Tiny Arizona county takes fight to Supreme Court

The Business Journal of Phoenix
Published: November 8,2007

Greenlee County, where federal land comprises 77 percent of its territory, is asking the U.S. Supreme Court for help collecting $2 billion from the feds.

Officials say the money is owed to Greenlee and 1,900 other counties under the federal Payment in Lieu of Taxes Act passed in 1976.

The small county, located on Arizona's eastern border, wants the high court to review a decision by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that denied Greenlee's claim for funds under that law.

"PILT was enacted to ensure that the total amount of federal funds received by counties that contain federal lands is at least equal to a specified minimum amount per acre," said Derek Rapier, Greenlee County Attorney, in a statement Thursday.

Eligible counties were to receive a predictable amount of federal dollars to compensate them for the tax-immune status of federal lands located in their jurisdictions, officials said.

Congress has failed to appropriate enough money to make the payments mandated by the statute, since 1995, said Kay Gale, Greenlee County Administrator. Increasing financial pressures on county government combined with Congress' failure to make the required PILT payments have left Greenlee and a lot of other counties very hard pressed.

Greenlee has a population of 8,605.