Fees and our forests don’t always fit
Guest opinion by Sen. Larry Craig
A Republican, Sen. Larry Craig is
Idaho’s senior senator in the U.S. Senate. This column was contributed to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia, Colo.
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 addition nine to 10 years, users of our public lands will
continue to enjoy and access their beauty in the way Mother Nature intended.