Fifty-six of Colorado’s 64 counties will receive $43.1 million in payments this year under a federal program that compensates local governments for the nontaxable public lands on their books, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced Thursday.

The Payments in Lieu of Taxes program, in place since 1977, will deliver $529.3 million to nearly 2,000 local government entities around the country for 2021, Haaland said in a release.

The funds, allocated based on acreage and population within a county, make up for public lands administered by the Department of Interior – including national parks, national forests, dams and wildlife refuges – that don’t generate property tax revenue. That amounts to roughly 23.7 million acres in Colorado.

“This year’s distribution of $43.1 million to 56 counties will help local governments carry out vital services, such as firefighting and police protection, construction of public schools and roads, and search-and-rescue operations,” Haaland said in a statement, referring to Colorado’s cut.

“Our mission relies on partnerships with U.S. states and territories. These disbursements are a great example of our commitment to be a good neighbor to the communities we serve.”

In 2018, Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhard, a Colorado native, announced the funds by unveiling an oversized check.

Mesa and Garfield counties are receiving the biggest checks in Colorado this year with a little over $3.8 million and $3.4 million, respectively, followed by Montrose County’s $2.8 million and Eagle County at $2.4 million.

The payments to more densely populated Front Range counties range widely, from $2 million to Larimer County to $1,889 to Arapahoe County. El Paso and Jefferson counties each get about $200,000.

Adams, Cheyenne, Elbert, Kit Carson, Logan and Phillips counties, along with the state’s pair of city and counties, Broomfield and Denver, don’t have public lands administered by Interior so won’t receive payments under the program.

The full list of this year’s payments is available here.

The funds are a portion of the roughly $10.3 billion in revenue generated nationwide in the last year from commercial activities on public lands, including oil and gas leasing, livestock grazing and timber harvesting.

Colorado’s 2021 statewide total marks a bump of about $1.4 million from last year’s distribution, which paid $41.7 million to the same counties. In 2019, the counties received about $40.1 million.

Earlier this month, Colorado’s two senators, Democrats Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, signed a letter led by Bennet and Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho asking Senate leaders to fully fund the program for the next fiscal year.

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, the Silt Republican whose 3rd Congressional District contains more federal land than any other district in the state, introduced legislation in April to study how to bring the payments more in line with property taxes the public land could yield if it weren’t owned by the federal government. 

The payments, Boebert said in a statement, while important to communities, “are a fraction of the dollars counties would receive if they were able to put these lands to productive private use. The federal government either needs to give the people back our land or compensate us appropriately for the tax base lost to federal lands.”