The Navajo County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved for the county to opt-in as a class participant in the Kane County, Utah v. United States case at the meeting on Aug. 28, authorizing the county manager to submit the Class Action Opt-In Form.
The background of the case started in 2008, when Congress significantly amended the Payments In-Lieu of Taxes (PILT) statute mandating full funding through 2014.
At the same time Congress also repealed the original statute language that made the program discretionary and subject to the annual congressional appropriations process.
Due to insufficient appropriations for three years, which included fiscal years (FY) 2015–2017, recipients of PILT did not receive the full amount to which they were entitled under the PILT statute based on the Department of the Interior’s full payment calculation.
As a result, in June 2017, Kane County, Utah filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, seeking to recover its own underpayments and the underpayments of all other PILT recipients nationwide for those years.
In December of 2017, the court ruled in favor of Kane County for FY 2015 and FY 2016 underpayments and issued a similar ruling on FY 2017 underpayments in March 2018.
Navajo County received notice from the United States Court of Federal Claims stating that the county is believed to be part of that class that was underpaid.
