On May 22, Craig Thomas (R-Wyoming) reintroduced the
Recreational Fee
Authority Act (S. 1107). Rep. Thomas had previously intorduced this legislation in the 107th
Congress.
This legislation would make Fee Demo permanent for the National Parks only. It does not address Fee Demo for the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, or Fish and Wildlife Service.
A General Accounting Office (GAO)
40-page report titled "Information on Forest Service Management of
Revenue from the Fee Demonstration Program" (2001), requested by Rep.
Scott McInnis (R, Western Colorado) and released May 19, 2003, "reveals
a deep-seated culture of deception and a total lack of accountability within
the US Forest Service's Recreation Fee Demonstration Program (Fee Demo),"
said Scott Silver, Executive Director of Oregon-based, Wild Wilderness.
Congressman McInnis, who is not philosophically opposed to the fees, requested the GAO audit to look into concerns raised by the Colorado-based Western Slope No-Fee Coalition and his constituents regarding the program.
Highlights of the report can be found on the GAO's website at www.gao.gov.
The GAO found that the US Forest Service (USFS) has been secretly subsidizing the management of its Fee Demo program with (in 2001) $10 million of appropriated tax dollars (p.32 of the report). "In what amounts to a complete absence of accountability on the part of Fee Demo managers across the nation, the Forest Service has failed to mention in its annual Fee Demo Progress Reports to Congress that (in 2001) close to $10 million was used as a tax-dollar subsidy to administer the program" (p.32) said Robert Funkhouser, President, Western Slope No Fee Coalition. "This alone immediately triples the $5 million which the Forest Service was declaring as the true cost of collection and administration for the program" added Funkhouser.
Costs of fee collection at major Fee Demo "sites" - such as the Southern California "Adventure Pass" and the Oregon and Washington "Northwest Forest Pass" - have been under-reported by concealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions received by pass vendors. (p.25).
The Forest Service's reported gross Fee Demo revenue for FY 2001 was over $35 million (p.6). From this figure if one subtracts the reported cost of collection, $5,051,000 (p. 9), the $10 million of appropriated funds used to support the fee demonstration program (p.32), and the $4.6 million in user-fees previously collected at sites that produced fee income prior to becoming fee-demonstration sites [i.e., campgrounds, boat launches, etc. (Source: April 2002 Interim Report to Congress on Fee Demo, p.23).], all of the Forest Service Fee Demo sites in all of the United States generated a total net increase in fee revenues of a mere $15 million.
Based upon these figures, "The cost of collection is closer to 50% - requiring more than $15 million to raise less than $15 million," said Funkhouser. "The $15 million adjusted net revenue is likely to still be too high" adds Alasdair Coyne, Director of California-based Keep the Sespe Wild who in June 2002 obtained information about vendor discounts using the Freedom of Information Act. "Vendor discounts for Adventure Passes sold in Southern California resulted in another $288,500 in lost Fee Demo revenues. The revenues lost through vendor discounts at other sites throughout the nation are unknown but are likely to be considerable", said Coyne.
The USFS was also found to have no mechanism for ascertaining whether Fee Demo has lessened the deferred maintenance backlog, which is the very purpose for which Fee Demo was created by Congress in 1996. What's more the GAO concludes that the USFS has no idea how large their maintenance backlog really is! (p.22)
"Until the General Accounting Office audits the BLM and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Fee Demo programs the amounts of cost of collection and the use of appropriated funds for program management is unclear. The net revenues for the BLM and USFWS combined is less than $4 million" adds Silver.
"It is time for Congress to terminate this ill-conceived fee program, Americans have already paid taxes to maintain what is theirs. The perverse incentive created by letting the land management agencies appropriate their own funds, outside of congressional oversight, leads to the abuses we see in this report." stated Funkhouser. "This GAO Report shows that the Forest Service misled Congress and the American people about the enormous costs involved with forest fees."