Page 9 - The NOISE November 2015

still time to fix recreation fee system?
story by cindy cole
on september 17, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held an oversight hearing on reauthorization and reform of the Federal Lands Recreation enhancement Act of 2004 (FLReA), the law that governs the recreation fee authority of federal land agencies. The act was due to sunset in 2014 but has received several extensions, the most recent as part of the emergency Continuing Resolution passed by Congress to keep the government from experiencing another shutdown this year. The sunset date has now been postponed to september 30, 2017. The deferrals are at least some indication that federal legislators may be willing to take a closer look at recreation fee programs and the impacts they have had on our public lands.
In her opening remarks, Committee Chair Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) stated her concerns that rising recreation fees on federal lands would make them “uninviting” to visitors. “we don’t mind paying these fees as long as they go toward improving the visitor experience,”
she said. “But we shouldn’t be charging people for simply walking onto public land. How we make sure that there’s a reasonableness with these fees is key to how people feel about their public treasures.” while the senator expressed her wish that recreation fees were not necessary at all, she said that she was generally supportive of FLReA. she also acknowledged the need to include “practical reforms” in any long-term reauthorizations of the law.
The Committee’s Ranking Democrat senator Maria Cantwell (D-wA) also offered general support for recreation fees but with some reservations. “In general,” she said in her opening statement, “I support the extension of the authority for federal recreation fees so long as fees are kept at reasonable levels and do not discourage the public from accessing public lands. we must also ensure that fee revenues continue to be used to enhance visitor experiences on federal lands.”
senator Cantwell also commented on recent rises in public recreation access fees and expressed concerns that other public land fees are not keeping pace. “while park visitors are being assessed higher fees on public lands, fees charged for extractions on public lands remain historically low,” she said. “so if we are going to ask the public to step up and fund increased recreation fees, then we ought to be asking those who are doing coal, hard rock mining and other extractions on federal lands to also pay an increase.”
The witness panel included: Ms. Peggy O’Dell, Deputy Director of the national Park service which is part of the Us Department of the Interior; Ms. Mary wagner, Associate Chief of the Us Forest service which is part of the Us Department of Agriculture; and Ms. Kitty Benzar, President of the western slope no-Fee Coalition, a grassroots activist organization.
Ms. O’Dell expressed her agency’s support for the permanent reauthorization of FLReA. while she acknowledged that some revisions to the law may be desirable she stated that the national Park service believes, “that FLReA is highly effective as enacted.” she cited incidences of the funds from recreation fees being used to make specific improvements at locations around the country. In addition, she said,“By providing a single recreation fee authority for the agencies and authorizing an interagency annual pass, FLReA has enhanced customer service, efficiency, and consistency in fee collection and expenditure and establishment of national fee policies, such as fee-free days.” Ms. O’Dell expressed concern regarding the possible termination of her agency’s ability to collect fees. ”Recreation fee authority has been a vital component of our Department’s ability to serve as effective stewards of the public lands we treasure,” she concluded.
Ms. wagner followed and offered the United states Forest service’s support for continuation of FLReA. “Continuation of FLReA is critical to the Forest service’s and other federal land management agencies’ recreation programs,” she said. “FLReA has enabled the Forest service to provide consistently excellent recreational experiences at sites across the United states. FLReA has strengthened the connection between visitors and the lands they cherish by requiring that the fees they pay benefit the sites where the fees are collected. Thousands of projects, large and small, have been supported by ReA fee revenues since 2004.”
In support of her position, Ms. wagner mentioned the overall support for fee propositions that the United states Forest service has had from public involvement including the use of Recreation Resource Advisory Committees in the approval process. “since 2005, the Forest service has submitted approximately 1,470 recreation fee proposals to Recreation Resource Advisory Committees. The vast majority of these proposals were for fee increases at campgrounds operated by the Forest service, but the proposals also included new or increased fees for cabin rentals and day use sites and elimination of fees at some sites. After deliberation, Recreation Resource Advisory Committees recommended proceeding with all but approximately 30 of the proposals.” But critics of recreation fees point out that this process has been essentially a rubber stamp for any requests that are made without regard to often staunch disapproval from the public at large. Ms. wagner’s statistics show only a 2% rejection of fee requests leaving a 98% approval rate.
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photo by callie luedeker
Ms. Kitty Benzar pointed out some of the shortfalls of FLReA as it is currently being used and interpreted by federal land agencies. Her organization, the western slope no Fee Coalition, has been involved in numerous cases where public lands visitors have been ticketed for failure to display recreation passes, particularly at United states Forest service trailheads.
several lawsuits have recently been decided in favor of users including the landmark decision in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Adams v. USFS, also known as the Mt. Lemmon decision. In that decision, the 3 judge panel concluded that the presence of developed facilities alone does not justify recreation fees. A visitor must actually use the provided amenities in order to owe a fee. This upheld the language in FLReA that prohibits fees for activities such as simply parking to access a trailhead, picnicking along a roadside, or driving, walking, or otherwise riding through a fee area without using its facilities.
“In multiple appearances before committees in both the senate and House,” stated Ms. Benzar, “I have provided numerous examples of how the Forest service and BLM [Bureau of Land Management] are evading the restrictions on fees that are in the current statute. They have amply demonstrated their ability to use any small ambiguity or conflicting language to go far beyond congressional intent as expressed in the law and by the law’s authors. Any reform or
revision of FLReA must be crystal clear as to what fees are allowed and, even more importantly, what fees are not.”
Ms. Benzar discussed the history of recreation fees on public lands and how they have changed the landscape, not necessarily for the better, of how federal lands are perceived and accessed by both the land management agencies that are responsible for them and by the public. “nineteen years ago the Fee Demo program introduced the ‘pay to play’ approach to recreation by authorizing the Forest service and BLM to charge the public simply to park their car and go hiking, riding, or boating in undeveloped areas without using any amenities,” she said. “Fee Demo also allowed the Park service to increase and retain entrance fees and to charge extra for backcountry access. ‘Pay to play’ has transformed our national Forests and BLM lands from places where everyone has a basic right to access into places where we can be prosecuted for not having a ticket of admission. Our national Parks, where modest entrance fees have long been well accepted, are now priced at a level that makes it difficult for many families to visit them, and further increases are being proposed.”
“Opposition to Fee Demo was overwhelming and widespread,” she continued. “Congress terminated the experiment in 2004 by enacting FLReA to set limits and scale back on fees based on what Fee Demo had shown. FLReA’s limiting language, had it been honored by the agencies, could have achieved this and might have calmed much of the public’s opposition. while the agencies made the appropriate changes in a few areas once FLReA was passed, in most places they carried on as if nothing had changed and recreation fees continued to spread to thousands of undeveloped and minimally developed areas.”
Ms. Benzar called recreation fees both a double tax and a regressive one. Americans are paying a double tax because we already pay for management of federal lands through income tax. They are a regressive tax because they put “the burden of public land management on the backs of Americans who live adjacent to or surrounded by federal land” and fall “most heavily on lower income and working Americans.”
Ms. Benzar also called recreation fee systems a “financial failure,” in open disagreement with the successes raised by the previous speakers. “GAO reports have revealed hidden administrative costs, fees being collected far in excess of operating costs, and agencies being unable to provide accurate and complete accountability for their fee revenue. One example is the Red Rocks [sic] Ranger District on the Coconino national Forest, where nearly half of fees paid through automated fee collection devices is retained as a sales commission by the device vendor. Yet just down the road on the Tonto national Forest they are in the process of installing those same automated devices, which will presumably claim similarly high commissions. Both Forests assure the public that 100% of their fees directly benefit the place where they were paid, but that is clearly not possible when collection costs are so high. The backlog of deferred maintenance, which was the initial justification given for Fee Demo, has continued to grow instead of shrinking, and appropriated funding disappears into agency overhead instead of making it to the ground. Instead of increased recreational opportunities, sites have been closed and facilities removed if they are perceived by the managing agency as inadequate generators of revenue.”
Additional hearings on FLReA will likely be held in the near future as it seems that Congress is finally paying attention to the need to improve and regulate the recreation fee authority of the nation’s land management agencies. To adequately do so will require work to begin right away before we once again approach the new sunset date for current law.
| Cindy Cole keeps tabs on FLREA. cindycole@live.com
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