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Legislative News and Views - Rep. Dale Lueck (R)

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Legislative update

Friday, December 3, 2021

Dear Neighbor,

The Aitkin County ATV Trails Committee recently met to review the status of the Northwoods/ Mille Lacs-Malmo East Loop ATV trail system. I carried legislation that provided $1.5 million in funding to Aitkin County for this project.

Work on Phase 1 of the project, which involves the first leg of the system, is close to completion. Phase 1 focuses on identifying the many terrain characteristics including wetlands, stream crossings, private versus public property, and archeological considerations that the first leg of the route will encounter.

Phase 1 is close to transitioning from concept to potential trail route options on a map and then that detail will be introduced to the public for consideration.

The Northern Counties Land Use Coordinating Board has been working on a detailed review of the “payment in lieu of taxes” program commonly referred to as PILT. I recently attended a presentation by the board on that subject. The program was created by the legislature in 1979 to compensate counites, townships and school districts in consideration that public lands are not part of the local property tax base which funds the public services provided by these local entities.

Over time, the program has evolved into ways that were not foreseen. Today, six counties, beginning with Aitkin County and north, contain over 62 percent (over 5.2 million acres) of public lands but receive about 39 percent of the annual PILT dollars.

In Aitkin County, along with Koochiching and Lake of the Woods, public tax-exempt lands make up over half of the total acres within those counties. PILT payments for those countries has stayed at less than $5 per acre, while in counties to the south per acre PILT payments now range between $10 and several hundred dollars per acre.

The program was never intended to reward counties with huge property tax bases and hold PILT payments at less than $5 per acre for northern Minnesota counties with very limited property tax bases and huge amounts of tax-exempt public lands.

The challenge is how to rebalance the compensation formula to better meet the original goals of this 40-plus-year-old program. It is important that we proceed with some caution to ensure that we don’t create any new unintended consequences. It’s clearly time to make some common sense some adjustments to this program.

Sincerely,

Dale