(adapted from AP newswire)

Thirty West Virginia counties could lose nearly $270,000 in federal payments they receive in lieu of property taxes on public land under President Bush’s proposed budget.

Bush has proposed cutting the program's funding by 21 percent, from $210 million this year to $165 million in 2003.

Under federal law, local governments are compensated for revenue they lose because they cannot collect property taxes on national forests, wildlife refuges and other public land.

Last year, the program, which is operated by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management, allocated about $1.3 million to 30 counties in West Virginia, according to government records.

Pocahontas County, which is home to large tracts of the Monongahela National Forest, would be the biggest loser in West Virginia. The county, which received nearly $350,000 in payments in lieu of taxes in 2001, would lose about $70,000 under the proposed cuts, according to government records.

Other counties that received more than $100,000 from the program in 2001 were Randolph, $229,000; Tucker, $114,000; Greenbrier, $114,000; and Pendleton, $107,000.

West Virginia Highlands Conservancy president Frank Young said, "With all the corporate welfare the Bush administration promotes, I think it outrageous that he’s wanting to take scarce health department and school system funding from rural counties whose only crime is to be the host of the nation’s fabulous National Forests, Wildlife Refuges, Wilderness Areas and other federal lands that are not part of the regular tax base."

Rep. Nick J. Rahall said he will fight the cuts.

"These funds are intended to compensate localities for lands within their boundaries owned by the federal government," Rahall said. "To propose cutting these funds, which flow directly to local governments, while claiming to be a champion of local control, is ironic at best," he said.

Interior Department spokesman Frank Quimby said the proposed cuts were "among the many hard choices that had to be made in the budget." "This was one that they thought had to be made in light of the other priorities," Quimby said Monday.

Cutting the payments to local governments "wouldn’t have had as serious as an impact as some other cuts, in terms of conservation," he said.