James Oberstar: “this payment in lieu of taxes program is about basic fairness. The Federal Government holds large tracts of land in…”

“this payment in lieu of taxes program is about basic fairness. The Federal Government holds large tracts of land in public trust for all Americans, land that is taken out of the local tax base and in return for maintaining this land in the public interest, we make a modest little payment to those local units of government. That payment has not increased in 20 years. Let me just take Cook County in my district that is 94 percent in public land ownership and off that 6 percent of the remaining land of 900,000 acres, that county has to provide for roads, for search and rescue, for emergency medical care, for surface water, ground water for all the people who come and travel through the area. St. Louis County has 3,000 miles of county roads. This is a county about the size of the State of Massachusetts. It has to provide emergency medical services, rescue the people who travel from other parts of the United States to see Voyageurs National Park and Superior National Forest. They have accidents and they have health problems and the county has to take care of them, but the rest of the country is not providing an increase in funding. We have not had an increase in 20 years. We need to have an increase in the funding for the payment in lieu of taxes program to be fair to the people of this country.”