Fee Demo unfair

To the editor,

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best solution. That certainly applies to Sen. Larry Craig's (R-Idaho) recent essay taking issue with some aspects of the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program (Fee Demo) as it relates to public lands administered by the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife agencies.

It's really quite simple. When Congress authorized Fee Demo, they ran smack up against one of the most deeply held, even cherished, ideas to come out of the American experience—our shared ownership of, and access to, our public lands.

Fee Demo transferred ownership of the land from the people to the land management agencies. Congress abdicated its responsibility to oversee management of our public lands and to ensure fiscal responsibility by the agencies. The relationship between citizens and the land has changed from "owner" to "customer."

Congress has heard, loud and clear, that it hasn't worked. But they still can't quite bring themselves to call an end to it. Sen. Craig's essay compares public land recreation to going to a movie or a concert. Fee Demo is like having to pay a fee to enter your own home.

Fee Demo gave the federal land management agencies permission to charge new fees for things that have always been part of our heritage. Hiking trails. Scenic roads. Access to fishing waters and hunting lands. Entrance fees, previously charged only at National Parks, became widespread on the National Forests and on the large, undeveloped tracts under BLM and Fish and Wildlife Service management.

The National Parks, with their higher level of service and infrastructure, account for 80 percent of Fee Demo revenue, but in the other land management agencies, the Fee Demo program has been a financial failure and has created enormous opposition and outrage.

The "demonstration" gave the agencies a green light to manage recreation as a business, using our public lands as their working capital. High-level agency bureaucrats have cut appropriated funding to local land managers and left them to fend for themselves with whatever money the fees can raise. That means the American taxpayer is being taxed again. We already own the land and we pay our taxes to maintain them. Simple.

The General Accounting Office has repeatedly identified a scandalous level of fiscal mismanagement and irresponsibility by the land management agencies. They have called on Congress, for years, for more, not less, oversight. What's more, the GAO has found that it costs up to 50 percent of fee revenue just to run the Fee Demo program.

It's basic—if your kid can't keep a goldfish alive, you don't buy him a pony.

Robert Funkhouser, president

Western Slope No-Fee Coalition