Congressman introduces public land recreation bill.

In early May, Ohio Congressman Ralph Regula proposed a bill (H.R. 3283) to make a pilot program permanent that currently collects recreation and visitor fees for the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The recreation fee demo program has already raised $1 billion for these federal agencies since its inception in 1996. Proponents of the program say the fees help curb maintenance and upkeep costs for the public lands, which currently are not funded to appropriately handle visitor capacity.

Testifying before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Recreation and Public Lands, P. Lynn Scarlett, assistant secretary for policy management and budget for the U.S. Department of Interim, says, "We strongly agree with H.R. 3283's creation of a multi-agency permanent recreation fee program. The department has found that the pattern of recreation on our federal lands has changed dramatically. National parks continue to be a destination favorite for American families. However, more than ever, Americans also are choosing to recreate on lands managed by other federal agencies, such as BLM and the Fish and Wildlife Service. This increase in visitor use on these other federal lands also creates a greater need to expend funds to protect natural and cultural resources--the resources that are often the very reason visitors are drawn to the particular site."

Critics of the bill fear the extra fees would not be primarily used for their intended purposes of defraying the multi-billion-dollar maintenance backlog. "In addition to these implementation criticisms, there have been what can be termed philosophical objections to fee demo, with three of them especially prominent: (1) that fee demo charges Americans for use of federal lands they own and are already paying for through their taxes; (2) that fee demo is economically regressive and inhibits use of the federal lands by those with lower incomes; and (3) that flee demo encourages commercialization of the federal lands by forcing the agencies to rely more on revenues generated by more visitors, resulting in ecological damage to those lands," says Aubrey C. King, president of the National Alliance of Gateway Communities," a non-profit group dedicated to protecting local communities' control over lands abutting federal park land.

While the bill is being debated, the 1996 fee demo program, which has been renewed several times through the appropriations process, is set to expire on Jan. 1, 2006.