I am shocked when I read letters like Linda
Knowlton’s, supporting recreation user fees. The greatest
period of public-land recreation-related infrastructure development
in the United States occurred during and just after the Great
Depression, when the nation was at its poorest. Now that we have
experienced huge growth in the GDP and in the number of taxpayers,
and very little change in the public land base of the Lower 48
states, the government claims it cannot afford to maintain trails
your great-grandfather built when he was in the CCC. Smell
something?
Recreation fees serve two ideological
objectives of the political right: privatization of public
resources and “flattening” the federal tax structure.
Conservatives view user fees (regressive by definition) as an
effective way to reduce progressive taxes such as the inheritance
tax and federal income tax. The strategy has been successful.
While the public is asked to pay a fee to use their own
public resources, commercial users have received a constant stream
of sweetheart deals, bargain-basement leases, direct subsidies, tax
write-offs, tax breaks and other perquisites.
Why not
charge the public $1,000 per day for a Selway River permit (after
all, people pay those rates for luxury hotel suites)? What would be
a fair price for a Desolation Wilderness permit? Why stop at
natural resources? Instead of enlarging the library, just charge a
hundred bucks for a card and eliminate the riffraff. That’s
the way it is with government fees. No natural market forces
control government monopolies.
When I was young and had
time but no money, I was fortunate to hike, climb, run rivers, fish
and hunt on public lands that were fee-free. We thought we earned
the right to the freedom of the hills with our sweat, daring and
courage. Now, government insists what we thought was a right is a
revocable privilege — requiring crossing bureaucrats’
palms with big green.
Don Tryon Addy,
Washington
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Something’s rotten in the state of user fees.
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