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When my home State of Oregon recently passed a resolution calling for repeal of the federal Recreation Access Tax, the media barely took notice. However, those working to privatize America's National Parks paid attention -- because Oregon's resolve threw an obstacle in their path!
Pasted below is an article keyed upon passage that anti-RAT resolution. It is titled "Who do you want to run our National Parks?" Its author, J. Bishop Grewell, is a research fellow at PERC, a free-market think-tank in Bozeman MT -- and that fact is important.
Before joining the Bush Administration, Interior Secretary Gale Norton was a Senior Research Fellow at PERC -- and that fact is also important.
PERC's Executive Director, Terry Anderson, in 1999 published "How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands." Two years later, Anderson served as an advisor upon President Bush's Transition Team. Today Anderson's report serves as the roadmap for the Corporate Takeover of Nature and the dismantling of the American Commons -- and it that's not important, then I don't know what else is?!
Scott
PS.... as tantalizing as Grewell's title for this article may be, nowhere does he reveal his answer. To learn who Grewell and the other PERCies think should manage OUR National Parks, you'll want to read Anderson's report.
For folks wanting the short answer, here it is. PERCies believe there should be NO National Parks and NO National Forests. They believe there should be NO public lands of any kind. PERCies would privatize everything -- and that, my friends, is precisely what is happening today. All that stands between them and their goal are you, me and anyone else who is willing to become personally engaged in this battle.
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Who do you want managing our National Parks?
Local expertise is better for our parks than projects by ribbon-cutting DC bureaucrats. Bad analogies cloud this fact.
by J. Bishop Grewell
The U.S. Forest Service is ending recreation fees under the Fee
Demonstration program on one quarter of its sites in Washington and
Oregon.
Recently, the Oregon legislature unanimously - unanimously - voted in
support of a resolution calling for Congress to repeal recreation fees
entirely. Both the Montana and Colorado state legislatures passed
resolutions in recent months calling for Congress to scrap Fee
Demonstration, as well. The hoopla comes in the wake of the program's
extension by Ohio Congressman Ralph Regula in a budget rider last fall.
While a rider is rarely an appropriate way to continue any legislation
- much less Fee Demonstration - the program deserved to continue. It
has been an unqualified success for our National Parks.
Breaking down the misguided analogies of the program's opponents
provides the clearest evidence of where the program has gone right:
The Western Slope No-Fee Coalition based in Colorado has been a long
time opponent to Fee Demonstration. In soliciting support for its
anti-fee crusade, Coalition co-founder Kitty Benzar recently likened
Fee Demonstration to "having to buy a pass to go into your house." But
Ms. Benzar's analogy only holds water if she has been living in public
housing for the last several years (and even then, people in public
housing have to pay something for that most of the time). If she lives
in a private house, her living space is not paid for by tax dollars,
but rather by her personal income.
Moreover, it is the ownership aspect of private housing that ensures it
remains in better shape than public housing. Similar to public housing,
the nation's federal lands suffered from graffiti and littering
problems as use has increased. In 1999, the National Parks Conservation
Association named the Chaco Culture National Historic Park in New
Mexico as one of the ten most threatened parks in the country. The main
threat to the park came from vandalism and looting. Free access to the
park not only led to a higher number of misfit visitors, but a lack of
respect for the park's value. Forest Service lands across the country
also suffered from vandalism and littering.
Fee Demonstration has remedied the problem.
"The anecdotal evidence is that [fees are] slowing vandalism," noted a
forest supervisor for the San Bernardino National Forest. A Park
Service report found similar drops in criminal activity at sites
charging fees. Not only do fees discourage vandals from using federal
lands in the first place, but they provide funding to clean up litter
and vandalism when it does occur.
Some Fee Demonstration opponents argue the same changes would occur if
Congress simply appropriated more funds for federal lands. But this
misses the important accountability that is created by paying for
upkeep from user fees rather than from tax dollars.
For twenty years prior to the start of Fee Demonstration, the
appropriations for federal land agencies outpaced increases in
visitation, even when factoring in inflation. The percentage growth in
full-time staff also outpaced increases in visitation over that time
period and yet the resources themselves continued to deteriorate as
multi-million dollar backlogs rose on both Forest Service and Park
Service lands. Congress constantly threw more money at the land
agencies, but the misguided incentives created by tax-funding directed
those increased appropriations to the wrong projects (like
million-dollar outhouses).
The politicians who direct tax dollars prefer to see their funds
allocated to glamorous projects where they can cut a ribbon and get
media exposure that will help at re-election time. Fixing potholes and
sewage systems doesn't stack up to building multi-million dollar
visitor centers or million dollar, self-composting outhouses.
Furthermore, the big visible projects allow politicians to reward
campaign contributors with lucrative construction projects that trail
work cannot. Retired National Park Service Director Roger Kennedy once
explained that "congressionally-identified" projects consistently
received funds at the expense of projects recommended by on-the-ground
Park Service personnel - i.e. the people who know the parks best.
(Here's why: read about subsidiarity.)
Fee Demonstration fixed that problem by keeping the funds in the hands
of the on-the-ground personnel and letting them spend the funds where
the funds were needed. In prioritizing their projects, the Park Service
personnel spent their money on the projects that bring visitors back to
visit again and on keeping the natural environments protected.
This means that roads are fixed, trails maintained, and sewers pumped
so that the natural environment, which draws visitors back each year,
is not degraded. If land agency personnel do not spend the funds on
what the visitors demand, budgets will falter as visitors refuse to
return.
Another failed analogy of Fee Demonstration opponents came from Scott
Silver of Wild Wilderness. Mr. Silver once claimed that the difference
between free access to federal lands and fee access is the same as the
difference between "romantic love and paid sex. It changes the
experience totally. It can't be wild if it's not free." Silver's
analogy fails because unlike in free love where both parties benefit,
free recreation affords the recreationist a benefit, but the
environment just gets screwed (not to mention taxpayers who pay for
them, but can't afford to visit them).
Silver also worries about the commercialization of the recreational experience.
But there is no reason for federal lands to turn anymore commercial due
to fees. The Park Service has been charging fees for over 100 years and
its lands remain dedicated to the nature experience. As a recent report
from the Reason Foundation pointed out: "The comparative advantage of
the national parks is a pristine, outdoor recreational experience that
cannot be found in more urban settings. For a park manager to destroy
this would be to destroy his product and, hence, his livelihood."
It simply isn't clear how twenty or thirty dollars for access to
federal lands makes the experience commercial, but the hundreds of
dollars spent by visiting recreationists on gas, Vasque and Merrell
hiking boots, Teva sandals, REI backpacks, and Oakley sunglasses does
not. At least, the over $1 billion raised by Fee Demonstration has been
directed to maintaining the environmental health of the federal lands.
The same cannot be said for all of the dollars given to Teva and Oakley.
The failed analogies of fee opponents, however, should not be
surprising. If they were to take the time to develop appropriate
analogies, they would undermine their own arguments. Analogizing to
anything as successful as Fee Demonstration would require finding
something equally successful to compare it to and that is the last
thing Fee Demonstration's opponents want to do.
(For more on rec fees, see this article at PERC.)
J. Bishop Grewell is a research fellow with the Property and
Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, and author of
Recreation Fees - Four Philosophical Questions.
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