WESTERN SLOPE NO-FEE COALITION
P.O.
Box 403, Norwood, CO 81423
970/259-4616
www.westernslopenofee.org
wsnfc@hotmail.com
EXCERPTS
FROM WSNFC PRESS RELEASE 12/6/04
It
was forced through without passing the House or any hearings or
debate much less a vote in the Senate. Such a major change in policy
should be done in an open public process not behind closed doors.
Key
provisions of the RAT include permanent recreation fee authority for
National Forests and BLM land as well as all land managed by the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the
National Park Service. Failure to pay the fees will be a criminal
offense. Drivers, owners, and occupants of vehicles not displaying
either a daily or annual pass will be presumed guilty of failure to
pay and can all be charged, without obligation by the government to
prove their guilt.
“Congressman Regula
has claimed that fees will be limited to only highly developed
facilities,” said Funkhouser. “But the actual language is very
broad and contains internal contradictions. The RAT prohibits
entrance fees for Forest Service and BLM managed lands on one hand
and authorizes basic or standard fees for the very same lands on the
other. It gives the agencies a free hand to decide how large an area
a fee can apply to, and it calls for essentially only a toilet in
order to qualify. Make no mistake, this bill transfers ownership of
our public lands from the taxpaying public to the agencies. These
agencies have a long history of financial bungling and
mismanagement, and should have more congressional oversight, not
less.”
Fee opponents plan to
work closely with the incoming 109th Congress to repeal
the Regula bill, and anticipate strong bipartisan support in both
houses. In the meantime the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition will be
monitoring agency implementation of the RAT to ensure that the
agencies do not implement fees outside this new law. Regula’s bill
failed to attract a single western sponsor but was co-sponsored by
seven eastern congressmen.
WESTERN SLOPE NO-FEE COALITION
July 29, 2003
General Accounting Office Report GAO-03-470 Highlights:
TWO-THIRDS
OF FS OPERATING COSTS UNREPORTED.
In what amounts to a absence of accountability on the part of
the Fee Demo managers, the Forest Service has failed to report in
its annual Fee Demo Progress Reports to Congress that (in 2001)
close to $10 million in appropriated funds was used as a taxpayer
subsidy to administer the program. (GAO p.32)
This alone triples the $5 million which the Forest Service
was declaring as the true cost of collection and administration for
the program. This $15 million for cost of collection and
administration represents, by itself, 43% of the Forest Service’s
reported Fee Demo gross revenue of $35 million in FY 2001. The
Forest Service is limited by Congress to 15% for cost of collection
expenses.
THE
FS DOES NOT ACCOUNT FOR ALL FEE COLLECTION COSTS.
The Forest Service does not report commissions to vendors for
selling Fee Demo passes (GAO p.25-27). In the Adventure Pass fee program, the Pacific
Northwest and Sedona`s Red Rock fee sites in Arizona, among others,
the Forest Service uses private vendors to help sell Fee Demo
passes. In the Adventure Pass fee program, vendors buy a $5 daily
pass discounted to $4 and a $30 annual pass for $27.
“Forest officials at the locations where this was occurring
could not tell us the total amount of vendor discounts that the
agency has permitted. Excluding vendor discounts from the cost of
collection is also inconsistent with federal financial accounting
standards and the U.S. Department of Agriculture financial manual.
These standards require that total revenues and expenses be
reported” (GAO p.25-26)
Although the Forest Service did not make vendor figures
available to the GAO the figures were obtained, in 2002, through
FOIA for the Adventure Pass fee program. Vendors sold 56% of all
passes in FY2001 and those sales represent hundreds of thousands of
dollars that had gone unreported as cost a collection in one fee
area alone. It is unknown what this figure might be nationwide.
OTHER COSTS OF COLLECTION ARE HIDDEN
A percentage of the $8.6 million categorized as program
operations in the FY 2001 Annual Report to Congress is actually Fee
Demo administrative overhead. This
increases the cost of operating the program (GAO p.32).
Local Fee program managers have been inconsistent with their
categorizing of costs of collection. Costs related to fee
enforcement and cost of collection had been reported in other
categories. This also
raises the costs of collection higher (GAO p.7 and p.17).
BOTTOM LINE: FEE DEMO IS NOT WORTH IT
The Forest Service gross Fee Demo revenue for FY 2001 was
over $35 million (GAO p.6). We must subtract the reported cost of
collection, 5,051,000 (GAO p.9), the unreported use of $10 million
of appropriated funds to subsidize the program (GAO p.32), the
unreported vendor commissions nationwide, and a further $4.6 million
(this represents the amount raised at some Fee Demo sites that
already produced fee income [ campgrounds, boat launches, etc.] before Fee Demo began in 1997) (April 2002 interim report to
Congress on Fee Demo, p.23). The Forest Service claims the program
is a success with
gross revenues of $35 million.
The bottom line is that the program brings in far less than
$15 million and the cost of overhead, cost of collection and the
enforcement is well over 50 percent. The public has rejected the
notion of Fee Demo and financially it is of little or no value to
the American taxpayer.
Until the General Accounting Office audits the Bureau of Land
Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Fee Demo programs
the amount of cost of collection and the use of appropriated funds
for program management in those agencies remains unclear. As it
stands, the net revenues for the BLM and USFWS combined is less than
$4 million.
The Forest Service has pointed to backlog maintenance needs
as its justification for the program.
The General Accounting Office reports that the Forest Service
puts less priority on paying down the backlog than other agencies
and does not even know how much Fee Demo revenue they spend on the
backlog. In fact, the
agency does not know how large the backlog really is (GAO
p.4,19-20,22). The Forest Service continues to put its emphasis
instead on capital infrastructure.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WSNFC Cost
benefit analysis of the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program of
the BLM, USFWS, and FS for FY2001.
All
information is taken from the April 2002 Interim Report to Congress
(IR), the 2001 Annual Report(AR), and the General Accounting Office
report GAO-03-470 (GAO). References to the GAO report will include
corresponding page numbers. Any
other sources will be noted.
U. S.
Forest Service:
Gross Revenue
(AR)
$35,261,047.00
Unreported
Vendor Revenue Est. (GAO-p. 25-26)
+ $951,468.00
Total Gross
Revenue FY2001
$36,212,515.00
$36,212,515.00
COST OF
COLLECTION AND OVERHEAD
Reported
Cost Of Collection (AR)
$5,100,000.00
UNREPORTED
COST OF COLLECTION
Inconsistent
Collection Reporting Est. (GAO-p.
17) $1,000,000.00
Administrative
Overhead In Operations (GAO-p. 32)
$860,000.00
Vendor Costs
Unreported Est. (GAO-p. 25-26)
Enterprise
Forest
$369,868.00
Northwest
Forest
$201,600.00
Southwest
Region
$180,000.00
Other
Vendor Costs
$200,000.00
Unreported Appropriated Funds Used
To
Bolster Fee Revenues (GAO-p. 31-32)
+ $10,000,000.00
Total
Cost of Collection And Overhead
$17,911,468.00
- $17,911,468.00
Total
Net Fee Demo Revenue
$18,301,047.00
Pre Fee Demo
LWCFA Revenues Included
In
FY2000 Fee Demo Revenues. (IR)
-
$4,600,000.00
Revenues
Collected Under The Land And Water Act
Before
And After Fee Demo (Campgrounds Etc.).
Projected
To FY2001
Total
Added Revenues From Fee Demo Tax-Forest Service
$13,701,047.00
U.
S. Forest Service Percentages
Percentage
Of Cost Of Collection vs Total Gross Revenue
50%
Percentage
Of Cost Of Collection vs Total Revenue
130%
Percentage
Of Forest Service Under Reporting Of
Cost
Of Collection And Overhead To Congress
351%
Bureau
of Land Management:
Gross
Revenues (AR)
$7,543,274.00
Reported
Cost Of Collection
- $2,777,448.00
Unreported
Cost Of Collection
Amount Unknown
Vendor
Costs Unreported
Amount
Unknown
Unreported
Appropriated Funds Used
To
Bolster Fee Revenues
Amount Unknown
Total
Net Fee Demo Revenue
$4,765,826.00
Pre
Fee Demo LWCFA Revenues Included
In
FY2000 Fee Demo Revenues. (IR)
-$2,200,000.00
Revenues
Collected Under The Land And Water Act
Before
And After Fee Demo ( Campgrounds Etc.).
Projected
To Fy2001
Total
Added Revenues From Fee Demo Tax-BLM
$2,565,826.00
BLM
Percentages
Percentage
Of Cost Of Collection vs Gross Revenues
37%
Percentage
Of Cost Of Collection vs Total Revenues
108%
U.
S. Fish And Wildlife Service:
Gross
Revenues (AR)
$3,828,451.00
Reported
Cost Of Collection (AR)
$944,847.00
Unreported
Cost Of Collection
Amount Unknown
Vendor
Costs Unreported
Amount Unknown
Unreported
Appropriated Funds Used
To
Bolster Fee Revenues
Amount Unknown
Total
Net Fee Demo Revenues
$2,883,604.00
Pre
Fee Demo LWCFA Revenues Included
In
FY2000 Fee Demo Revenues (IR).
- $1,900,000.00
Revenues
Collected Under The Land And Water Act
Before
And After Fee Demo (Campgrounds Etc.).
Projected
To FY2001
Total
Added Revenues From Fee Demo Tax-Fish And Wildlife Service
$983,604.00
U.
S. Fish And Wildlife Service
Percentage
Of Cost Of Collection vs Gross Revenues
25%
Percentage
Of Cost Of Collection vs Total Revenues
96%
Notes
·
Both revenues and cost of collection for passes sold by vendors have
been going unreported by the Forest Service according to the GAO.
This is in violation of Federal Financial Accounting Standards.
The
Forest Service did not make records of Vendor sales available to the
GAO for this audit, but these vendor records where obtained through
FOIA for the Enterprise Forest. Vendor cost of collection and
revenue were estimated based upon these numbers and percentages as
well as research done in each region.
·Administrative
Overhead In Operations by using 10% of $8,600,000 (GAO p. 32).
·Inconsistent
Collection Reporting is an estimate.
·LWCFA
Revenues represent revenues from sites like campgrounds that
collected fees before fee demo under the LWCFA and will continue to
charge fees after fee demo has expired. These funds will continue to
go to the LWCFA and therefore should not be taken into account by
fee demo revenues.
·The
GAO has not done an audit of the BLM or USFWS. The scale of use of
appropriated funds to bolster fee revenues is unknown. It is also
uncertain if cost of collection figures are complete.
·Total
net revenues for the BLM and USFWS is under $4,000,000.
