Federal agencies report on Recreation Fee Demo Program

IMBA Trail News
Volume 12, Number 2
May 1999

Two recent reports show that the federal Recreation Fee Demo Project is determining the best ways to charge fees for recreation on public lands. However, neither report addresses the fundamental issue of whether fees are fair.

The General Accounting Office (GAO) last November released a report titled, "Recreation Fees: Demonstration Fee Program Successful in Raising Revenues But Could Be Improved." The four federal land agencies USDA Forest Service, US BLM, National Park Service, and US Fish and Wildlife Service ­ released in February a "Progress Report to Congress" for Fiscal Year 1998.

The reports indicate that the program is significantly increasing money available to the agencies for managing recreation. The money is being spent on repair and maintenance of facilities, general recreation operations, and resource management. But collecting the fees has been expensive, primarily because of high start-up costs. It's likely the costs of collection will decline as capital costs are amortized and systems become more efficient and integrated.

Some sites ("sites" are loosely defined, ranging from a campground, to a group of national forests) are collecting lots of money. A few even collect more than the yearly operating budget of the site. Some high revenue sites may be able to catch up on delayed maintenance within five years or so facility repair backlogs are a common problem on all public lands.

But the money collected at high revenue sites is not likely to fund improvements at other, less revenue generating or non-fee sites, for two reasons: The Congress has required that 80% of the fees generated at a site be spent at that site, and the agencies are allowing local managers to retain and spend 95% to 100% of generated fees.

GAO therefore suggested that Congress may want to consider whether to allow some sites to deliver more than 20 percent of revenues to other projects. "Permitting some further flexibility in where fee revenues could be spent, particularly the fees from high-revenue sites, would provide greater opportunities to address the highest-priority needs of the agencies," the report stated.

The agencies' report, however, warned, "The current fixed formula, which returns at least 80 percent of fee revenue to the site in which it is generated, is key to public and agency acceptance of the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program... There is no immediate need to modify the 80-20 formula." The agencies did agree with GAO that some flexibility be allowed in very limited situations.

The GAO report stated that the four land agencies are not sufficiently coordinating their fee programs, and cited situations where adjoining land units of different agencies are not recognizing fees paid to each other.

The agencies' progress report agreed that coordination is an issue, and broadened it to the national level. There is a need to refine the existing, interagency Golden Eagle pass, which provides access to all national parks and many Forest Service, BLM and Wildlife Refuge areas. That pass, and other national passes, cause confusion because they grant entrance to those places, but don't cover use of facilities such as campgrounds, boat launches, and trails.

In general, it appears the program is working as planned. The agencies noted the advantages of changing the program from demonstration to permanent.

The two reports are available on the web:

GAO: http://www.gao.gov/AIndexFY99/abstracts/rc99007.htm

Agencies: http://www.fs.fed.us/recreation/fee_demo/fee_intro.shtml

Gary Sprung