The next time you visit your local
public library, drive an interstate highway through the West or
attend a city council meeting, imagine how frustrated and upset
you’d be if you were charged a fee for the privilege of doing
so. In spite of the tax dollars you already pay to support these
entities, imagine if you were charged an extra “user fee” or
“admission fee.”
Managers might assure you that the fee
will go toward more helpful signs on the road, more comfortable
chairs at city hall or a refreshment stand in the library. These
amenities might improve your experience while providing extra
funding for these institutions. If, after a year or two of paying
these fees, some of the promised services materialized and some
didn’t, you would rightfully feel used, confused or angry.
Rest assured, highways, libraries and city halls
won’t be subject to fees like this in the foreseeable future.
Across the nation, however, some of our public lands already are.
The authority to charge a recreation fee is provided to
the agencies under the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program, which
is set to expire in December 2005 unless Congress votes another
reauthorization. This program has been a demonstration in the
truest meaning of this word by providing us all with insight into
what we like, dislike and are willing to pay for when it comes to
using our public lands.
What I have heard overwhelmingly
is that people around the country are willing to pay for a service
associated with actual use, but not simple access to our public
lands. I agree with this and have no problem with charging users a
recreation fee, or more accurately, an amenity fee for the
maintenance or related costs of areas with a Forest Service or
Bureau of Land Management campground, a public access boat ramp,
garbage pickup or other such services. These are important services
that require upkeep, and they are vital to the preservation of
these areas.
But I do not agree with charging users a fee
to hunt, fish, hike or otherwise use unimproved public lands.
Some fees that we encounter in everyday life are
well-established and reasonable. We pay to see a movie or concert
in a public place; we might pay a fee to enter a museum. Sometimes,
we pay a toll to finance roads or bridges.
In each
instance, we pay for a finished product — something that has
taken time and money to build or create, or that will require
funding to maintain. That is why I cannot support the policy of
charging people fees to access lands and resources that are already
theirs, which certainly were not created or upgraded by the natural
resource agencies, and which won’t be improved or altered as
a result of these fees.
In the case of a town or county
that imposes a user fee for something like a library, the citizens
can use the ballot box to resolve their concerns about
administrators who overstep their responsibilities or the bounds of
common sense. In the case of the land managers who work for federal
agencies, there are no elections. That is why I am calling for
recreation fee advisory committees in each state to review and
advise where and what fees should be charged.
I am also
concerned that during the six-year Recreation Fee Demonstration, we
relieved the federal agencies from having to count these fees as
part of their gross receipts, which are shared with the counties
through programs like the Forest Service’s 25 percent Payment to
Counties.
Now that the demonstration is coming to an end
and we are trying to determine if and how to provide permanent
authority to the program, we must also look at how recreation
affects the counties that host our public lands. When a hiker gets
lost in the woods, it is the county’s search and rescue team
that is tasked with finding the hiker. Improved amenities will
bring more recreation, and as a result, increased pressure on
counties. I will demand that all fees collected from this and other
programs continue to be shared with county and local governments.
I will continue to work with my colleagues and the
administration to refine the recreation-fee program, so that if it
is authorized for an additional nine to 10 years, users of our
public lands will continue to enjoy and access their beauty in the
way Mother Nature intended.
Republican Sen.
Larry Craig of Idaho is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado
(hcn.org).
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