FEES FOR RECREATION ON PUBLIC LANDS - No More or Forevermore? The future of public access to public lands will probably be decided within the next seven weeks. Your help is needed. Please call or write your Congressmen & Senators. We need to keep the heat on Fee Demo as never before. It would also be helpful to spread the word to friends and write your local editor.
write, or call the Capital Switchboard to be connected to Congressmen & Senators. 202 224 3121 or 800 839 5276. (samples below) According to a major press release on the new General Accounting Office (GAO) Report on the Forest Service Fee Demo money trail, The Forest Service has been shown to be dangerously unaccountable with respect to its cost of collection figures. The GAO 40-page report titled "Information on Forest Service Management of Revenue from the Fee Demonstration Program" (2001), released May 19, 2003, reveals a deep-seated culture of deception and a total lack of accountability within the US Forest Service's Fee Demo program. The full report can be downloaded from: http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-470, highlights can be read at http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d03470high.pdf HERE IS WHAT THE GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE (GAO) FOUND: � The US Forest Service (USFS) has been secretly subsidizing the management of its Fee Demo program with (in 2001) $10 million unreported appropriated tax dollars (p.32). � Costs of fee collection at major Fee Demo "sites" - such as Southern California's "Adventure Pass' & the Oregon and Washington's "Northwest Forest Pass" - have been under-reported by concealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions received by pass vendors. (p.25). � The USFS has no mechanism for ascertaining whether Fee Demo has lessened the deferred maintenance backlog, which is the very purpose for which Fee Demo was created by Congress in 1996. What's more, the GAO concludes that the USFS has no idea how large their maintenance backlog really is! (p.22) FEE DEMO'S FUTURE IN THE BALANCE The Fee Demo Program was enacted in 1996, extended at least four times and is currently set to expire on September 30, 2004. Legislation to make it permanent did not move forward in 2002. The administration has once again asked Congress to make these fees permanent but no legislation has yet been introduced in the current session. "It is time for Congress to terminate this ill-conceived fee program, Americans have already paid taxes to maintain what is theirs. The perverse incentive created by letting the land management agencies appropriate their own funds, outside of congressional oversight, leads to the abuses we see in this report." states Robert Funkhouser, President, Colorado-based Western Slope No Fee Coalition. "This GAO Report shows that the Forest Service misled Congress and the American people about the costs involved with forest fees." Scott Silver of WildWildrness.org concludes: "This year Congress must decide the future of Fee Demo in our Public Lands. The data revealed by the recent GAO Report show this to be an incredibly inefficient means of raising funds for public lands. The public has rejected Fee Demo and after seven years of the program so should Congress." please put the following samples into your own words: SAMPLE talking points on the phone Tell staffers you're calling about the GAO Report about Fee Demo on our National Forests - say (example): The Forest Service is not accountable for the fee money they've reported/Fee Demo fees make so little money and are so unpopular that they need to be terminated this summer . SAMPLE letter I've seen the GAO Report on the Recreation Fee Demo Program on our National Forests. The program must be terminated this summer. The Forest Service is not accountable for the money they've raised with Fee Demo; it has been supplementing their fee revenues with $10 million in appropriated taxdollars, which means they spent $15 million in 2001 to raise $15 million, when Congress limited Fee Demo's cost of collection to 15% of revenues. Please help end Fee Demo in the Forest Service, USFWS, and BLM this year. Will you find out for me the amount of appropriated dollars that the Forest Service has used on Fee Demo since 1996? (Add why you personally oppose Fee Demo.) Yours sincerely, (PLEASE PRINT YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS VERY CLEARLY.) _______________________________________________ BDNow mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can unsubscribe or change your options at: http://lists.envirolink.org/mailman/listinfo/bdnow
