Senator Graham (D-FL) introduced the
National
Parks Stewardship Act (S.1011) on Monday, June 11th. Sen. Graham previously
introduced the Recreation Fee Authority Act last
year to make the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program (Fee Demo) permanent. In
keeping with the push for permanent fees, a major component the National Parks
Stewardship Act aims to introduce permanent public lands access fees starting in
October 2002 when the current Fee Demo ends.
While the bill on its surface appears ot be a National Parks bill, in reality it would dramatically and permanently alter the manner in which recreation is funded for four public lands agencies - the Park Service, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Fish & Wildlife Service. The bill also ensures that funding allocated by Congress will not be decreased in response to increased revenue generation from recreation user fees for all of the affected agencies except the Forest Service. Forest Service budget allocations may be reduced by Congress as the agency brings in new recreation fee income possilby resulting in the Forest Service becoming entirely dependent on fees.
Other aspects of the bill would permanently modify the Land Water Conservation Fund to provide broad new recreation fee collection authority, and would facilitate expansion of private/public partnerships, authorized in the original Fee Demo, for development of recreation and tourism infrastructure on public lands. There is also a pilot program within the bill for the purpose of attracting "professionals with expertise in areas such as business management who are not typically attracted to careers in the National Park Service" In short, this bill would turn public lands from lands held in the public trust for the people of the United States to lands managed by the private sector for the profits of big recreation companies.
Rep. Peter DeFazio's (D-OR) introduced an
amendment to the 2002 Interior Appropriations bill on June 21 to shorten a new
four year extension of the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program (Fee Demo) to
one year. The amendment would also have removed a provision from the bill that
eliminates the cap from the number of Fee Demo sites each affected agency can have
(currenlty 100 for each agency). The amendment lost by 129
votes to 287.
Supporters of Fee Demo argued on the House floor about the needed revenues coming into National Parks from Fee Demo. Representatives Ralph Regula (R-OH; creator of Fee Demo), Joe Skeen (R-NM; House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chair), and Norm Dicks (D-WA; House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Minority) all argued in favor of Fee Demo.
Arguing against Fee Demo were Representatives Peter DeFazio, Mary Bono (R-CA), and Nick Rahall (D-WV; House Resources Committee Ranking Minority).