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Quoted from appended article:
[Leasing (NH) state land for skiing, cell-tower construction and all-terrain vehicle use to help pay for all state parks could be studied this summer in a bill passed by a Senate committee yesterday.]
New Hampshire's State Parks are required to be 100% self-funded. That requirement is creating serious conflicts between the purposes for which state parks exist and the necessity of funding those parks/purposes without the ability to use tax-based funding.
The following article has its roots in President Ronald Reagan's administration and in the "President's Commission on Americans Outdoors" (PCAO). Wilbur LaPage, then Director of New Hampshire Division of Parks and Recreation, was one of Reagan's PCAO commissioners. LaPage bears full responsibility for New Hampshire's self-funding requirement. Another of the commissioners was Derrick Crandall. Crandall was then, and still is, President of the American Recreation Coalition. Crandall bears full responsibility for fee-demo, the RAT and for leading the current effort to implement Reagan's PCAO recommendations! ARC's soon to be introduced "Federal Recreation Policy Act" has ITS roots firmly buried in Reagan's PCAO. After reading this news article, I encourage you to read the background I've appended.
I find it curious that just as the federal government has begun wandering down the self-funded public-lands path pioneered by New Hampshire, New Hampshire has begun to seriously question whether that was the right way to have gone. It appears federal-lands funding is at a crossroads and it is possible to avoid repeating and old mistake.
Scott
"Those who choose to ignore history are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana
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Senate committee OK's bill to study state park system
By PAULA TRACY - Union Leader Staff
CONCORD - Leasing state land for skiing, cell-tower construction and
all-terrain vehicle use to help pay for all state parks could be
studied this summer in a bill passed by a Senate committee yesterday.
Senate Bill 5, proposed by Sen. Robert Odell, R-Lempster, received a
unanimous vote out of the Senate Environment and Wildlife Committee
after a hearing in which no one spoke against the measure.
The bill would have government officials and the public with interests
in natural resources, cultural resources, tourism and recreation
evaluate the mission of the state park system and the policy of
self-funding.
New Hampshire's 45 state parks include ocean beaches, mountain
reserves, ski areas and campgrounds and have an annual revenue of $15
million
The proposed study would consider, in part, the pros and cons of leasing public lands to private interests.
The measure would also develop a long-term capital improvement plan for
the parks and identify other potential sources of revenue in the event
that self-funding did not continue.
R. Sean O'Kane, commissioner of the state Department of Resources and
Economic Development, which operates the state parks, said his
department would welcome the study and its recommendations. More than
40 state laws address how the department should run the parks.
State Rep. Judith Spang, D-Durham, is a co-sponsor of the bill. She
said the department has "long been struggling with an inherent conflict
in its mission to both provide resource-based recreational
opportunities for all its citizens, regardless of their income, and the
need to maintain those facilities and its lands and water resources and
its amenities at an adequate level . . . at self-funding.
"This conflict has really created odd bedfellows for the state parks
system," she said, including the leasing of Mount Sunapee State Park,
placing cell towers on Mount Kearsarge and the potential for opening up
land for off-road vehicle use.
"These are complex decisions that must be made, but they should be made
around the appropriateness of the use for the park in question and not
have to drag in the whole issue of compromising the values of the parks
out of economic necessity," Spang said.
Tom Elliott, spokesman for the Friends of Mount Sunapee, opposes the
proposed expansion of the lease of Mount Sunapee ski area to its
leaseholder.
Elliott has supported two bills to study the state's leasing of land and one that seeks to halt the expansion of Mount Sunapee.
"We advocate for a different model of state parks and forest
management, one appreciative of our conservation history and heritage,
one grounded in the public trust doctrine and ever-vigilant about
upholding government's public trust responsibilities and, sadly, one
quite different from the status-quo.
"Our model requires the retirement of the 100 percent self-funding
scheme, an infusion of additional public dollars in support of a new
mission and vision-driven management philosophy, and one guided by
clearly set expectations for the administrators of these reserves,"
Elliott said.
The parks department currently does not have a director. Rich McLeod
retired Jan. 1 after more than 30 years; a new director is expected to
be appointed this spring.
The bill would require a report of the study committee by Nov. 1.
(Some background from a piece I've recently written:)
The Reagan Administration
Recreation user-fee legislation was offered by President Ronald
Reagan's Office of Management and Budget in 1982. OMB's proposal called
for cutting the appropriated budgets for each of the federal land
management agencies by an immediate 25% while granting agencies new
authority to charge, collect and retain recreation users fees. The
concept was intended to imbue an entrepreneurial spirit within the
bureaucracy and to provide land managers with a mechanism for replacing
federal funding with direct payment derived from park and forest
visitors. Reagan's bill called for the eventual phasing out of
appropriated recreation-related funding and a near complete shift to
user fees. This strategy was consistent with the strategy of then
Budget Director David Stockman to reduce the size of federal government
by "Starving the Beast" and was actively supported by Reagan's Interior
Secretary, James Watt. It was actively opposed by the heads of each of
the federal land management agencies and by many within Congress.
Senator Malcolm Wallop (R-WY) while presiding over a Recreation User
Fee Senate hearing on June 27, 1985 (S Hrg. 99-303) said of this
legislation, "The direct offset from a maintenance budget of fees
collected is close to one of the most idiotic concepts I've heard in a
long time." Wallop's Senate report described the recent history of the
President's fee proposal as follows, "[Park] Service managers (were)
reluctant to adopt an incentive system, proposed by Interior officials.
As the study report noted, the fee receipts were not necessarily within
a park's control; an incentive system might cause superintendents to
overly stress collection, and the parks that received the most revenue
were not always those most in need of more money. Under heavy pressure
from the OMB, which slashed $12 million from the Service's fiscal 1980
budget request and advised it to raise the money itself, the Service
planned more and higher fees to become effective that year."
Senator James McClure's (R-ID) testimony was even more critical of
the President's proposal. He said, "I am certain that by now everyone
has seen the April 15 gray covered document entitled
Senate/Administration Deficit Reduction plan. It compares the National
Park System with Disneyland and the San Diego Zoo. That would certainly
come as a surprise to Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and Stephen Mather.
OMB will probably next propose that we put golden arches in
Canyonlands."
Additional background available at
www.wildwilderness.org/docs/nfra94.htm - then scroll to "Outdoor
Recreation Policy Development" by Derrick Crandall.
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- Land management 
