The poster child of government inefficiency

By McKenli Williams
Nevada Policy

The federal government owns 85% of the land in Nevada. That proportion climbs even higher in certain counties. In Lincoln County, it’s 97.8%; in Nye County, 97.2%; in White Pine 94.3%. Counties cannot assess property taxes on federal land, creating a hurdle for funding schools, roads, hospitals, and emergency services. 

In 1976, Congress created the federal Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program as a supposed solution to the problem. PILT allocates funds to county governments to offset property tax losses due to large holdings of tax-exempt federal lands. 

PILT payments are not based on market rates – they’re calculated through a complex formula tied largely to population, not land value. This puts Nevada’s rural counties at a disadvantage. Since Washington owns the vast majority of their land, these counties have almost no private property to generate local tax revenue. 

At the same time, their small populations limit how much PILT they receive and, because federal ownership is so pervasive, it’s difficult to build the infrastructure that would attract more residents. The result is a revolving door: massive federal land ownership prevents growth, and that forced low population permanently locks counties out of meaningful tax revenues. 

PILT yields far less than what property taxes would generate through privately owned land. This fact is undisputed and even the Department of interior acknowledges it. Like many government programs, instead of supplementing the communities in need, PILT has become a “colossal ripoff” as the Las Vegas Review-Journal has opined.

In 2024, Nevada received just $0.58 per acre, while neighboring states, like Utah and Arizona all received at least $1.50 per acre. For a state with 85% of its land subject to federal dominion, that is little compensation for the roads, emergency services, and other infrastructure rural counties are supposed to maintain. 

Making matters worse, PILT is a discretionary program – Congress isn’t required to fund it, leaving counties in budgetary limbo every year. 

Rather than holding rural counties hostage with minimal, unreliable payments, Nevada needs to push for control of its destiny. Counties’ fiscal woes are just one more example of why states, and not Washington, should control the land within their own borders. 

Local land in local hands means decisions about roads, grazing, development and conservation get made by the people who actually live with the consequences – not by a distant bureaucracy handing out pennies on the dollar. Giving rural Nevada counties the ability to own and tax their own land, the same way Eastern states can, is not an option but the constitutional duty of Congress. 

McKenli Williams is a Research Assistant at Nevada Policy, focused on land and water issues. Raised on a ranch outside Wells, she holds a degree in Agricultural Communications from Utah State University and has worked on Capitol Hill, on a U.S. Senate campaign, and as a writer for The College Fix.