Senate Bill will repeal BLM and USFS fees!
Dear Public Lands Supporter:
FYI the following press release was sent out today. Please copy it to
your local media.
The Fee Repeal bill has been given a number: S2438. You can read the
text at www.thomas.loc.gov <http://www.thomas.loc.gov/>. Type in the
bill number then click Search by Bill Number.
It can be tricky to understand since it refers to several other laws and
has language repealing previous repeals, which works like a
double-negative, i.e. the repeal of a repeal is a re-instatement.
Essentially, the bill restores the rules under which the Forest Service,
BLM, Fish & Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Reclamation operated for
over 30 years under the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act. They will
be able to charge for developed campgrounds, swim sites, and boat
launches. No more fees for trailheads, scenic overlooks, roads, parking,
toilets, or picnic tables.
National Park entrance fees are retained, but the National Parks Pass is
reinstated at $50 and the planned NPS increases every 3 years using the
Consumer Price Index are stopped. The America the Beautiful Pass ($80)
goes away.
Please contact your U.S. Representative and both of your U.S. Senators
and ask them to support S2438.
Kitty Benzar, President Western Slope No-Fee Coalition
December 18, 2007
For Immediate Release
More information: Kitty Benzar 970/259-4616 wsnfc@earthlink.net
Bill Would Eliminate Recreation Fees
No-Fee Coalition Hails Proposal, Calls For National Public Lands
Initiative
DURANGO CO A bill introduced by three western Senators on December 10
would repeal the Federal Lands Recreation Act and restore free public
access to millions of acres of federal public lands managed by the
Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Bureau of Reclamation.
Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester joined with Idaho Senator
Mike Crapo as original co-sponsors of S2438, the Fee Repeal and Expanded
Access Act of 2007. Baucus and Tester are Democrats, Crapo a Republican.
The Western Slope No-Fee Coalition, which has championed the effort to
end the user fees that began as an experiment in 1996, hailed the bill
as the first step in a national initiative to restore public lands to
public control.
"The Fee Repeal Act will bring an end to a failed experiment that has
for 10 years burdened Americans with a double tax and kept them away
from public lands they have always enjoyed," Benzar said. "I applaud
this bipartisan effort and call on all public lands supporters to
mobilize in support of it."
S2438 would allow National Parks to continue to charge Entrance Fees,
but would return all other federal land management agencies to the
provisions of the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965, which
governed recreation use fees for 32 years. Fees would be allowed only in
developed campgrounds and swim sites, and at specialized boat launch
facilities. Fees would be specifically prohibited for the use, either
singly or in any combination, of drinking water, wayside exhibits,
roads, overlook sites, visitors' centers, scenic drives, toilet
facilities, or solely for the use of picnic tables. Fees would also be
prohibited for dispersed, undeveloped camping and recreation.
The 1965 rules were repealed in late 1996 by the Recreational Fee
Demonstration Program that came to be known as Fee Demo. Originally
limited to a 2-year experiment at no more than 100 sites, Fee Demo was
repeatedly expanded and extended, but met increasing public resistance.
By 2004, there was so much opposition to Fee Demo that another extension
was unlikely to pass, and the program was set to expire. Instead,
Representative Ralph Regula (R-OH) attached the Federal Lands Recreation
Enhancement Act to a must-pass omnibus appropriations bill, which went
into effect on December 8, 2004.
FLREA, known to its detractors as the Recreation Access Tax, or RAT,
replaced Fee Demo with a permanent fee program. It was never debated on
the floor of the House and was not even introduced in the Senate. Under
FLREA, access fees have multiplied, visitation has declined,
recreational facilities that cannot pay their own way in fees have been
closed, and fee revenue has replaced public funds at the local level.
"Recreation user fees were originally sold as a way for the agencies to
raise supplemental funds to address their backlogged maintenance,"
according to Benzar. "Instead, fee revenue was used for day-to-day
operations and to build facilities that have only added to long-term
maintenance needs. And now we are facing thousands of site closures and
being told they are necessary because there is still no money for the
backlog."
Appropriated funding for recreation has increased by 22% over the past
10 years, but administration and overhead costs have skyrocketed, and
fewer dollars are making it to the ground. Some local areas saw budget
cuts of up to 60% last summer, even though appropriated funding was the
same as the prior year.
Even as local managers were facing huge cuts, a 2006 audit of the
recreation fee program by the Government Accountability Office (GAO
06-1016) found that $296 million in unobligated fee receipts was being
held by the four federal land management agencies that are authorized to
levy fees. A full 93% of National Forests were carrying unobligated fee
accounts, and 58% of Forests had more than a year's fee revenue in their
unobligated fund.
Benzar sees the policy of Fee Retention at the heart of the problem.
"Fee Demo and RAT allowed the local land managers to keep whatever
recreation fee revenue they could raise, instead of returning it to the
Treasury," she said. "Congressional oversight was lost, and appropriated
funding was diverted to other uses. Local managers were left to raise
their own budgets, and their incentives changed from land stewardship to
revenue generation. They began looking at citizens as customers, instead
of as the owners of public lands."
After ten years of increasing reliance on fee revenue, the program will
not be easy to uproot. Benzar is calling on public land users and
supporters to rally behind the fee repeal bill as the first step in a
new National Public Lands Initiative.
"Numerous state legislatures, county commissions, city councils, and
civic organizations have passed resolutions opposing Fee Demo and RAT,"
said Benzar. "We will be asking all of them, and additional groups as
well, to support S2438.
"For a decade, the agencies have been acting as if they own our public
lands," she concluded. "It's time for the real owners - the American
people - to step up and assert our rights. This bill offers us a golden
opportunity to take back our precious public lands."
Mike \"Lack-O-Slack\" Dooley
\"Nothing is foolproof, to a sufficiently talented fool!\"
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