LET'S HEAR IT FOR GEEZER POWER!
Congress, Greens: Time to Spike RAT, Out-of-Control Forest Service Fees
As the Forest Service intensifies its abuse of recreation fee-charging authority, the agency forces more and more people, and now even the elderly and disabled, off their land. Meanwhile, politicians and environmental leaders who purport to be concerned about access to public lands sit on the sidelines. Where will it end? With toll booths on every Forest Service road?By Bill Schneider, 1-28-10
 |
|
 | |
| Photos courtesy of the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition. | |
|
The bad news is we’re getting older, and the good news is we’re getting older.
Nobody likes the older-slower-fatter succession, but at least when you get to be a geezer--and yep, I’m officially a geezer, so I take it personally--you usually have more time, but less money, to enjoy the outdoors and our public lands for camping, hiking, fishing, or scenic driving.
But not if the Forest Service has its way.
Back in 1965, the federal government gave geezers and people with disabilities a little legacy with the Golden Age and Golden Access passports that granted free entry to national parks and 50 percent discount for camping in national forest campgrounds. The FS didn’t use many private concessionaires at the time, but those that were on board were required to honor these discounts. Now, the FS wants to spike the discounts and free entry passes, which at best seems like a broken promise, if not breach of contract, for those who bought them. I guess “lifetime” means until the concessionaires no longer want to honor it.
This geezer-friendly policy ended in 2005 when the Bush administration slipped through the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, called RAT (Recreation Access Tax) by its detractors, I among them. RAT is a far-reaching piece of legislation affecting virtually all Americans, and it became the law of the land without a vote of Congress. Instead, in December 2004, it was a midnight rider on a must-pass budget bill that our elected representatives passed as they prepared to head home the holiday break.
RAT provides for the new America the Beautiful Pass, $80 annually. The law also allows a $10 Lifetime Pass and a free Access Lifetime for the disabled, but--and this is a big but--it does not require concessionaires to honor these passes.
Enter Corporate America. Nowadays, FS officials apparently have the idea they represent private concessionaires instead of the people who employ them, you and me, because in December they published a notice of proposed administrative rule change in the Federal Register that would essentially scrap all favors given to the elderly and disabled. Why would they purposely rub these constituencies the wrong way when politicians faithfully avoid doing so?
Because, as frequently stated in the notice, FS is concerned that concessionaires aren’t making enough money off public lands. Huh? With all the challenges facing public land managers, this is what they prioritize? The proposed rule reads like it was written by and for the benefit of private business instead of the public the FS is supposed to serve.
In recent years, the FS has been turning over campgrounds and other public facilities to private concessionaires as fast as they can sign the papers. Today, incredibly, private concessionaires manage half of the 4,731 national forest campgrounds and 82 percent of those campsites that can be reserved, which are often the cream of the crop. And concessionaires have the authority to charge extra fees the FS doesn’t dare charge, such as for parking on public land. And they do it!
Remember the days when the Forest Service used to manage Forest Service campgrounds instead of Corporate America? Some concessionaires are mom-and-pop operations, but in recent years, large companies have also moved into the campground reservation and management biz.
The rub is, for private business, there are just too many geezers. Current age demographics conflicts with the public lands business plan.
Basically, here’s how it has been going for the past five years. Even though the agency’s funding has steadily increased, the FS continues to push its fee-charging authority as far as legally possible (too far, actually, but that’s another story) and when they get nervous, they simply turn over the dirty work to a private concessionaire--sort of like hiring a thumb-breaker to do your collection work.
The result? The FS now runs our national forests like a private business, but not directly. It’s on contract to concessionaires.
This trend, and RAT itself, doesn’t benefit the public, but the FS apparently doesn’t care. Even AARP, probably the second most powerful lobby in the country (behind the NRA), voiced its concern for the new policy, but that hasn’t deterred the FS from its attempt to make public lands less accessible to the aging public.
Meanwhile, sadly, all major green groups, including those that often voice concern about public access, continue to say and do nothing about the Forest Service’s abuse of its authority given under RAT and the rampant commercialization of public lands.
Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Mike Crapo (R-ID), who both believe Americans already annually pay for the right to use their lands on April 15, have introduced a repeal of RAT, S. 868, which would put us back to the pre-2005 days of reasonable fees for highly developed sites only. Regrettably, their bill has gone nowhere in either the 110th or 111th Congress, nor has even one of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives cared enough about access to public lands to introduce a companion bill.
And for those who think President Obama might be more concerned about the geezer vote or keeping public lands accessible to all. Ha! If there has been any of the hoped-for, oft-promised “change,” it has not been for the better. Instead, it’s business as usual--continuing to squeeze as much cash as possible out of public lands, using the vast resources of the federal government to punish struggling nonprofits and volunteer attorneys who dare challenge RAT, and consequently, gradually destroying the tradition of free use of public lands.
I say, its time for our Senators to take a small break from health care reform, stopping Al Qaeda, or worrying about the next election to do something that will not only win back some of the votes they’re losing but help all Americans enjoy a right we all cherish just as much as the Second Amendment, the right to enjoy our own land. Actually, it seems apropos that they simply attach S. 868 as a rider to the health care bill or the next endless-war-funding bill and make it the law of the land the old-fashioned way--by not passing it.
Ditto for our green group leaders. Let them know that runaway recreation fees is an issue worth their time and like our Senators, they need to take a break from climate change and farm legislation and do something that benefits all their members.
In the meantime, until February 1, you can have your say, officially, on the proposed FS rule by clicking here.
Cross your fingers that the FS has finally pushed it too far and messed with the wrong crowd. Let’s hear it for Geezer Power!
Footnote: For more NewWest.Net coverage of the RAT, click here.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
Our youth no longer want to go to the hills and park beside the highway and look at the landscape only to be told they can't use it. The idea of spending the night away from wi-fi access and TV to sit in a campground full of barking dogs, noxious generators and parties somehow doesn't seem like much fun. Trying to hike a trail while avoiding mountain bikers and their ever present troop of dogs running wild is no fun either. God forbid you should light a fire and try to roast a hot dog!
I think a lot folks got what they deserved - look but don't touch and if you want to touch it is going to cost you some money.
Offer nothing, charge nothing?
And John is absolutely correct in his premise. Visiting the forest is getting to be a negative experience, not to be repeated...the USFS is in fact shunning the only substantive constituency it has besides the usual litigants and eco-correct visitors. The vast majority of the recreating public use modern forms of transport and if the USFS won't maintain the necessary infrastructure, see ya.
I think perhaps it is time to cut the cabbage. How about if all the wilderness areas become the U.S. Wilderness Service, with all services paid for with user fees and sponsorships from, say, Yvon's buddies? That'll be great, right?
I just finished reading "The Big Burn" by Egan. Mr. Schneider's words sound very familiar and illustrate the challenges faced by the Forest Service on many fronts. May what we should be doing is asking, "Why are concessionaires necessary?"
I'm 62, and "old" by any yuppie's definition. But I'm all for taxing the rich, ending wars, and national health care. You're thinking of "old people," those over 65 who are generally opposed to these things (the Teabaggers). A new generation of oldsters is at hand, those of us born right after WWII. As we used to say during the revolution: "Up against the wall, MF's, its time for change."
It was Ben Franklin who stated "If you are willing to give up your freedom for safety, you deserve neither!" That's what "homeland security is all about. Giving up your freedom for so called safety.
I say we need another civil war in this country. The people against the government. What have they been doing for you except robbing you?! We also deserve the same health care that the president has.
Not a dime out of your pocket and the best health care in the country. Now, don't you deserve that?
Among the things that everybody knows to be true that just ain't so are that the appropriated funding to public lands has been cut (it hasn't) and that the agencies have a huge maintenance backlog (they may or may not but since they don't actually keep track no one can say.)
Thanks Bill for another spot-on column. Don't stop.
Other than that, we need a low-income discount as well.
But what's happening doesn't end with the placement of a toll booth. Next you get congestion pricing or dynamic pricing or differential pricing or a combination of all three. Want to use the forest on a weekend, it will cost you more than mid-week. Want to see an interpretative exhibit, well the price will vary depending upon demand. Want to wander in the woods when the sun is shining and the flowers are in bloom, well it's going to cost you more than on a dreary winter day.
But it doesn't end there. No, all that's been done to define market values so that every possible thing you wish to do can be monetized and every activity can be marketized. At that point, the fire sale of our public lands can begin in earnest.
I suppose folks know that those roads and bridges with toll booths on them are being sold -- mainly to foreign companies. Needless to say, the cost to use these roads and bridges is shooting though the roof. Want to drive to work during normal commute hours and premium fees are charged. Even high occupancy lanes are up for bid such that one person can be a carpool if he's paid an extra-premium, go to the front of the line, fee.
So NO, it doesn't end with toll booths. It ends when the public lands are no longer public except, perhaps, in name. It ends when there is no democracy except, perhaps, in name. Whether recreational access will exist for the average guy or gal, is anybody's guess. But you can bet your bottom dollar that access won't be free --- except, perhaps, to a particularly nuked part of the forest on a unusually dreary and truly miserable winter's day. That's what this issue is all about and that the future all of us face, unless we create a different one.
Clearly, the path of privatization of publicly owned treasures such as our national forests, parks, and Wilderness will end with a populace who will not be able to afford the price of admission to access what little remains of what they once owned, and once were taxed to maintain for everyone's benefit.
An equally important question is "How did this start?"
Clearly, this started with a populace who bought the lie claiming "big government" needed to be defunded to the point where it could be "drowned in a bathtub". "Big government", is corporate-speak for regulators and agencies charged with operating in the best interests of the people, as opposed to the investors' bottom line.
We're being robbed in broad daylight every time our tax dollars get siphoned from maintaining services most developed countries take for granted. Our own bought-off representatives in Congress will continue to reward corporations and suck us dry until we say, "Enough".
"Public lands have become the arena of the elite and the young."
This has been proven to be false time and time again, yet people continue to spread the same false info.
If anyone is acting "elite" out there it's the older folks with RV's, generators, towing a pick up full of ATV's.
No Fees for FS lands, just look at OR& WA with their NW forest pass.
I don't thing the +65 diaper crowd is riding around on ATV's, though they may still be able to pilot big RV's. Those older than 40 but still in control of their bowel movements may have the money to pay the fees and buy gas for their toys, but this is the group that is most likely environmentally-minded.
The "youngsters" may be least able to afford the toys and fees, and hopefully are equally green. But I still don't get the age thing here. It seems to me anyone is capable of environmental ignorance, and may or may not have the money to indulge it.
Call me a socialist, liberal, whatever (the classifications are many when you believe in publicly accessible amenities in this country) but the gist of it is FS and NPS staff, rangers and personnel often have a connection to the environments they work in that a concessionaire will never have. These folks provide enforcement, education and management of some of our countries most amazing ecosystems and landscapes.
I go to campgrounds to get away from the everyday junk that stifles our lives. I don't want to hear generators, tvs and radios. But, I realize that some folks do, so I take it in stride. Paying fees is ok too, as long as they aren't equivalent to what it would cost for me to pitch my three man tent in a $70 hotel room.
I hope for everyone's sake though that access and affordability of getting into the outdoors, teaching our youth about the environment by getting them out there, and sharing the spaces considerately is better addressed in the coming years.
Boy, do people miss that timber revenue.
Again, boy, do people sure miss that timber revenue.
Sorry. No infrastructure left. No critical mass. No companies on the West Coast making sawmill equipment. No log yarder manufacturers left. Logging equipment is now something modified from construction equipment. All the specific logging equipment industry is gone. Only one foundry producing blocks and rigging, and they send stuff around the world. All the logging equipment is made in Europe and used in Europe. The US imports wide dimension lumber on the east coast from Austria. And the Balkan states. Panels from Finland and Norway, and England saws logs shipped in from the Baltic states on the eastern shore, from Poland to Russia. There is a robust timber industry in Europe. And a dead one in the US.
Pay to play. The joke on the USFS campground with a pit toilet and cold water from a pump or pipe, is that you can stay in a motel for half again the money, and not have to pack all that equipment nor have to listen to a generator half the night. My old Uncle Carl said he thought that maybe there was a blue collar class of people in the West who thought that if there was not an internal combustion engine running, the world was coming to an end. He thinks maybe they set them up next to cribs to lull their babies to sleep at night. And, he advanced the concept that maybe they did better breathing engine exhaust until they were old enough to smoke cigarettes. He sometimes gets a tad cynical.
The real issue is that we lost our democracy to entitlements and the entitled. We have advanced public employment in these United States to where there are more of them than there are us. When you add up public employees, district, city, county, state, and Federal, and all the retirees from there, and whoever is living off their paychecks and benefits, working and retired, it costs a lot of money to do nothing. The Queen of Hearts dilemma from Alice through the lookinglass. We have to run this fast to not fall behind, even though we are not going anywhere. And raise the Federal debt limit by another trillion and a half. Now we have to run a little faster. To not go anywhere.
The sleight of hand from the majority in Congress and the President is going to be to put the pea under the shell of state responsibility. Pass the buck with great oratory. The unfunded mandate. And that is where the USFS has found itself. No income, lots of responsibility. The opposite of the DINKS---double incomes, no kids, public employment. The public's answer is to resist, and the USFS answer is the one we see everywhere and all too often: close the campground. All the campgrounds. Don't maintain or repair trails. Let it burn. Don't grade the rock roads. Don't fill the pot holes on their paved road. Close roads.
I don't know if you can follow this, but the USFS is on precisely the same path as the industrial timberland owners. They are morphing into REITs and TIMO tax structures, which is a polite and muffled way of saying that they are out of the milling business, and now in the process of liquidation of the land base, and all the capital gains taxes are going to be paid by the stockholders. The USFS is in the lock it up and walk away mode. No more extractive use. No more use of renewable vegetation. No more use of roads. And we are going to let fire burn off the vegetation. The liquidation by natural means of the Public Forested Estate. Under way and on going. And if you want some of it for a while longer, then you have to pay your taxes, and then pay more to use it, and feel damned lucky you have that much access, because the USFS can deny you any and all use and will if that is what their NGO minders desire.
appalling--but only one more blatant move in a sordid script to disenfranchise the American Recreation Public. On almost every important matter the USFS will cave in to Corporate America and totally ignore the true public interest. You can set your watch by it. There are many principled FS recreation managers still working diligently on Ranger Districts and in Supervisor offices trying against mighty odds to provide public service. I know and talk to many of them. Most see right through the Fee monstrosity. The problem is at the TOP of the agency ---where there is total insensivity, arrogance, and disconnect from reality.
The logo on the FS letterhead still reads ---"Caring for the land and serving people." To reflect the current reality it needs to be changed to: "Serving the Concessionaires and Corporate America first and foremost and the American Public can eat cake."
All of this is terribly and horribly wrong. Please contact your Senators and Representatives and demand that the USFS be held accountable. Accountability is a concept they do not currently understand. Demand that Recreation Management be completely re-directed to serve We the people. Demand that the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA) be repealed. A national outpouring of outrage by the American People can and will save the day. Privatization of our precious Recreation Resource and the Public Lands themselves is the ultimate evil. It must be stopped and only we the people rising up can accomplish that. The future of the core concept of Public lands for the Public is very much on the line. Let's all do our part. Thank you.
If you have not done so please visit the excellent website of the Western Slope No Fee Coalition. http://www.westernslopenofee.org
Instead of trying to articulate my own opinion, I'll just defer to some of you guys. Bill's article is right on, and brings attention to the issue. thanks Bill.
The first person to post, John, illustrates my experience almost every time I have been able to go camping. Dogs, generators, and TV's. We always arrive home exhausted because of interrupted sleep.
Finally, I love the conspirisy theory by Bearbait. He hits the nail on the head and continually drives it home. I followed every nuance of your rant and I get it. Thanks BB!
Scott Phillips wrote "A national outpouring of outrage by the American People can and will save the day."
Can't have much of an outpouring if nobody knows about it but newwest readers and a few others.
Bill, you've been doing a great job, but maybe you need to shout a little louder.
Forest management and income production has been gone for two decades. Both parties have had a working majority in Congress. Neither pays a whit of attention to the USFS needs, and the NGOs of the Environment have other agendas to further, and trail maintenance is not a flashy hot item to fill the coffers, while EAJA reparations from the Justice Department of "We don't track those numbers" AG Holder, a holdover from the Clinton years with appeal to Harry Reid, are the major single source of money for the litigating NGOs. Having a dysfunctional USFS is money in the bank for those people. The more dysfunctional the better. And with social engineering the driving force for the agency, with conservation and management issues far in arrears, they are as dumb, inadequate, vulnerable as they look and appear outside of the Chief's Office in Washington DC, where it is about the D.C. lifestyle, their power, and their after lives beyond The Outfit. The D.C. component does not care. The machinations of Capitol survival is all they care about and do. If there is some benefit on the ground, "out there", serendipity can happen.
As for being dumped off like a Mexican dope grower in the dark to use the Public Domain unfettered by permits and fees, that is just not how I want to live. Nor is it an honest endeavor.
The USFS needs a salesman, or woman, and that person is not forthcoming, if only because the USFS is such an easy touch for vast sums of billable hours from NGO law firms, and the EAJA pays so well, with so little hassle. Billable hours and individual attorney compensation are not even close to the same thing. Billable hour profits have to be more than 50%. Litigation against any and all USFS decisions, due to the vast number of court decisions and the myriad Acts and Laws passed by Congress, and the Administrative Rules passed as a result, makes it just a matter of finding an interpretation of some clause or requirement, most vague and open to interpretation by a judge (and a well "shopped" judge at that), and you can appeal a decision, and if ANY action of the USFS stated intent is modified or ceases because of the appeal or litigation, then EAJA pays whatever the NGO law firm bills. It is a gold mine and there is a great story about a small two attorney shop in Eugene, Oregon, that spent like $300,000 this last year lobbying to pass a bill in the Oregon legislature to end field burning, a response to smoke from California WFU wildland fire before and during the track tryouts for the 2008 Olympics at the U of O in Eugene. If there is smoke, blame it on farmers. So they prevailed. But there is no EAJA money to be made in that deal. They did get $20,000 in donations, but not only did the money not fill the hole of $300,000 spent, they were not in Federal Court with any NGO litigation or appeals to make EAJA dollars, which it turns out are 40% of the annual funding of the NGO and its little two lawyer litigation shop. They had to lay off one lawyer and a paralegal. No "eagle shit" to pay the bills. That might have been the most savings of the national budget for the year in one place.
If you don't perform, and by perform, the USFS has a century old responsibility to provide a goodly part of its operating revenue by selling, leasing and renting natural resources and access to them, you don't get your budget as you want it. That was profoundly influenced by not cutting timber. And there has been no salesman in the Outfit to go to Congress and sell the USFS idea, the dream, the future, to Congress. Shame on them. Smokey the Bear was charismatic and adorable. Not logging does not have the same panache, nor does "let it burn" vegetation management. The Outfit has an image problem. The rugged ranger has been supplanted by a wide glide babe with a ducktail haircut and low rider jeans telling the public what they can't do. Or a volunteer in the lobby of the Ranger Station who can't find you the right map, and then you have to pay ten bucks to get one that is sorely out of date. Only to find out the campground if full, and the only open spot in the next one costs $28 a night. Right next to the horse corrals. Screen doors can keep out flies, but not odors.
The USFS would be well served to hire an image prop outfit. And find a charismatic spokesperson. Sell the image and idea, and then live up to the promise. Maybe Congress would look upon them with more concern and compassion, and do something for the users at the same time.
Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Mike Crapo (R-ID), who both believe Americans already annually pay for the right to use their lands on April 15, have introduced a repeal of RAT, S. 868, which would put us back to the pre-2005 days of reasonable fees for highly developed sites only. Regrettably, their bill has gone nowhere in either the 110th or 111th Congress, nor has even one of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives cared enough about access to public lands to introduce a companion bill.
I suspect that the reason their bill has gone nowhere in the House is because they don't go to the House and jaw-bone with a few like-minded Reps. This kind of a procedure -- with no back-up or publicity, nada--is probably mere window-dressing for the base back home.
All of that being said, I do not like concessionaires either and I certainly do not like closing primitive campgrounds to "improve" them then close them and others because there is no money to keep them open. That is really dumb and could only be thought up by a bureaucrat.
Finding recreation money in a country that cannot find work for tens of millions is probably not going to happen. The money comes from working, and not working produces less money.
The keepers of our wilderness heritage once had cash flow and a sufficient budget. Somehow, that sufficient budget was painted as a subsidy for the timber industry, and used to end that industry. In one of those unintended, (but projected), consequences, a whole lot of maintenance and services that had somehow become "subsidized" by the "timber baron subsidy" left with the timbering. And there is no Congressional inclination to backfill the missing currency.
There is no end to the money individuals send to support NGOs to stop any logging. Money talks and BS walks. Recreation spending has to walk. Contractors and concessionaires don't create a benefit and pension liability for public employment and future taxpayers. Remember, we now have a seasonal full time (makes sense, no?) USFS and BLM fire fighting force. You get full time health and welfare benefits, but only a seasonal work schedule guarantee for hours in a year. If there is more work due to a longer or more intense fire season, then you get paid your hourly wage. And you can draw unemployment during the off season. And build a retirement. Too bad they can't do that with recreation staff. Or maybe they are, and hiding it in the fire budget.
All that "below cost" timber sale income sublimated into the ether of the NGO litigation claims, and gee whiz, where did the money go? Where's the money? Show me the money!!!! Budget legerdemain in the timbering years kept the recreation budget and capital expenditures funded. A timber sale road requirement to add rock, grade, pave, replace culverts, what have you, was an every day occurrence. There were myriad "funds" and "deposits" paid on every board foot of timber removed for future road concerns, timber stand improvements, replanting, and that money was beyond Congressional control for the most part. Think that none of that was diverted to another project? Timber supported recreation. Period. Now it does not. Live with it. Or prevail on your Congress to "Stimulus" (the new American adjective to verb deal) recreation capital improvements, or hire seasonal workers to pad the employment figures. RAT is just a way to pay the bills. And the bills have to be paid. Burning forests instead of logging excess trees is the "preferred alternative" and with that goes the need to pay to use recreation opportunity on public lands. That is the majority rule. That is the NGO driven public support paradigm for public lands. For it to happen, the user must pay market value. I know people who see their 99 year USFS lease cabin payments double each year to reflect penis envy and inflated real estate values...because the USFS can and the NGOs promote penis envy. The left is about class warfare. USFS recreation fees are about class warfare. American politics are now about class warfare. You pay to play. Not playing is an option. Not paying is not.
I remember when us evil Jarbidge Rebels had our little wingding down in the canyon. Part of that was the ultimate bucket brigade...there was this pit toilet, right?
For the past couple of years since the holy road had washed out, only the good people had pooped in it -- hikers into the Jarbidge Wilderness. It was plum full, and yes, even good poop do stink. Trust me, it wasn't the "Grody Old Broads For Wilderness" who were doing the miserable task of shoveling it out into buckets and humping it back to civilization and a pump truck...
How about charging camping fees by vehicle volume? :)