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When in 2001, the American People purchased the 90,000 acre Baca Ranch in New
Mexico for a little more than 100 million dollars, Congress mandated that this
newly acquired public property would be operated so as to be financially
self-sufficient. At that time, I vociferously lambasted this management model, suggesting that it would become the harbinger of a very dangerous new trend. I
suggested that the Valles Caldera would become America's de facto first "Charter
Forest" operated under President Bush's new Charter Forest Initiative. In 2003,
Wild Wilderness' blowing the whistle on this fraud and
deception was recognized as one of Project Censored's Top 25 Stories of the
Year.
Pasted below is a newly published article in which the former head
of the Valles Caldera Trust says the areas needs subsidies. This article makes
it clear that the Charter Forest concept is FAILING.
I am not overjoyed.
On the contrary, the failure of the Valles Caldera was entirely
predictable. The mandate that the Valles Calder MUST be financially
self-sufficient remains, and this all but ensures that the area will have to be
further commercialized in an effort to meet its required revenue generation
goals.
This all but guarantees that these publicly owned lands,
purchased five years ago with public tax-dollars, will be managed in ways that
enhance the privatization of access and use, while maintaining public deed-title
ownership.
This all but guarantees the imposition of higher user fees
and the development of increasingly "value added" recreation and tourism
products -- products that will be marketed and sold exclusively to paying
customers. This all but guarantees that the Valles Caldera Trust will
increasingly look to the Disneyland model when trying to figure out how to
manage this area. And this all but guarantees that the area will remain largely
off-limits to the non-paying public.
The fact that the Valles Caldera
privatization experiment has failed comes as no surprise. The problem was that
in choosing to manage the property as a quasi public resource, the privatization
process did not go far enough. In order to make this scheme succeed, the Valles
Caldera Trust must push the privatization envelope more fully. It must more
faithfully execute Libertarian / Free-market privatization ideology and do so
more completely. Either that, or this public resource should be operated as a
public resource for the good of the American People and not, as is now the case,
as an experiment in privatization.
To learn more, click here.
Scott
--- begin quoted ---
October 27, 2006
Former head of Valles Caldera Trust says area needs subsidies
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - The Valles Caldera National Preserve will never
be self-sufficient, as called for in the law that created it, because of
"the federal overhead," the former head of the Valles Caldera Trust says.
Congress bought the 89,000-acre former Baca Ranch west of Los Alamos
for $101 million in 2000. The northern New Mexico preserve includes mountain
vistas, miles of trout waters and forest trails, elk herds and a vast
ancient collapsed volcano known as the Valles Grande. A unique management
arrangement calls for the preserve to remain a working ranch and to be
self-supporting by 2015.
But Bill deBuys, the trust's first chairman, said federally imposed
costs should be paid for by the federal government.
Such things as higher standards for employee insurance, federal
requirements to do environmental analyses and obligations to work with and
educate the public are expenses no working ranch could afford, he said.
"We should cost that out, and that's what Congress should pay for
every year," deBuys said.
A report by the U.S. General Accounting Office last November said the
preserve lacks a plan to ensure steady revenue and annual financial audits,
and that a management plan published by the trust in 2005 did little to
provide concrete, measurable goals.
A grazing program on the property in 2004 turned out to be a money
loser. Critics also have said the preserve's progress has been hamstrung by
the lack of a business plan, poor financial record-keeping and turnover
among top administrators.
DeBuys, in an essay in his book, "Valles Caldera: A Vision for New
Mexico's National Preserve," said he has some concerns about requirements on
the preserve.
A report said economic gains on the preserve "should not be won at the
cost of 'unreasonable' diminishment of scenic and natural values, but just
what would 'reasonable' diminishment be and how might future boards
interpret so vague an idea?" he wrote.
DeBuys was part of a panel discussion Sunday about the preserve that
also included the area's executive director, Jeffrey Cross, who started his
job in May.
"One of the things we have to do is to show how we would become
financially self-sufficient and what it means," Cross said.
"We can become self-sufficient under various models, but is it
acceptable? But can we meet those other goals?" he said.
Cross, responding to complaints about the slow pace of opening the
preserve to the public, said the trust was evaluating a one-day "Drive and
Discover" event in August that saw bumper-to-bumper traffic.
"We will learn from that," he said.
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- Privatization 
