The following editorial appeared in the Coos Bay, Oregon World on September 18, 2002.
What more evidence do federal lawmakers need to persuade them to eliminate day-use fees on U.S. Forest Service land?
Repeated protests over the past several years have done nothing to disuade Congress from continuing the pilot program originally set up to raise money for operations and maintenance.
It's been six long years and still they are ignoring growing opposition to the program.
The very people who stand to gain from those fees have become skeptical of the program. A recent independent survey of the Forest Service's employees in this region found that 38 percent just plain oppose it. The majority of the agency's workers have serious concerns over whether the program treats low income people with fairness.
Simply, it doesn't.
If a local family can't afford to pay, they can't play on the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area or access any adjoining state-owned beaches. They can't hike in dozens of historically popular trails from Florence to Brookings.
While those fees may provide 20 percent of the agency's regional budget, the pay-to-play program discriminates and there's just no reason federal lawmakers should continue to ignore that. It's an issue of simple economics.
The fee mostly hurts local residents, poor local residents. These are the people most likely to visit the South Coast's popular forest trails and Oregon over and over again. These are the people who can't afford to vacation far from home.
These are the people already paying to subsidize those lands through property taxes and income taxes that maintain the roads, other surrounding infrastructure and even law enforcement - all of this in a region plagued by unemployment, underemployment and chronically low wages.
There's another issue to consider, too. Lawmakers are dismissing the fact that this region for decades has sent billions of dollars in timber receipts east - a practice likely to continue as long as the agency harvests trees.
Still, Congress persists on squeezing even more money from South Coast residents. Disguising this added tax as a user fee doesn't make it any more palatable. Local residents still must pay every time they want to hike the dunes or go beachcombing, and that's pretty hard to swallow.