Washington, D.C. — A new analysis from the Center for American Progress shows how steep cuts to important payments from public lands affect local governments across the country.
Congress has failed to reauthorize expired programs and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) ended some mandatory public land payments that rural communities have relied on since 1908—diverting those funds away from local budgets and school districts to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
CAP’s analysis and interactive map includes data on the immediate impact of ending these payments to every state, county, parish, and borough in the United States. According to the analysis, the local counties have been out $207 million since Congress allowed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act (SRS) to expire.
Of these cuts, $159 million were in nonmetro counties and $86 million were in the most rural and isolated counties in the United States.
For the past century, the U.S. Forest Service had been sharing 25 percent of revenue from commercial activities, primarily timber, with local governments as compensation for those foregone property taxes of those public lands. Since 1986, these payments and subsequent reforms have provided local governments with nearly $25 billion (in 2024 dollars) to fund services such as schools, road systems, public safety, and more.
But the OBBBA effectively ended these payments. Specifically, it redirected a portion of the 25 percent revenue share back to the federal government to pay for the OBBBA’s tax cuts for the wealthy, and it failed to reauthorize the SRS, one of the most important forest and timber payment programs.
Read the analysis: “Congressional Republicans’ Big Shift on Public Land Payments to Counties” by Mark Haggerty and Jenny Rowland-Shea
For more information, or to speak with an expert, please contact Sam Hananel at [email protected].