Federal Lands

Improvements Needed in Managing Short-Term Concessioners Gao ID: RCED-93-177 September 14, 1993

Nationwide, about 6,000 short-term agreements (of 5 years or less) exist under which concessioners provide goods and services to the public on federal land. The services they provide include sightseeing tours and guided fishing, hunting, and rafting trips. This is one in a series of reports on concessioners' operations on federal recreation land. GAO reviews the federal government's policy and practices for (1) evaluating short-term concessioners' overall performance; (2) ensuring that short-term concessioners comply with federal, state, and local health and safety laws and regulations; (3) ensuring the reasonableness of the prices charged to the public by short-term concessioners; and (4) setting fees for the use of federal land by short-term concessioners.

GAO found that: (1) short-term concessioners operating on federal lands are not treated consistently by the four agencies that manage the lands because of varying policies and practices; (2) not all short-term concessioners are subject to annual performance evaluations; (3) some required performance evaluations are not done due to funding problems and logistics and may not be documented; (4) National Park Service concessioners operate under three different types of agreements and performance evaluations are only required for permit and limited-permit holders; (5) most short-term concessioners do not receive health and safety inspections although they are required to comply with all applicable laws and regulations; (6) the Park Service is the only agency that requires documentation when other qualified agencies perform health and safety inspections, but it does not require inspection of its commercial-use license holders; (7) the agencies cite the lack of resources, responsibility, and reported complaints as the reasons for not doing health and safety inspections; (8) price reviews are generally not required and the agencies rely on market forces to regulate prices; and (9) short-term concessioners' fees vary by agency due to different fee criteria.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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