Dear HCN,
One of the people you
interviewed for the fee demo feature article (HCN, 2/14/00: Land of
the fee), Gary Guenther, asked, “Where’s the money going?” I can
provide a partial answer to that question, and it’s
mind-boggling.
The river activist group
Riverhawks and the Northwest Rafters Association have conducted an
extensive audit of the Rogue River fee demo program using the
federal Freedom of Information Act.
The program
sounded good initially. The 1997 Rogue River Business Plan listed a
backlog of needed maintenance totaling $300,000 along the Rogue.
The agency promised fee money would be used “for repair and
maintenance, interpretation, signage, habitat or facility
enhancement, resource conservation, and law enforcement relating to
visitor services.”
Instead, the BLM tried to use
$127,000 in fee money to pay for a visitor center that no one
wanted. The BLM immediately withdrew the funds when we pointed out
language in the federal law authorizing fee demo that prohibited
agencies from using the money on such
buildings.
BLM also substituted fee funds into
the salaries of employees in its river program office – at least
$40,000 in 1998, with another $10,000 going to administrative
overhead. Another $15,000 went to a video promoting tourism
throughout southern Oregon. BLM also spent fee demo money on
airline tickets and other travel
expenses.
Meanwhile, on the Forest Service end of
the Wild Rogue River, a number of river issues, conflicts, and
violations remain unresolved. Forest Service officials have claimed
there’s “no money” for enforcement.
It’s clearly
a disaster. Fee demo constitutes a blindingly unregulated system of
de facto taxation performed by untrained, relatively low-level
government officials. Agencies like the Forest Service and BLM are
given the singular responsibility to at once tax, collect and
spend. Plus, they unilaterally determine how much tax to levy,
where to spend it, and then get to police themselves with people
from their own agency.
It’s amazing! Even the IRS
only performs one of these multiple functions. The lack of
meaningful accountability and oversight, and no system of checks
and balances, are crippling shortcomings of this
program.
What we have, then, is a fee demo
program spinning out of control, and missed opportunities to care
for a beautiful river.
Lloyd
Knapp
Applegate,
Oregon
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Where the money’s going.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
