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Congress cuts the PILT by not appropriating the money to fill its statutory obligations to pay. The PILT law is passed and on the books, it just isn’t fully funded. Hasn’t been for a while. The state of California has renegged altogether on its PILT.

The BLM lands were largely “public domain” lands left after all the withdrawals for National Forests, National Refuges, National Parks and Monuments. They were managed under the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act. In 1972 under FLPMA (Federal Land Management Act) Congress stated that it was its policy to keep those lands under federal (all the states together) ownership rather than as trustee for the public of the states in which they are located. East of the Mississippi, all the public domain lands were already disposed into private hands, so this “theft” was purpetrated on the people of the west. (Forests, park lands etc. in the east were created on purchased or donated lands.)

Despite the Equal Footing Doctrine, there has always been an inequality between the way the Eastern and Western states are treated in the Union. This is part of what the “Sagebrush Rebellion” was all about.

I am not certain about the Oregon Railroad Lands. I do know that the various railroad acts set aside every other section along the path of a proposed rail road line to be given to the Rail Road as an incentive to invest in building the track. Some routes were set aside and never built. In my California County, the BLM know owns checkerboard sections of land next to private land because of this.