Our View: A failed fee experiment


J. Robb Brady

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Post Register editorial board members are J. Robb Brady; Roger Plothow, acting publisher; Marty Trillhaase; and Dean Miller


Three years ago Congress authorized the U.S. Forest Service to experiment with
recreation fees at selected national forest sites. It looked like a test worth trying.

More people were using their national forests for recreation, but Congress had not
given the Forest Service the resources it needed to meet public demand.

Trails were deteriorating and were being closed.

Lake sites were being eroded and trashed.

Some campgrounds were closed for lack of care.

The experimental fee program offered dollars that could be focused on forest
trailheads, strategic lakes, wilderness entries and some easily accessible
campgrounds.

And it had this appealing feature: All of the fees would be spent in the area where
they were collected.

Now, as Congress considers what to do next, it's time to reassess.

To begin with, the fee program has a fundamental flaw. It's not fair.

Industries that earn profits by using public lands - particularly mining and
livestock ranchers - receive generous subsidies. Yet the public now must pay fees
to recreate on public lands they've already paid taxes to support.

It's possible to look past that philosophical issue - the National Park Service has a
strong precedent of relying on user fees - if the fee experiment worked. It hasn't.

Idaho's Sawtooth National Recreation Area sells entry tickets or season passes,
which must be displayed in vehicles at trailheads at 34 designated sites throughout
the sprawling 800,000-acre recreation area. But the fee program will raise about
$30,000 this year. The SNRA's annual recreation budget is near $700,000. So the
fee program generates less than a nickel out of every dollar recreation requires.

The Forest Service is finding it difficult to collect the fees. A recent federal district
court decision at Flagstaff, Ariz., found that three people cited for using the Red
Rock area of Arizona's Coconino National Forest could not be fined since the
agency "failed to show that they had been in the area where the pass was needed."

So what's the next move? Adding patrols to assure that everyone using an area had
a season pass or entry fee? That's like spending dollars to collect dimes. It hardly
seems worth the trouble.

One government alternative to collecting fees has problems of its own. In the past,
Forest Service officials have expressed interest in industry "partnerships" in
recreation programs. Under these arrangements, industry operates new or existing
recreation facilities.

Here's the drawback: There's little information to judge whether the public's
interest is being served. The Forest Service says the federal privacy act bars it from
releasing any evaluation of a firm's profits or performance while it is franchised to
do business on the national forests.

That's why, for example, people cannot challenge commercial outfitters selling their
camping permits on their public lands.

In all such cases, the books are closed and the door is barred.

Fees and industry partnerships aren't the answer to sagging Forest Service
recreation budgets. The taxpayers have already paid for these national forests once.
They shouldn't be charged - through fees and hidden private-public partnerships -
twice.

It's time for Congress to drop the gimmicks and come up with real appropriations.

http://www.headwatersnews.org/pr.fsfees.html
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More fee demo articles can be found here:
http://www.crowley-offroad.com/Snitz/topic...sp?TOPIC_ID=505

Crowdog


[This message has been edited by Crowdog (edited 04-03-2002).]