Recreation fee REBELLION.

Byline: Scott Maben The Register-Guard

Of everything that could land a guy in federal court, the practical equivalent of a parking ticket seems an unlikely offense.

But that's what put Bend entrepreneur Patrick Kruse at the center of a protracted legal battle over a $50 citation placed on his car last year in the Mount Hood National Forest. He figures he's spent about 200 hours and $300 fighting the ticket so far, and he doesn't plan to give up anytime soon.

Kruse was cited for failing to pay a $5 recreation fee at a remote campground in April. He claims he wasn't at the site but was kayaking on the nearby White River, and that a friend borrowed his Subaru wagon and parked it at the spot that requires a Northwest Forest Pass.

A federal magistrate found Kruse, 43, guilty and ordered him to pay $35. Kruse appealed to federal court in Eugene, arguing that prosecutors failed to prove he was in the fee area. A district judge sent the case back to the magistrate, who again found him guilty.

Kruse is appealing a second time and said he's prepared to press his case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

It's an extraordinary but not unprecedented step in the recreation fee rebellion. The case reveals the level of indignation that some people have for federal fees on public lands. It also shows the lengths they'll go to challenge a program that Congress has extended repeatedly since creating what was supposed to be a two-year pilot project in 1996.

The fees are required at thousands of trailheads, boat ramps, rustic camp sites, interpretive centers and other day-use areas on public lands across the country, with at least 80 percent of the proceeds going back to those sites for upkeep.

In Oregon and Washington, the Northwest Forest Pass costs $5 a day or $30 a year and is required at more than 1,000 sites, though that number will drop to about 680 on May 1.

As the fees have become a fixture, federal officers have boosted enforcement. And with that, recreation fee opponents have stepped up their resistance. Scores of Northwest residents have appeared before federal judges to proclaim their innocence, complain about how officers issued the citations or make other arguments.

It's unclear how many cases are winding up in federal courtrooms because the courts lack a clear tracking system. But the number of open Northwest cases on the federal Central Violations Bureau's list has swelled into the hundreds over the past couple of years.

And though some people ignore the tickets altogether, many others are making their cases in court.

`It doesn't make sense'

Kruse, whose company makes outdoor gear for dogs, didn't set out to take on the government.

He said he doesn't necessarily like the recreation fee program and doesn't believe taxpayers should have to pay to get on a trail or look at a view. But more to the point, he insists his citation was unjustified. And the more he argued that point, he said, the more he felt misled or manipulated by the Forest Service, prosecutors and courts.

"The amount of effort I have put into this has been the reciprocal of the amount of deceit, bullying, sleight of hand and intimidation that the feds have dished out to me," he said. "All I'm saying is, 'Hey, gentlemen, does this make sense to you? Because it doesn't make sense to me.' '

William "Bud" Fitzgerald, assistant U.S. attorney in Eugene, declined to discuss specific cases but said it's worth the time to prosecute fee violations.

"These cases are very important to the agencies from a policy standpoint ... and until the courts tell them they can't do something, they are going to do it," he said.

Jocelyn Biro, Northwest recreation fee coordinator for the Forest Service, said her agency's goal isn't to write citations but to inform forest visitors about the reason for the fees and the need for compliance.

"Those folks who don't want to comply may receive a ticket," Biro said.

Once a citation is issued, she said, "it really is up to the court and the assistant U.S. attorney as to how they are going to proceed with that."

But there's no doubt that citations have grown more common in the Northwest. Federal officers began writing tickets in earnest last year after several years of warning hikers, boaters and others that they need to buy a Northwest Forest Pass and display it in their cars when parking at designated sites.

From October 2002 through November 2003, the Forest Service in Oregon and Washington issued more than 1,900 tickets for failure to pay admission or use fees. That's more than twice as many as the year before, according to the agency's tracking system.

The vast majority of those violations were for failure to display the pass at a required fee site, said Barb Severson, a Forest Service patrol commander based in Vancouver, Wash.

"A lot of people accept the fee and know the fee is good for the forest," Severson said. "In that sense we're getting better compliance. We've been doing this for seven years now, and people know about it."

Burden of proof

But opponents have used court cases to try to expose inconsistencies or flaws in enforcement.

One of Kruse's chief arguments is that his car was cited, and he wasn't. The distinction may sound irrelevant to those who think of the forest pass as a parking fee rather than a recreation fee. But that contention has been central to several key cases in the West, and some judges have dismissed cases because the officer couldn't prove that the defendant was in a given area.

The burden of proof right was upheld in a 2001 ruling by a federal magistrate in Arizona who said the Forest Service couldn't issue a citation to an unattended vehicle.

But last year in Washington, a magistrate in Spokane disregarded the same argument in the case of Blair Kipple, a Poulsbo resident who works at the Navy shipyard in Bremerton. Kipple's car was cited in the Wenatchee National Forest in 2002, and like Kruse, he's on his second appeal.

"The judge ruled it was like a parking ticket. They have no evidence the registered owner was there," he said. "All they have is a citation with a license number on it. That's really the extent of their case."

Forest officials don't deny it's simply easier for officers to cite cars in a parking lot rather than go looking for the owners.

"If we had I suppose a bunch of people who could sit and wait for every recreater to come out of woods - it's not a practical option, I think," Severson said. "It's difficult."

But officials also recognize that leaving tickets on cars can make it more difficult for prosecutors to prove the owner's guilt. The Deschutes and Ochoco national forests in Central Oregon no longer leave citations on cars. That's also the preference for officers with the Willamette forest, spokeswoman Julie Cox said.

"We're not going to issue tickets if we know for sure they're not going to make it through the court system," Cox said. "Here we've decided the best thing is to cite the individual. ... We want to meet people face to face and work on voluntary compliance."

Fitzgerald said he prefers to prosecute cases when a person, not a vehicle, has been cited. It's a better guarantee that the person responsible for parking without a pass actually receives the citation, he said.

Chilling effect 

Bend resident Scott Silver, one of the foremost critics of the national recreation fee program, believes the Kipple case in Washington may have a chilling effect on people otherwise inclined to contest their citations.

"Those who contact me, I advise them if they fight it in court, the chances are they are going to lose," said Silver, executive director of the group Wild Wilderness, which advocates for undeveloped recreation on public lands.

The inconvenience of preparing a defense and attending a federal court proceeding, often in another city, also discourages many residents from contesting the fines, he said.

"It's just an amazingly tedious process for people to pursue these things legally, especially when the probability of being found guilty is so high," Silver said.

Mary Ellen Barilotti, a public interest lawyer in Los Olivos, Calif., who represents defendants in several major challenges to the recreation fees, said most people aren't going to find a lawyer to fight a ticket.

"I think most people begrudgingly pay these things," Barilotti said.

But some believe there's another option: Don't pay, don't go to court, don't do anything.

Scott Ivie, a 40-year-old Oakridge logger who believes the recreation fees are just plain wrong, disregarded the $50 fine he got for parking without a forest pass when he took his son and his son's friend, both 8, swimming at Hills Creek Reservoir last May.

They were at the picnic area and boat launch for less than half an hour, Ivie said, when a forest officer wrote him up.

"I told them I wouldn't pay it," he said. "I figured if they'll suspend my license or put me in jail, I'll pay it."

It's unlikely he'll have a problem unless he's cited again. Then Ivie could receive a mandatory order to appear before the magistrate. If he were to fail to show for that, a judge could issue a warrant for his arrest.

"That parking ticket or violation notice is always going to appear on your record until you resolve that," Biro said. "For a $50 ticket, we're not going to go out and arrest you, but it will show up on your record."

NORTHWEST FOREST PASS

Available on a daily ($5) or annual ($30) basis

Sold at all U.S. Forest Service ranger district offices in Oregon and Washington and at more than 240 vendors in the region

For more details, including where the pass is required, call [phone] or go to www.naturenw.org

CAPTION(S):

Scott Ivie of Oakridge was cited $50 for parking without a Northwest Forest Pass while he took his son swimming at C.T. Beach on Hills Creek Reservoir last summer. "I told them I wouldn't pay it," he said. "I figured if they'll suspend my license or put me in jail, I'll pay it." Rob Kerr / The Bulletin Patrick Kruse of Bend has spent about 200 hours and $300 fighting a $50 citation placed on his car last year in the Mount Hood National Forest. He's prepared to press his case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.