TURNING BACK THE CLOCK TO THE GOOD OLD DAYS
What the Baucus-Crapo Bill Does
By Bill Schneider, 12-13-07
As reported on NewWest.Net a week ago and five days later by daily newspapers, U.S. Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Mike Crapo (R-ID) have introduced S. 2438, the Fee Repeal and Expanded Access Act of 2007. The original stories on the introduction, including my article, only offered generalities about intent of the landmark legislation. Since then, a lot of questions have come up on what impact this bill would have when passed.
To answer those questions, I had a long chat with the staffers for Max Baucus who developed the legislation, and here are the details on what this major bill actually does for all of us who enjoy outdoor recreation on public lands.
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| Everybody understands that current fee revenue must be replaced. | |
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Consequently--and intentionally, I'm sure--FLREA created a serious incentive for federal employees to institute and increase fees because if they didn't, their programs and jobs would be cut. That caused agency line officers to push the envelope, going way beyond the letter of the law, creating and increasing fees in a desperate attempt to keep operating.
FLREA created even more incentive--again, intentionally, I'm sure--to institute and raise fees by allowing districts and parks to keep fee income instead of sending it to the Treasury--and hope it would be appropriated back to them.
The Baucus-Crapo bill would take away most fee-charging authority and require any remaining fees to go back to the Treasury instead of staying with the local area. But will this fee revenue be replaced with real appropriations? Clearly, most upcoming opposition to the bill will focus on this question, as it should.
At this point, there is nothing specifically in the bill about replacing the funding, but Baucus staffers assured me that the senator "is committed to make the agency budgets whole" and will "squeeze Congress" to replace the fee revenue. As chair of the powerful Finance Committee, Baucus is certainly in a position to do this.
Here's the firm message coming from the office of Max Baucus: "Max is committed to getting as much money for the recreation programs as possible. We'll be fighting throughout the appropriations process to make sure the funds coming in from fees are replaced. And we believe people in Senator Crapo's office want to see the same thing happen."
That's strong talk, but still just talk, of course. I'm sure federal employees living on fees will remain skeptical, but they should find some comfort in two powerful senators, one from each party, being in their camp.
Baucus staffers also discussed firefighting costs, the "800-pound gorilla out there sucking up the Forest Service budget." In future years, fighting forest fires might burn up 50 percent of the agency's budget--and not just money directly budgeted for fire fighting. In every big fire year, like we just had in 2007, the FS faces unbudgeted fire-related costs, so what happens? Agency heads raid already shriveled recreation budgets to cover fire cost overruns.
Senator Baucus also has a plan for this problem. As part of climate change legislation currently being debated in the Senate, he has created an $800 million fund dedicated to cover firefighting costs of the FS and other federal agencies and prevent raids on other budgets such as recreation.
So, given these sincere efforts by Baucus, Crapo and powerful politicians, it seems like everybody understands that current fee revenue must be replaced, at least, and more likely, increased.
Getting accurate figures on how much fee income actually comes in is almost impossible, but clearly, the total amount generated by fees is minuscule compared to other federal expenditures such as the endless money pit I call the Trillion Dollar War and can be easily replaced through the appropriations process like it was for many decades before the Age of FLREA.
Now, to questions about what S. 2438 actually does, Baucus staffers had these answers. In general, the bill takes us back to the way it was before FLREA.
Concerning our national parks, Baucus believes most people accept paying a reasonable entrance fee or for a night in a secure, developed campground, but after that, access and enjoyment of our national parks should be free.
The bill allows the National Park Service (NPS) to continue charging entrance fees, but caps them at $25 per vehicle (not per person) with no fee for people under 16. The recently launched America the Beautiful Pass would go away, but the NPS can sell an annual pass similar to the Golden Eagle Pass, but the bill caps the cost at $65 per year.
The NPS can also continue charging for staying overnight in developed campgrounds with facilities like garbage disposal and toilets. But the bill seeks to prevent the "layering" of fees i.e. paying the entrance fee and then have more fees layered on after inside the park. The NPS could charge for "expanded amenities," such as a museum, visitor center or developed campground, but not for parking or enjoying the natural amenities. Hence no parking fees or permits for backcountry hiking or river running.
For the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies, the bill changes things more radically than in does for the NPS. The agencies could still charge a fee to stay in a developed campground or enter a visitor center filled with pricey interpretive displays, but all other fees are disallowed. Also gone are the High Impact Recreation Areas, large areas designated by the FS, so the agency can charge fees to drive through our national forests.
Definitely no more entrance fees to drive into national forests. The toll booths will be coming down.
I'm sure that even more details will come out as the debate continues over the Baucus-Crapo bill, and the bill will be amended. I'll try to keep you informed as more information becomes available.
Also, for many related articles on the recreational fee controversy, check out the Recreation Fee Chronology.
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Please don't be a sucker and fall for the old line, “is committed to make the agency budgets whole.” It simply won't happen. Baucus will talk tough now, but in the long term he and the other elected officials will turn their attention to something more pressing, something that will help get the most votes at the least cost. And that is least cost based on impact to the federal budget or to the political chits each lawmaker builds up with their colleagues.
They will always find the best way to increase political support on the cheap. This year, it's getting votes on the cheap to be opposed to the fees and not have an answer for the degredation of the facilities and the resources that are impacted by public overuse and abuse of the public lands.
I think in 5-10 years from now if your wet dream about repeal of FLREA has happened you will be faced with budgets about 50 % where they are now and citizens and politicians doing nothing but complaining about the crappy facilities and degraded lands. Be careful what you wish for, Bill.
What do you mean by the USFS is "... making everyone a law enforcement person?"
That is what the people who wrote the bill told me. Unless the agnecy is using "some other authority" besides FLREA or the Land and Water Consrvation fund to charge fees, thee fees would be disallowed by the Baucus-Crapo bill.
Bill
It is interesting to note that one particular FS activity (fire-fighting) has never had to raise it's own revenue in the way that other mandated multiple uses (timber, grazing, mining, etc.) have had to.
Allows fees on sites that offer at least 5 of 9 recreation improvements.
Prohibits BuRec and BLM RAT fees.
Increases NPS fees a good bit.
Bill inadvertently raises the issue of government employees having to support their own jobs. Private sector does that all the time -- and then if they do a good job of it, they pay taxes that go to the Treasury and are, um, appropriated. It might be a good idea if the USFS and other agencies had that general attitude.
Then we might see some timber management, smaller fires, better recreation infrastructure....just like in the good old days before everything was sued into paralysis.
You do make a good point, but if USFS employees were required to support their own jobs, then it would be all about how much money they could make - not neccessarily what is best for the land. There's a reason why government does not act like the private sector (Plum Creek timber and Weyerhauser anyone?). Many projects just don't lend themselves to that type of management (weed spraying, culvert removal, etc.). I firmly believe 99% of the employees are truely doing what they think is the right thing, regardless of how much money is involved.
Major generalization coming up: Has the Homeland Security Department done so well, what with all the 1-bidder contracts, ties to Cheney, etc.? Personal gain and interest should be kept out of government when possible.
What is best for the land is a seriously open debate at this point. I would argue that current policy stinketh.
Even such eco-luminaries as Jerry Franklin and Norm Johnson have finally come out of the green closet, testifying that landscape-scale vegetation management, with a mechanical component, is needed toot sweet. They even grudgingly concede that revenues from products would help cover the cost of the needed management.
I would argue that revenues from products would cover ALL the cost of needed management, plus I would argue that even federal employees have an obligation to minimize their burden upon taxpayers. There was an analysis done on Region Six for Intertribal/Interior that showed Indians, state and private ground all covering their expense of management while USFS was spending at least four times what it took in. And that was BEFORE all the epic fires.
Any business, or any person, throwing money away like that would be sleeping under the bridge yesterday.
As for PCT, I can speak directly to their practices. I feel they have taken too many trees from their ground to maintain current levels of harvest in perpetuity. Yet their present methods of harvest are actually pretty good. Just yesterday I was looking at a harvest plan some cronies of mine are executing and it specifically says "visually pleasing" with a fair number of nice leave-trees. As for the land itself, you'd be hard-pressed to see much in the way of "bad."
In short, they are certainly slicking things off, but they are slicking things off right. The forest will be back, and in fact, is still a forest.
As for DHS, TSA et al, I agree. They reek. If you have a solution, I suggest you run for office and straighten it all out.
I would love to see the FS go back to the days of paying for all management activities with timber harvest revenue... it would solve a lot of the economic woes seen today. As you pointed out in your previous post, in today's litigious atmosphere, it just doesn't get the job done anymore... and that's just the timber lawsuits. I'm sure you're aware of the current Sierra Club lawsuit against the FS to allow more burning.
I also agree that federal employees have an obligation to minimize the tax burden - which they do with economic analysis providing the alternative with best value to the government (i.e. public taxpayers). Trouble is, those alternatives are never supported by the groups that most often sue the FS.
As far as spending more than it takes in, the FS barely recieves enough of a budget to cover employee salaries, let alone spend on worthwhile projects... fire spending aside (yuck - I HATE the current policy).
With regards to Plum Creek, I have no problem in general with their harvesting practices. I do think they tend to do a pretty good job in that respect. What came to my mind was their current foray into the real estate business.
As with most issues, this is complicated with many sides and shades of gray. I wish I had the solution!
I just think it would open up Pandora's Box if gov't employees were driven to keep their jobs based on how much money they generate for their agency.
The agency is a mess. I'll support more resources for it when I see them using what they have responsibly.
There have also been some reports that the agency has received more recreation funding but that it isn't making it to the end of the line where the public sees any benefit. Of course this is hard to determine when their accounting has been deemed unintelligible by the GSA.
Its not surprising there are no cosponsors at the moment, its a new bill. And congress is trying to figure out how to budget the government this week, which is proving difficult when there isn't money to do everything.
We really need some paying customers sharing the cost....and of course the use. We simply must reign in the "me onlys".
One of the basic undelying principles of this program IS: the LOCALS pay for what THEY use in THEIR area - if you don't use use it, you don't have to pay for it!!
SO - see a doctor about your crainial rectal insertion and TRY to learn something about what you are saying!!
As many other folks in this blog have stated; we ALL pay taxes for things we don't want or like; that is the WAY of the world/country; if you don't like it- CHANGE it or LEAVE!! The saying; "It's a FREE country" doesn't mean it costs NOTHING TO BE HERE- but it does MEAN you are FREE to GO somewher else!!
To regain a modicum of recreation use and structure, the first issue is to cut off the head of the monster that is having a politically run USFS with the Chief being a political appointee instead of the person being someone long groomed for the job through the SES process. Just me talking about better times in the far past.
Yep. Franklin and Johnson have done a 180, a huge course correction, and I am still recovering from whiplash. Until I see results, I am speechless. I applaud their candor. Kittens open their eyes in weeks. Too bad academics take decades.
If my memory serves me, the USFS has just spent the better part of a half century maintaining and repairing the efforts of the CCC in trail construction, aforestation of forests that used to burn frequently or be fired frequently for cultivation of forage resources, and construction of campgrounds and administration buildings, and housing. Never having enough money to get the job done right, some assets have melted into the ground, some are currently being sold, and many have been protected by the Antiquities Act but ignored by the US Govt under their own rules. All that USFS police activity is to make sure someone does not dig up a bottle from an old outhouse while their bosses let buildings rot and campgrounds be closed. I just love the sight of a USFS law enforcement rig pullling over speeders on the highway and writing tickets. My federal money being pissed away while their Rome burns. I drifted.
The only way to have the facilities and resources the public lands of the New West so desperately need is to somehow be able to grab Congressional appendages and apply pressure, and that has to be done by representation from the West against the much more numerous representation from the East. Or turn it into a civil rights issue or a national defense issue. Or just admit it will never happen, that the old timers were smarter than we are today, in that they had the timber program to siphon money off of to keep all the amenities funded, and the locals in good roads, schools, and supporting the efforts to keep money in the county.
Franklin and Johnson may have changed direction, but the PILT money just again evaporated, and that is the real sign of how much the US majority cares about the rural New West, and their public lands. If you think about all the money that goes, untaxed, to support the NGOs, the Sierra Clubs, the Defenders of Wildlife, the Wilderness Society, that seemingly endless list, you can appreciate why there is no money for the USFS recreation programs. We don't collect taxes from the obfuscators! They don't pay their share! But they damn well cost the programs endless amounts of money in their incessant litigation.
We have discovered the enemy and he is us. Or is it we forgot to dance with the gal what brung us?
Makes sense doesn't it!
The USFS does not salvage one one thousandth of one percent of the trees that die. The amount is almost of no statistical value. The are not doing what their agency was created to do, and now even authors of the Northwest Forest Plan, Jerry Franklin and Norm Johnson, are admonishing the USFS and Congress to step up thinning and salvage logging by many times, just to save the old growth and its attendant species from certain extirpation from conflagration.
I absolutely agree - I just was pointing out to Irene that the federal government DOES allow that type of harvest... probably could have worded my hasty response in a better fashion.
Interesting turn-about on Franklin and Johnson's end...
It is location-specific, but in my Ranger District, half or more of all projects with a commercial timber component are comprised of salvage of lodgepole pine killed or infested with mountain pine beetle. I guess in my eyes that makes it pretty "regular" around here.
Bark beetles are killing our forests because of the lack of long, cold winters......because of global warming. (I went skiing in Yellowstone yesterday, Dec. 16, in my shirt sleeves!). Forests are overgrown because of mankind's insistence to put out every little fire for over a hundred years.
As for the fees: Good for Max on this one. Can you imagine the Utopia we might have if we had all the money that has been spent (and misplaced!) in Iraq and Afghanistan? Maybe NO FEES on public lands. Maybe health care for all Americans. Maybe no hunger. Maybe fix social security.
We can only dream.........
Man came into a place where the Native First People set fires on a regular basis to maintain open forests. First, we did our damnedest to kill all those savages, and then we prohibited burning, began to log, and then stopped all logging. As a result, we have 2/3 of our public forestlands grossly overstocked with trees gasping for water and nutrients, and some real idiots running around preaching the gospel of conflagration as our saviour. Radicals in control can only bring us radical solutions. Common sense is out the window.
Last week, noted old growth forest scientists told a Congressional hearing that we had better get to thinning, to a very open canopy, soon, or we lose all the old growth heritage forests that so many gave so much to save. The pendulum swung way too far one way, and now is on its way back, and it is my hope that a common sense backstop will shorten its swing....in either direction. Radicals are radicals, and the best laid plans of mice and men of' go astray...
I just put down the Economist, and was reading about all the success that NATO is having in parts of Afghanistan, and that our most egregious mistake was not to put more "boots on the ground" early on. (That is doing something on the "cheap".) Some parts of Afghan government is doing its job, and their national police force/army is coming along nicely. In this nation of instant gratification, we have to somehow acquire the patience needed to see something through to its logical end, whether it be forest policy or nation saving/building. I watched a great Division III running back last saturday who had the most patience of any runner I have seen in several years. He waited until he had the hole he needed, and then burst, cheetah like, through the hole. Beaver was his name. Well, Beavers are patient and persevere. Tear out their dam and tomorrow it will be rebuilt. We need some of that in this country. We need to persevere, to stick with it, to overcome, to restore our forests, our faith in government, our ability to be the best and the most honorable.
I would like not to spend money on a lot of stuff. I would not like to spend a million and half bucks on every person who got hurricane damaged in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast. I would not like to give social security benefits to people who our country admits in their old age, people who did not pay into the system. I would not like to have Congress getting full wally health coverage and not me. There are many things about this place I would like changed, and if I am patient, they will in time if my cause is just. If not, I will have a long wait for nothing. We can only dream.
"Man (I presume you mean 'white man'" came into a place where the Native First People set fires on a regular basis to maintain open forests."............Prescribed burns are done regularly on National Forest lands across the country when conditions allow. Heck, they even did a couple in Yellowstone this year. Unfortunately, because of over 100 years of fire suppression, bark beetles and global warming, most forests aren't waiting to burn. Remember, fire is a vital part of the NATURAL processes, and forests managed to exist for millions of years without man's "help". From an ecological standpoint a natural forest fire is not a tragedy; as demonstrated by the 1988 Yellowstone fires. They are only a tragedy to humans who have lost their homes, communities or "view". The bark beetles are the real tragedy because they are killing our forests without nourishing the soil, germinating the pine seeds and regenerating plant communities.
......."we had better get to thinning, to a very open canopy, soon, or we lose all the old growth heritage forests that so many gave so much to save." The problem with "thinning" is that the forests that need to be thinned are the ones near towns, communities and homes. Of course folks who live in these areas don't want to lose their "mountain atmosphere" and "privacy". Of course the logging industry will tell you that we need to "thin" (read that 'log') wilderness areas, which will (and always have) take care of themselves through NATURAL processes....including fire; which, again, is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to a healthy ecosystem.
....."Afghanistan, and that our most egregious mistake was not to put more "boots on the ground" early on." Hard to argue with that! That is exactly what we should have done. Gone in strong and gotten bin Laden and been done with it. Instead of wasting 500 billion dollars, 4,000 US dead and 60,000 wounded in Iraq. Estimates now are that the war in Iraq will cost more than one trillion dollars before we get out. You can fix a lot over here for one trillion bucks.
"I would not like to spend a million and half bucks on every person who got hurricane damaged in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast."
Well I have no problem spending whatever is necessary to help any American who truly needs it (would much rather spend money to build America, than to destroy Iraq), waste is the hallmark of our current administration. David Letterman got $8,000 in rancher subsidies last year for his "hobby" ranch in Montana. To his credit he donated it to charity.
"I would not like to have Congress getting full wally health coverage and not me.".........Isn't that what I said?
Our North American forests are less than 15,000 years old. Or at least the ones at elevation and north of 40 degrees lat or thereabouts. The forests moved to occupy new lands as those lands became climate favorable. Some moved up slope, and some moved north. But forests move as surely as the slug in your garden, albeit at a much slower rate.
They surely did not start as old growth forests. They start as a tree pioneering a new site, and his use of water or providing shade or a drip line nourishes another new seedling. It is a slow process to instant gratification America, but a rocket ship ride in evolutionary time. And right with them were the First People, who quickly learned (all that protein building large brains) to pre-emptive burn for safety or to herd animals or provide for agriculture. In some form of like mindedness and serendipity, man began the cultivation of a cereal and a legume, together, almost simultaneously around the world. Corn and beans here, rice and soybeans in East Asia, lentils and barley in the MidEast. Probably as a hedge against reduction in available game seasonally. In the Pacific Islands, of taro cultivation and pigs, when things got tough they ate each other or moved on to colonize another island somewhere far away. Whatever, they survived, and they modified their environment in order to survive.
Now you can be an environmental troglodyte and believe that lightening fire is the natural forest manager, but those who have evolved beyond their caves would like you to understand that set fire, for thousands of years, is what shaped the environment and allowed for trees to live beyond 50 to 100 years instead of being consumed by wildfire in their first century. Our ancestors on this land were not stupid and were not consumed with political correctness. They burned for many reasons, but burn they did. They burned for sanitation (no "00" shovels to dig a latrine trench), to have a safe place to live (who likes wildfire coming in the night--the Norm MacClean described defense), to herd animals, or to leave them with places of refuge that were easy to hunt them in, to provide for regrowth of plants that provided fruits, seeds, or strands to make baskets or useful tools. The cumulative result was the Edenic forests described and found by early Europeans on this land. Thousands of years of set fire, and millions of lightening fires deprived of conflagration fuels. That is how you get "Old Growth" forests, the diversity of meadows, parks, and prairies, and open grown forests with large old trees and ease of life for hunter/gatherer peoples.
To regain that land use pattern, millions of acres of vastly overstocked forests will have to have fuels (trees!!!) removed, and not just a few little ones. It takes vision and thought, and appreciation and knowledge of the trail to this time and these places to understand what needs to happen. However, if you have the knee-jerk, anti-logging, Luddite view of forest management activity, and Restoration Forestry, then you will surely lose the forests you most love, and all that they were. It will be all our losing, but you in particular. What a shame!!
Our forests are sort of like concentration camps for trees. Zealously guarded, not fed, not provided sanitation, and crowded beyond belief. Bark beetles are just the typhus, dysentery, wholesale population malaise that you see in a concentration camp. Gaunt, denuded, dead, lifeless, hopelessly crowded trees, all suffering from common parasites and diseases. And all this is celebrated in the propaganda of their Econazis keepers who now proclaim conflagration as the final solution. There will be a day of reckoning. Public opinion will have its own Nuremburg event in the voting booths. One too many properties burned, one too many killed needlessly. It will come.
OK. So the first people came across the Bering Straight and immediately saw the necessity of setting up a Dept. of Agriculture....no doubt they also set up a Dept. of Fish and Game, because without intense management, and predator control, it is clear that wildlife would not have survived.......What an admirable job those several thousand early pre-historic peoples did in managing hundreds of millions of sq. miles of forest! Not to mention the wildlife! How incredibly naive of the Encyclopedia Britannia saying that, "Planned management of forests with the aim of perpetuating and improving them is a relatively new development"......."spreading from Europe to the rest of the world in the Nineteenth Century"!! And that prior to that "the process of destruction and deterioration was encouraged by the almost universal belief that the forests were inexhaustible....".
No! No! No! My brain hurts! Guess I'm not ready to evolve out of my cave yet! Can't believe that the Earth would shrivel up and whither away without man's "management". Too many (though not nearly enough) places where man seldom sets foot that are doing very well, thank you very much! Too many places where man did not live (at least not in very many numbers) down through the centuries that did quite well without him. Too many forests that burn from natural, lightning caused fires that have resurrected themselves quite well.
NO! MAN IS NOT GOD!!
BTW...I never said that I am opposed to logging. I live in a wooden house, use wood to heat it and have plenty of wooden furniture. What I am opposed to is clear cutting, destroying critical wildlife habitat, cutting down old growth (which, in order to get "old" has probably survived many fires) and using "healthy forests" as an excuse to build roads into and log wilderness areas.