The following editorial appeared in the Twin Falls, Idaho Times-News on February 17, 2004.
Our view: Idaho Sen. Larry Craig deserves praise for voting against forest access fees last week.
Watching Idaho Sen. Larry Craig join forces with environmental groups is like seeing Halley's Comet. Few observers live long enough to see it twice.
Craig deserves credit from public land users for opposing pay-to-play fees in national forests and other federal lands. The Recreation Fee Authority Act, or S.1107, sponsored by Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., could be the beginning of the end for the fee demonstration program in Idaho's Sawtooth National Forest and similar sites.
The program, which charges citizens for merely visiting their national forests, is ripe for termination.
Craig helped push S. 1107 through the Senate Energy and Resources Committee last week. The bill would make fees permanent in America's national parks.
The committee withstood heavy pressure from within the Departments of Interior and Agriculture to make fees permanent not only in parks but also in national forests and Bureau of Land Management territory.
By rejecting those lobbying efforts, the committee leaves the fee demo on track to expire in 2005. Craig, who chairs the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests, merits applause for sticking with his 2002 promise to oppose continuation of the program.
Unlike a true user fee, the forest fee doesn't apply to specific services or facilities. Instead, it's an access fee. Citizens must pay for simply parking at a trailhead to stroll through the national forest -- a forest they theoretically own.
Craig supported the fee demo when it started in 1996 and for years afterward. But he did so on the conditions that recreationists and nearby communities support the program, and that the money stay in the forests where fees are collected.
The latter condition has never really been proved. But the first -- support from the local public -- has been a hoax from the start.
Despite describing the program as a "demonstration" to test public support, federal agencies did their best to coerce public participation. Then they boasted of how many supposedly willing participants had paid the fees.
Classifying every permit purchaser as a supporter is like calling your steer a supporter of branding irons. Participation does not signify approval.
And now the feds are tightening the screws. Under new BLM regulations that go into effect this April, violators on BLM land could face $5,000 fines and six months in jail.
By raising the penalties for noncompliance, federal agencies are admitting their lack of public support. When citizens recognize an unjust law and widely disobey it, the law cannot stand.
Passing S.1107 is a huge step, but the agencies' campaign for the fee demo will continue. Craig and the rest of Idaho's congressional delegation should keep trying to kill it for good.