What the nation promised the counties that keep its forests
The federal forest payment that funds our schools and roads has fallen three-quarters since 2001. Congress has authorized Secure Rural Schools only through fiscal 2026, which ends September 30, 2026. Here is why PILT can't make up the difference, and why the county can't easily make it up locally.
The promise dates to 1906. Counties couldn't tax the national forests inside their borders, so Congress began sharing what the forest earned: 10% of its receipts at first, then, in 1908, 25%, paid through the state for public schools and roads. The Forest Service made its case to taxpayers in a 1907 pamphlet: "Thus a county which is partly covered by a National Forest is better off than one which is not." (The Use of the National Forests, 1907.)
In 2000 Congress offered counties Secure Rural Schools as a guaranteed alternative to the old timber share, after harvests on the Gifford Pinchot collapsed in the early 1990s. Congress has shrunk it over time and let it lapse more than once. In 1988, before the collapse, the forest paid Skamania County and its schools about $11.4 million.
No Washington county gets a larger forest payment, and none relies on it more: Skamania's is 3.5 times its PILT, the widest gap in the state (fiscal 2025).
| Fiscal year | Paid |
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Payments in Lieu of Taxes counts federal acres, then caps the payment by population, then subtracts the forest money the county got the year before (31 U.S.C. 6903).
So when forest money was high, PILT was small. When it fell, PILT rose, but only up to the ceiling. Skamania's 841,692 federal acres are worth about $3.0 million at the 2026 rate. The population ceiling holds the payment to about $1.98 million.
PILT can soften a lost forest payment. It can't replace one.
Without a public vote, Washington lets a county's regular levy grow at most 1% a year (less when inflation is lower), plus new construction. The cost of running the same services rises faster. Our property tax explainer walks through the lid.
Even assuming costs grow a conservative 3.5% a year, the gap reaches about $525,000 a year by 2035. Washington counties' own books show median cost growth of 5.1% a year from 2015 to 2024 (Skamania's own: 6.2%). To stand still next year, Skamania would need about $74 million of new construction, 1.75 times what it added in 2025, and more every year after.
In Interior's 2026 payment file, 189 of the roughly 2,280 local governments listed have federal acreage worth more than their population ceiling lets them collect. Together, the ceilings held them back about $1.37 billion in 2026.
Interior says the 2026 PILT increase was "driven largely by a 42.63 percent decrease in prior year timber deductions," from the lapse in Secure Rural Schools. Of the $107.6 million drop in deductions, only about $69 million, roughly 64 cents on the dollar, reached counties as higher PILT. Most of the rest went to places already paid on the formula's flat minimum, many of them held there by their population ceilings.
Skamania isn't a special case. Using Forest Service and Interior payment data for fiscal 2025, we found 29 counties where national forest covers at least 45% of the land, forest and PILT payments come to at least $100 per resident, Secure Rural Schools is more than half of that money, and the county takes Secure Rural Schools rather than the old 25% share. Skamania ranks 20th, at $250 per resident. The 29 stretch across ten states, from Alaska to Florida, and their members of Congress come from both parties.
The list depends on the year. With fiscal 2026 PILT, which rose after Secure Rural Schools lapsed, it shrinks to 15 counties. Oregon counties are understated, because BLM's O&C timber payments aren't in either dataset. Five counties sit close to a cutoff. House districts are those of the 119th Congress (2025–2026); California and Utah have new maps for the 2026 election. Party labels are as the House Clerk and the Senate print them. Download the county table (CSV).