The US Forest Service’s (USFS) Fee-Demo program is now on the verge of passing from the demo stage to become a permanent part of our recreation on public lands. I’m a frequent user of public lands, for camping, hiking, bird and wildlife watching, and just for the pure enjoyment of natural spaces and the forest environment.
When the Fee-Demo program began it sounded like a good idea—the way many government programs are presented to the public. To ante up a few dollars for trail upkeep and to catch up on deferred maintenance seemed a reasonable request. That cost is now $5 for a daily trailhead pass and $30 for an annual, or Adventure Pass.
After I started shelling out, I began to realize how much this was costing me. It’s one thing to live near a participating national forest where you pay a single annual $30 fee which entitles you to a year’s worth of use, but it’s another thing when you travel about in an RV visiting several national forests over a year’s time, not staying in any one long enough to warrant buying an annual pass (how many $30 would that add up to?).
When I started coughing up $5 for every time I used public lands—for morning runs, a hike, or an afternoon walk--that I already paid taxes for, it began to get my goat. (According to the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1964, the USFS can charge fees only for the use of (1) boat launching facilities that offer services such as mechanical or hydraulic boat lifts and (2) campgrounds that offer certain amenities such as toilet facilities, drinking water, refuse containers and tent or trailer spaces.)
It wouldn’t be so bad if the USFS issued a national pass good for all the forests, or even a regional pass, but having to buy an annual pass for every national forest that I visited was out of the question. So I stewed and fumed but didn’t complain. After all, the money collected went directly back into the forest for deferred maintenance, right?
Then more information began to spill out. The money collected—that was to go to trail maintenance among other uses—all seemed to be appropriated for paving parking lots, improving picnic areas, installing new fancy entry signs, and building spiffy new vault toilets, rather than to trail maintenance.
Then, just recently the other hiking boot hit the floor. Representative Scott McInnis (R, Western Colorado) requested that the Government Accounting Office (GAO) prepare a report of accountability on the Fee-Demo program. The report was released May 19, 2003 and revealed that the USFS has been secretly subsidizing the administration of the program with funds collected at Fee-Demo sites, despite the program’s requirement that only 15% of fee revenues could be used to pay for collection costs.
And with this secret slush fund that was hidden by fuzzy accounting, it turns out that as much as half of the collected fees went to collection costs.
How much Fee-Demo money REALLY goes to help our Forests?
The gross Fee-Demo revenue for 2001 was over $35 million. Subtract the reported cost of collection, $5,051,000, the undeclared use of $10 million of appropriated funds to support the program, the Adventure Pass program’s unrecorded vendor cost (discounts paid to private sellers of the pass--$1 on daily passes, and $5 on annual passes) of $370,000 (data obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request in June, 2002 but
withheld from the GAO), and subtract a further $4.6 million in funds raised at some Fee Demo sites that already produced fee income from boat launches and campgrounds before the program began in 1997, and that leaves a net revenue of $15 million.
Not only that, but the GAO reports: "the Forest Service does not have a process
for measuring the impact of fee demo expenditures on reducing the deferred maintenance backlog," and "Further, while acknowledging that it has a
significant deferred maintenance problem, the agency has not developed a
reliable estimate of its deferred maintenance needs.". . . "As a result,
even if the agency knew how much fee revenue it is spending on deferred
maintenance, it would not know if its total deferred maintenance needs are
being reduced." In other words, it looks like it’s all going down the rat hole.
For over a century our tax dollars have maintained our National Forests for all of us to enjoy. When congress cuts back on funding for the forests and discovers that they can milk us for the un-done maintenance, do you think they will ever restore the funding they took away? We both know the answer to that question. And if the USFS hierarchy can get away with un-reporting or mis-reporting how they collect and how they use this new-found cash cow, which side of the fence do you think they will stand on?
Do you want to have a say in this matter, which is on the verge of becoming law? Check it out for yourself. The full GAO report can be downloaded from: www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-470. Highlights can be read at: www.gao.gov/highlights/d03470high.pdf.
Then write your congress person or senator. You can get the address and phone number of your representative by calling the Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Or contact CA Senator Barbara Boxer who is actively opposing the Adventure Pass at (202) 224-3553 or write her at: 112 Hart, Washington, DC 20510.
