon.