Summary: Federal land management agencies administer many revenue-sharing programs to compensate states and counties for the tax-exempt status of federal lands within their boundaries. Congress has created several programs that add to a complex system for fully and fairly compensating states and counties for the federal presence. Members of Congress have raised concerns about the level of complexity of these programs as well as whether counties are receiving their "fair share." This report provides information on (1) the programs that the federal land management agencies use to compensate states and counties and the major differences among these programs; (2) the processes that California, Oregon, and Washington use to distribute the federal payments to the counties and the major differences among them; and (3) the amount of federal compensation that the three states received and distributed to their counties compared with the amounts that the federal agencies calculated as attributable to the receipts generated in the counties during fiscal years 1995 through 1997.
