The money is in the bank, and eight years of negotiating with the federal government are over, but the haggling over payment in lieu of taxes continues for Benton County commissioners.

A week after the Department of Energy paid Benton County its first installment of an $11.2 million settlement on the PILT issue, commissioners are questioning whether any of the money should be used to pay for trips Treasurer Claude Oliver made during the negotiations.

And Commissioner Ray Isaacson is wondering if the county might be able to squeeze a little more money from the DOE for the PILT claim. The money is to reimburse the county and other affected taxing agencies for Hanford lands that were taken off the tax rolls by the federal government.

The issue of reimbursing the treasurer's account surfaced Monday. Commissioners were meeting to figure out how to divide the money collected from the DOE among the county and eight taxing districts and to discuss the expense of collecting the money.

Isaacson said it isn't clear if the treasurer's budget should be repaid $131,000 for travel expenses because Oliver, who visited various DOE sites across the country, didn't clear his trips with commissioners.

"He was out on his own," Isaacson said.

The commissioners decided the reimbursement money should go into the county's current expense fund until a final decision is made, probably after Jan. 1 when two of the three commissioners are replaced. Oliver will be one of those taking a seat on the commission.

Oliver, who butted heads with commissioners throughout the negotiating of the settlement, defended his travels and called the commissioners' reluctance to repay his department "11th hour brinkmanship."

"It shows the people of Benton County the obstacles I was up against," Oliver said. He added that the few times he did go to the commissioners for approval of trips, they failed to support him.

In any case, it's too late now for the commissioners to decide his budget won't be reimbursed, Oliver said. He said the money already has gone into the treasurer's budget.

Isaacson said it will be up to Oliver to transfer the money into the county's current expense fund until a final decision is made.

Meanwhile, Isaacson also is beginning to wonder whether the county might be due more money from the DOE. On Friday, Isaacson said he found a letter he wrote in 1987 to DOE that inquired about payments in lieu of taxes. This could prove the county began inquiring about the PILT case a year earlier than DOE has written in the contract, he said.

DOE held the payments to a 1988 start date because that's the year in which a formal request was believed to have been made, Isaacson said.

"It definitely shows we were actively pursuing this issue in 1987," he said.

That means the federal government owes Benton County taxing jurisdictions another $1.1 million, the amount of money they received for 1988, Isaacson said.

But Oliver said it's too late for that. The county has signed a contract, waiving any rights to taxes owed before 1988, Oliver said.

"Ray raises an interesting question, but I wish he would've brought it to my attention in 1987," Oliver said.