Nevada gets $23.9 million from PILT program

Nevada will receive $23.9 million in federal funding through the Payments In Lieu of Taxes program this year - $119,008 of it for Carson City.

PILT is a program designed to compensate states that have a disproportionately large amount of federally owned lands within their borders. In Nevada, 87 percent of the land is federal and, therefore, exempt from property taxes.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the funding can be used for essential services and improvements for education, law enforcement, health care and infrastructure.

In Nevada, many particularly rural counties are nearly all federally owned - several of them more than 97 percent. Those counties, Reid said, struggle to pay for basic services because they simply don't have a property tax base.

"PILT payments make a difference for Nevada's communities," he said.

Douglas also received a smaller amount - $632,761. But neighboring Lyon County will get more than $1.9 million.

The payments were much smaller in the past because Congress typically didn't fully fund PILT. Reid, however, managed to get legislation through to fully fund PILT in 2008. Since then, the state has received $22 million-$24 million each year.