PUBLIC LANDS: Panel takes ideas on reauthorizing recreation fees
Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
E&E PM: Friday, April 4, 2014
House lawmakers today took ideas from federal officials, outfitters, concessionaires and public lands users on how Congress should best reauthorize a 2004 law that dictates how fees are charged to access federal lands.
The outcome will affect everyone from campers and boaters to educational organizations and businesses, seniors and veterans -- and it will most certainly affect federal agencies' bottom lines.
Leaders on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation expressed optimism that a bipartisan solution can be reached, but they agreed they must work in haste.
The Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act expires in December 2015, but federal officials say reauthorization must happen sooner for them to properly implement it.
"Reauthorization ... is an area where we can work together to improve government and protect the taxpayer," said a joint statement following a hearing this morning by panel Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) and ranking member Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.). "There is still a lot of work to do, including addressing special recreation permits and the services of outfitters and guides. We look forward to working together on this legislation in the coming months."
But reauthorization will be complex, Bishop said.
Issues include who should be charged for recreation on public lands -- and where and when; how to ensure that the public is aware of and can comment on proposed fee changes; ensuring transparency in how the fees are distributed and used; and how to ensure outfitters and guides are not driven out of business by bureaucracy and excessive permit fees.
"Charging fees on the public lands is a complicated issue that Congress has been dealing with since 1914," Bishop said.
FLREA allows the Interior Department and the Forest Service to charge fees for properties with restrooms, picnic tables and other facilities, for entrance to national parks and to recreational outfitters, among other fees. It raises hundreds of millions of dollars annually, most of which is used by agencies to help upgrade recreational infrastructure.
But the law has proved controversial. Courts have wrestled over precisely where the Forest Service can charge day-use fees, for example, and some stakeholders say private concessionaires should be held to the same fee-limiting provisions as the federal agencies.
Bishop has introduced a draft bill that would reauthorize FLREA for five years, though he cautioned that it is "not the final version of the bill that will go forward."
It revises how and where fees can be collected and also introduces new concepts such as a pilot program that would allow groups to pay for special recreation permits through services like trail restoration or maintenance.
Multiple witnesses said reauthorization should be for a longer term, and two federal officials suggested that it be made permanent.
DeFazio said numerous problems with FLREA ought to be addressed in the new legislation, including inconsistent fees across agencies, a dearth of information on where groups can obtain recreational permits and "inappropriate" fees in underdeveloped areas that have "violated the spirit of the law."
"Transparency and accountability are essential" in the reauthorization, he said.
But Congress must also appropriate sufficient funds to the agencies, lest they allow FLREA revenue to act as a replacement for their normal budgets, DeFazio warned.
Interior and Forest Service witnesses said there was a lot to like about Bishop's draft reauthorization, though neither took a position on the proposal.
Leslie Weldon, the Forest Service's deputy chief, said recreation fees are a critical supplement to the agency's recreation budget and have allowed it to provide services such as a mobile app in Utah that helps guide users to recreation areas, and river rangers in Idaho who help remove garbage and problem trees from the Middle and Main forks of the Salmon River, while monitoring for invasive species.
"When a recreation user agrees to share in the cost of managing our most heavily used facilities and services by paying a fee, it not only helps create a stewardship ethic, but also reduces the burden on taxpayers to maintain these sites," she said in her prepared statement.
Pamela Haze, Interior's deputy assistant secretary for budget, finance, performance and acquisition, said Bishop's draft bill "represents a thoughtful approach to addressing many of the issues and concerns that have been identified by the administration and by stakeholders regarding implementation of FLREA."
But she warned that sections of the bill may roll back the agency's ability to charge fees for activities that currently qualify.
'A user is a user'
Other witnesses found a lot to like and dislike about the draft.
Brian Merrill, who leads a river outfitting company in Utah, lauded the draft's provisions for accountability, public input and stewardship credits, but he said fee exemptions for educational and nonprofit groups should be more narrowly tailored.
"A user is a user," he said. "We look at a person traveling with an outfitter, a person traveling on their own, a student -- they have the same impact on the resource, and they should all be required to pay fees unless they have a really compelling reason."
Aaron Bannon, environmental stewardship and sustainability director for the National Outdoor Leadership School, a national organization based in Lander, Wyo., said he agreed that the fee exemptions should be narrow, and said his group is among those that can afford to pay, and does.
He, too, expressed support for allowing outfitters to offset permitting fees through stewardship work and said the draft would improve accountability.
Derrick Crandall, president of the American Recreation Coalition, which represents makers of outdoor recreation products and national forest concessionaires, among others, urged the committee to include Army Corps of Engineers recreation sites in FLREA and to consider allowing fees to be used to advertise public lands.
Kitty Benzar, president of the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition in Durango, Colo., said Bishop's bill "should be rejected" because it sets thresholds too low for when fees can be charged, lacks accountability and fails to address concerns raised by a federal district court ruling last week that essentially exempted private concessionaires from FLREA (Greenwire, April 1).
She offered her own draft FLREA reauthorization.
Other stakeholders are weighing in, too.
The Wilderness Society, Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education, High Mountain Institute and Mazamas sent a letter to the committee last week urging changes to how the bill defines cost recovery for special recreation permits as well as how the federal agencies publicize the availability of permits and how FLREA applies to private concessionaires.
"We are interested in the development of this legislation because we believe America's public lands should be readily accessible for recreation by individuals and guided groups, subject to statutory limitations," the groups wrote. "In our experience, the indiscriminate imposition of fees can have the effect of limiting access."
