The Department of Interior (Park Service, Bureau
of Land Management, and Fish & Wildlife Service) and the Department of Agriculture
(Forest Service) gave their Recreational Fee Demonstration Program (Fee Demo)
report
to Congress for fiscal year 1999.
This report differs little from the two previous reports made to Congress in 1999 and 1998. The agencies say that visitation was unaffected by the fees, public acceptance is high, and that the program should be implemented permanently.
Contrary to these claims, visitation decreased slightly at Fee Demo projects, and increased at non-Fee Demo projects in 1999. The claim of continued public acceptance flies in the face of the growing opposition to the program across the country. The claims also do not take into account independent scientific studies which claim that the methods used to collect data on public acceptance are flawed. These studies also showed significant decreases in visitation at some Fee Demo sites.
Other items of note in the report include that the cost of collection - which was up in 1999 for all agencies except the Fish & Wildlife Service - averages about 20% for each agency and fee revenues are leveling off at a point where the agencies will require significant appropriations from the General Treasury to operate.
A Forest Service Recreation Fee Demonstration Program violator
made a court appearance in Portland, Maine in January regarding a ticket given at
Caribou Mountain in the White Mountains National Forest in Maine.
The defendant chose not to respond to the ticket at all. Several weeks later the defendant received a notice from the U.S. District Attorney that a court date had been scheduled, and tha failure to appear, would result in a guilty verdict by default.
When the defendant went to court, the court provided an attorney, which had not been requested. The attorney advised that the defendant simply testify as to not being there as many other people had been using the defendant's car.
Before the trial began, the defending attorney asked the prosecutor if he had any evidence placing the defendant at the location. The prosecutor indicated that he did not. When the trial began, the defending attorney instantly moved for dismissal based on the fact that the prosecution had no evidence placing the defendant at the location in question. The judge promptly dismissed the case.
On Wednesday, January 19, Kevin Brady of
Albuquerque, New Mexico was fined $75 for refusing to pay a fee to walk on public
lands. His trial was attended by two journalists from the Weekly Alibi and the
Albuquerque Journal bringing media attention to Kevin's show of determination
against the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program. He is also considering an
appeal.
According to Mr. Brady, "[t]he judge said, before we started, that he had heard several of these cases before, and he warned me that he was likely to find me guilty since the whole business seemed cut and dried."
Of note during the trial, the prosecuting attorney quoted from a statue that the fee was required and mentioned a 10th circuit court opinion that held that the fee had to be paid, even if the sign didn't say so.
Mr. Brady brought up the issue that the nature of the fee was for recreation and that the officer had not observed him at all, so he could not have known what he was doing. The judge said that he thought it was clear enough that this was a user fee and that anyone entering the area had to pay it.
On January 14, 2000 Tate Trautz of Portland, Maine
went to trial in federal court in Concord, New Hampshire over his violation of the
Forest Service's Recreation Fee Demonstration Program in the White Mountains
National Forest. Federal Magistrate Muirhead informed him of his right to remain
silent and that anything he said could be used against him. Trautz pleaded
"not guilty" to the charge of not paying the forest fee.
Earlier, the prosecutor had been offering deals to those accused of not paying the forest fee: plead guilty and pay only $30 rather than the $50 fine. One individual accepted the deal and left, another was granted a request that his trial be postponed 60 days. Magistrate Muirhead noted that of 47 people who were supposed to appear that day regarding forest ticket violations, 44 were no-shows. He said it's the same every trial date; he said he appreciated today's defendants showing up.
The prosecutor called the forest ranger who wrote Trautz's citation to the stand and questioned him about the facts of the case, using a number of exhibits: examples of the actual fee signs, photos of the Greely Ponds trailhead parking lot, and relevant paperwork. The ranger also had a roll of undeveloped photo film showing, he said, the ticket he placed on the defendant's windshield with the Forest Service's Recreation Fee Demonstration Program sign in the background.
Magistrate Muirhead asked the ranger and prosecutor about CFR 261.15 -- the law, pre-dating the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program (Fee Demo), under which Fee Demo cases are being tried. He asked the officer where in that statute it says that a decal or pass is required to be displayed on a car. He said that he had looked at CFR 261.15 and hadn't been able to find the relevant text.
Trautz, briefly questioned the ranger, and then took the witness chair and condemned the fees saying he'd been hiking in the White Mountains since he was a kid and that the fees were completely unneccesary and absurd. He questioned where they were coming from, noting that volunteers do most of the trail-work and that it was a free American's right to walk freely in the public forests.
After he finished, Muirhead turned the questioning over to the the prosecutor. He asked Trautz whether he had seen the signs to which Trautz replied, "I seen all the signs, and I'm not paying." The prosecution rested.
Muirhead then told Trautz that if had remained silent about not paying, he would have dismissed the charges because of "no probable cause." But since the defendant testified that he hadn't paid, he had no choice but to find him guilty. He told him he had to pay the $50 fine. The Magistrate went on to say that the prosecution did not prove what the statute required: that is, that Trautz hadn't paid a fee. He said the prosecution had proven only that there was no decal on his car, which is not what CFR 261.15 refers to. "I have been throwing out these cases left and right because of 'no probable cause.'"
Trautz firmly told Muirhead he would not pay. Muirhead said he had no choice but to have him led out of the courtroom by the marshalls. After a few minutes the defendant was brought back in and the judge again said, "You supplied crucial evidence by testifying that you didn't pay the fee. Otherwise -- if you'd remained silent on that, I'd have dismissed your case." Then he clearly and forcefully outlined various options, including one in which he might get arrested and shipped "right to Oklahoma," if he was found in contempt of court by still refusing to pay. Trautz agreed to pay.
*Adapted from the
Idaho Mountain Express, Jan. 12, 2000: U.S. attorney freezes forest fee
prosecutions*
The U.S. Attorney in Boise is asking the Forest Service to review its controversial user fee program on the Payette National Forest and Sawtooth National Recreation Area. Meanwhile, she has said that her office will freeze prosecuting fee violations. "The program is well-intentioned in principle but problematic in application," U.S. Attorney Betty Richardson said. "As it's set up now, the program relies on the federal criminal justice system to enforce what are essentially parking tickets. In most instances, that's an unwise use of taxpayer money, which is badly needed to fight more serious problems like fraud, drug smuggling and violent crime. I am not interested in pursuing any of these cases until the Forest Service figures out how it wants to handle these cases. I think the Forest Service needs to consider how best to enforce the program."
There are 22 pending cases that the U.S. Attorney's office will not consider until some sort of resolution can be reached, Richardson said. The Forest Service and U.S. Attorney officials were scheduled to meet on the issue January 12 in Boise in an attempt to reach resolution. "We need to take a common sense approach," Richardson said. "We ask the Forest Service to work closely with our office and with resources users to design a program that's workable, cost-effective and fair."
Out of 140 cases that went as far as the U.S. Attorney's office in Boise, 80 have been dismissed, according to Sawtooth National Forest Spokesman Ed Waldapfel. Fifteen of those involved out-of-state violators. Many were dismissed because violators either purchased a pass or were not able to be found, he said. Waldapfel said the Sawtooth National Forest still does not anticipate any changes to the current user fee system, but added that "we obviously need to resolve the current issue."
*Adapted from the
Times-News, January 10, 2000: Cases dropped against 15 out-of-state trailhead
pass violators*
Most of the people who have been cited by the U.S. Forest Service for failing to buy a parking pass for certain parts of the Sawtooth National Forest either bought a pass or paid the fine. But 15 people who live outside of Idaho were cited, and the U.S. Department of Justice decided not to prosecute them over what officials say is essentially a $50 parking ticket.
That takes the teeth out of the pass, and is unfair to Idahoans, said Mike Tracy, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Larry Craig. And that is one more problem with the pilot Recreational Fee Demonstration Program. Craig, R-Idaho, will take that and other problems into account when he makes his decision on whether to continue the program, Tracy said. Senator Craig has supported the program, but he has also expressed concerns about problems with the program.
The Sawtooth National Forest adopted the trailhead parking fee -- $5 for up to three days or $15 for a year -- in May to replace an earlier version of the demonstration fee program. The program is in force at 38 trailheads in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area and the Ketchum Ranger District. Since the program was changed in May, the Sawtooth National Forest issued 1,529 tickets. Of them, 1,301 paid either in person or mailed in the fee. Another 88 paid after a warning letter was sent or in a few cases the license numbers were written incorrectly and no information was available, Sawtooth forest spokesman Ed Waldapfel said. The Forest Service sent out 140 notices of violations. Of those, 80 were dismissed when proof of purchase was provided; 15 were dismissed by the U.S. Department of Justice because they were to out-of-state residents; 30 people paid the $50 fine; a couple of people negotiated a lower fine; one person pleaded guilty and paid three times the permit fee plus court costs, a total of $25; and the rest of the notices are pending or were undeliverable, Waldapfel said.
Sawtooth forest officials are working with the U.S. attorney's office to resolve the problem, and they have made no decision not to prosecute out-of-state violators, he said. "We can't afford to have a program that's enforced only for people in Idaho," Waldapfel said.
*Adapted from the
Associated Press, January 6, 2000: Feds back down over park fee U.S. won't
prosecute woman over $5 fee for parking at Sawtooth*
The federal government has declined to press a case against an Oregon woman who has steadfastly refused to pay the $5 fee to park her car while she hiked in central Idaho's Sawtooth National Recreation Area. The decision, made for pragmatic reasons, headed off a court test of the validity of the fee program that is being tested in the Sawtooth. Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Derden said there was doubt the government could collect the $50 fine the Forest Service assessed against Majorie Hoye of Bend, Ore., after she refused to buy the pass. "Considering the limited number of resources in the federal courts," Derden said on Wednesday, "we look at the likelihood of success. That's what they pay us to do."
Hoye was driving from Jackson, Wyoming, back home to Bend on September 6 when she stopped at the Iron Creek trailhead in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area to take a walk. She returned three hours later to find a ticket on her windshield for not buying the user pass. She ignored it, as well as the notice of a $50 fine that came three weeks later and a mid-November summons to appear in federal court in Boise on the matter. Instead, she objected to the imposition of the parking fee in a letter to the U.S. Attorney's office. Hoye maintained the fee was discretionary for forest users and that her hikes were spiritual, not recreational, in nature. In her letter, Hoye pointed out that a year ago a federal judge in Los Angeles refused to uphold citations against Robert Bartsch for refusing to obtain a use pass under another demonstration program. The judge said future citations would also be dismissed until the passes were made mandatory and not part of a demonstration ot test.
The Sawtooth National Forest adopted the parking fee -- $5 for up to three days or $15 for a year -- in May after complaints about the general use pass that it tried to require of recreation area users the year before.
Forest Service Law Enforcement Supervisor Steve Lipus said 175 people were issued notices of noncompliance in the Sawtooth National Forest last year, and 85 percent of them purchased a parking pass after being told to. Lipus did not know how many people have gone to court for the violation, but he conceded that, as in Hoye's case, "we're not going to take anything to court and waste taxpayer money if we feel we don't have a good case."