The following editorial appeared in the Ojai Valley News on December 10, 1997.
Almost as controversial among Ojai Valley residents as the recently resolved Fuel Break Road brouhaha ia the U.S. Forest Service Adventure Pass.
Touted by the Forest Service as a method for raising money for much-needed forest upkeep and maintenance, the pass has drawn fire from forest users and non-users alike, the majority of whom believe the national forests are our birth right, and while it's understandable we should pay for campground usage, to also pay for a walk in the woods is tantamount to an attack on our first amendment rights.
The Forest Service says it doesn't have the money to perform proper upkeep and maintenance on the national gorests because Congress hasn't supported Forest Service budget requests as it should.
The Adventure Pass, it argues, is one way for the Forest Service to raise money it needs by charging the very people who use the forest. Pay to play, so to speak.
Opponents of the Adventure Pass are adamant that while it is true Congress holds the money and it should be held accountablr, the bureacracy running our Forest Service is top heavy and too expensive; it whould pare expenses and find some other avenue for raising money than the Adventure Pass.
We have supported the Adventure Pass for its goals even as we don't necessarily support the philosophy that spawned it. We believe funding for national forest maintenance will be increasingly difficult to find, and without the Adventure Pass, or a program similar to it, upkeep and maintenance, not to mention improvements, will continue to wither in the face of Congressional stinginess.
Back in late Spring, then the Adventure Pass was put into effect, the Ojai Ranger District representative said that fully 80 percent of the money generated by the sale of the $5 pass was to be returned to the forest where it was collected, "instead of going into the U.S. Treasury where it could be used on other things such as the defense budget."
The funds were to be used to "improve the quality of recreational services" in that forest where the pass was sold, he said, and only 20 percent was to go to Sacramento to be administered.
However, we were caught with our hiking shorts down last week when we learned that of the $66,300 generated by the pass in the Los Padres National Forest, only $1,600 was actually available to each district, for a total of $8000 over the five districts. That's a far cry from the approximate $53,040 we were promised.
In the Ojai District, the $1,600 was spent to repair some camping facilities in Rose Valley.
The lion's share of the $66,300 — some $42,000 — went to the salaries of two people hired as "recreation technicians" whose job it was to educate unaware forest users about the requirements and necessity of the pass.
It is difficult to imagine a more blatant example of exactly the sort of bureacratic money management the opponents of the Adventure Pass have warned about.
We're embarrassed for all of us who believed that when it came to the management of our forests, this go-round with the government might be different; and we're embarrassed for those at our Ojai Ranger District office who went on record inferring funds raised by the Adventure Pass would be used on forest maintenance, only to see those funds spent where they were probably needed least - on more personnel.
There is some wiggle room here for the Forest Service, however. Our district representative didn't specifically say the 80 percent would be spent on improving the forest. Rather, he said it would be spent on improving recreational services which, by Forest Service interpretation, could mean hiring recreation technicians.
Our District Ranger has indicated a major problem for the Forest Service is that there has been no money with which to properly market the Adventure Pass and that's why he had to hire two recreation technicians for $42,000.
Mr. Ranger, for about one tenth of that $42,000, the combined media of the Ojai Valley could have informed more people in a week about the Adventure Pass than those two recreation technicians will talk to in five years.
- editor