Grant Parish Sheriff Steven McCain convened a meeting with U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy and regional law‑enforcement leaders last week to address the growing local cost of policing Kisatchie National Forest without support from the federal Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program. Participating from Central Louisiana were Rapides Parish Sheriff Mark Wood, Natchitoches Parish Sheriff Stuart Wright, Winn Parish Sheriff Josh McAllister, and Chief Deputy Calvin Turner of the Vernon Parish Sheriff’s Office. Also, the sheriffs of Webster and Claiborne parishes attended. Grant Parish Assessor Keith Maxwell also attended to provide detailed acreage data for the forest and associated tax related information.
“In a meeting convened last week by Sheriff McCain, our sheriffs in Central Louisiana told me how they’re providing law enforcement on federal lands. This is a service like any other service federal parks pay for. They should pay for this too,” Senator Cassidy said.
Cassidy agreed that ideally the U.S. Forest Service would treat payments for local law‑enforcement services as a routine budget item, on par with any other operational expenditure.
Sheriff McCain welcomed Cassidy’s support. “Senator Cassidy didn’t just listen—he immediately put his team to work. He’s now reaching out to colleagues in states like Nevada, where roughly 80 percent of the land is federally managed, and Utah, where the share tops 60 percent. By combining their data with ours, we can present an airtight case and secure the reimbursement funding Louisiana—and every other state in the same position—rightfully deserves,” McCain said.
Assessor Maxwell’s figures show Kisatchie National Forest includes approximately 144,962 acres in Grant Parish, 130,462 acres in Natchitoches Parish, and 102,723 acres in Rapides Parish—nearly 380,000 acres that local deputies must patrol without direct PILT support.
The group agreed to compile precise cost data and coordinate with sheriffs’ associations in Western states to compare expenses. Sheriff McCain will forward the combined findings to Senator Cassidy, who plans to share them with his Western colleagues as the basis for a bipartisan effort to secure PILT‑style reimbursements for local law‑enforcement agencies that police federal lands.
Sheriff McCain concluded, “Every sheriff at the table is proud to serve our parishes and keep our communities safe. Our deputies answer every call on these federal lands because it’s the right thing to do. We’re simply asking the federal government to return a fair share of our own tax dollars so we can keep doing that job without placing the entire burden on local taxpayers.”
