The following editorial appeared in the Tucson, Arizona Daily Star on February 7, 2003.
Symbolic gestures are in the news these days. Most of them are linked to the war in Iraq, but one that will come before the Pima County Board of Supervisors today deals with a battle much closer to home. Today's gesture is Supervisor Richard Elias' attempt to tell Congress and the president to abolish the user fees they imposed on national forests and other federal lands.
The user fees, including parking fees at Sabino Canyon and tolls to drive up Mount Lemmon and into Madera Canyon, were authorized by Congress in 1996. Members of Congress never debated the fees before they adopted them; instead, the measure was tacked on to a totally unrelated appropriations bill. Like so many other bills, it became law through a backdoor process.
Elias is now asking the Board of Supervisors to adopt a resolution calling upon the federal government to abolish this program, which formally is known as the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program.
In the last three years, this newspaper has advocated both sides of this issue. Though never fully comfortable with the idea that citizens should be required to pay a day- use fee to go for a hike on public lands, or pay a toll to drive up Mount Lemmon for an afternoon outing, we saw the fee demonstration program as a necessary evil. Congress simply would not appropriate adequate funds to enable the Forest Service, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management to maintain the land and facilities for which they are responsible. It was clear that something had to be done for the sake of the land.
While we were opposed in principle to a policy that shifts the financial burden for maintaining popular public recreation area from the federal treasury to individual taxpayers, we saw some aspects of the program that were positive. For example, the money collected by the Forest Service remains in the district where it is collected, and those who have been up Mount Lemmon have no doubt seen the improvements in various facilities.
The points made in Elias' resolution, however, are still worth repeating, if only to stress the hypocrisy of those in Congress who claimed (and continue to claim) that there simply is not enough money in the federal treasury to support the stewardship of public lands. It seems clear enough that when a crisis develops, Congress and the administration find the resources necessary to do what must be done. The crisis in public land management was never seen as such in Washington, and in any case funding for national parks and forests, even during the halcyon days of budget surpluses, remained inadequate.
Elias' resolution is a small voice in a great forest. It's not likely to change what has become a lamentable practice, but adopting it is superior to simply rolling over and accepting a policy which Congress clearly has the means and power to remedy
The Recreational Fee Demonstration Program was useful and perhaps necessary on a temporary basis, but after seven years it is time, as Elias says in his resolution, for Congress "to restore land-management funding for the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and Fish and Wildlife Service ... to provide for those agencies' full needs without the charging of fees."