Representative Parsons urges keeping 70/30 PILOT split; committee declines amendment after staff briefing

Representative Joseph Parsons offered a late amendment to strike bill language that would change town pilot-payment allocations (described in committee discussion as moving from a 70/30 split to a 75/25 split). Parsons said the change would shift funds away from a town-level share and that, in his view, the underlying problem is underpayment to towns rather than the split itself: "the problem is on the back end, and we're not giving our towns the correct amount of money. We're short changing our towns," he said.

The committee then received a technical overview from Jeff Burnett of the Joint Fiscal Office on how pilot payments work and how the bill’s language would affect fund balances. Burnett described the A and R (land) pilot payments as an "eighty-twenty split between the general fund…