Recreation Fees
Information on Forest Service Management of Revenue from the Fee Demonstration Program Gao ID: GAO-03-1161T September 17, 2003Since 1996, federal land management agencies have collected over $900 million in recreation fees from the public under an experimental initiative called the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program. The Forest Service's part was about $160 million. The authority to collect these fees expires at the end of fiscal year 2004. Central to the debate about whether to reauthorize the program is how effectively the land management agencies are using the hundreds of millions of dollars that the recreation fees have provided them. In April 2003, GAO reported on Forest Service management of the fee demonstration program. (See Recreation Fees: Information on Forest Service Management of Revenue from the Fee Demonstration Program, GAO-03-470 (Washington D.C.: Apr. 25, 2003)). This testimony is based on the work GAO conducted for the April 2003 report. Four issues are addressed: (1) how the Forest Service determines spending priorities for the revenues generated by the fee program, (2) how the agency has spent its fee demonstration program revenues, (3) what the agency is doing to measure the impact of the recreation fee revenues on reducing its deferred maintenance backlog, and (4) how it accounts for its fee demonstration program revenues.
Local forest managers largely determine Forest Service spending priorities for the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program. Given broad discretion in deciding how to use fee demonstration revenues, local forest managers retain between 90 and 100 percent of the fee demonstration revenue at the sites where fees are collected and are expected to establish spending priorities consistent with general program guidance provided by Forest Service headquarters. This guidance advises local forest managers to spend fee demonstration revenues on needs that have been identified by forest visitors and to maintain existing facilities rather than initiate new construction projects. On the basis of priorities identified by local users, the Forest Service has spent fee demonstration revenues on a wide range of projects at national forests throughout the country. The legislation authorizing the fee demonstration program permitted all the participating agencies to spend fee revenues on certain categories of activities to increase the quality of the visitor experience and enhance the protection of resources. GAO's review at selected Forest Service sites found that expenditures were consistent with authorizing legislation and agency spending priorities. The Forest Service does not have a process for measuring the impact of fee demonstration expenditures on reducing the deferred maintenance backlog. Further, while the agency acknowledges that it has a significant deferred maintenance problem, it has not developed a reliable estimate of its deferred maintenance needs. Consistent with the authorizing legislation for the fee demonstration program, the Forest Service keeps its fee revenue in accounts separate from other appropriated funds. The agency also tracks its fee revenues and expenditures separately from its appropriated funds.
GAO-03-1161T, Recreation Fees: Information on Forest Service Management of Revenue from the Fee Demonstration Program
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Testimony:
Before the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, Committee on
Resources, House of Representatives:
United States General Accounting Office:
GAO:
For Release on Delivery Expected at 2:00 p.m. a.m. EDT:
Wednesday, September 17, 2003:
Recreation Fees:
Information on Forest Service Management of Revenue from the Fee
Demonstration Program:
Statement of Barry T. Hill, Director Natural Resources and Environment:
GAO-03-1161T:
GAO Highlights:
Highlights of GAO-03-1161T, testimony before the Subcommittee on
Forests and Forest Health, Committee on Resources, House of
Representatives
Why GAO Did This Study:
Since 1996, federal land management agencies have collected over $900
million in recreation fees from the public under an experimental
initiative called the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program. The
Forest Service‘s part was about $160 million. The authority to collect
these fees expires at the end of fiscal year 2004. Central to the
debate about whether to reauthorize the program is how effectively the
land management agencies are using the hundreds of millions of dollars
that the recreation fees have provided them. In April 2003, GAO
reported on Forest Service management of the fee demonstration
program. (See Recreation Fees: Information on Forest Service
Management of Revenue from the Fee Demonstration Program, GAO-03-470
[Washington D.C.: Apr. 25, 2003]).
This testimony is based on the work GAO conducted for the April 2003
report. Four issues are addressed: (1) how the Forest Service
determines spending priorities for the revenues generated by the fee
program, (2) how the agency has spent its fee demonstration program
revenues, (3) what the agency is doing to measure the impact of the
recreation fee revenues on reducing its deferred maintenance backlog,
and (4) how it accounts for its fee demonstration program revenues.
What GAO Found:
Local forest managers largely determine Forest Service spending
priorities for the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program. Given broad
discretion in deciding how to use fee demonstration revenues, local
forest managers retain between 90 and 100 percent of the fee
demonstration revenue at the sites where fees are collected and are
expected to establish spending priorities consistent with general
program guidance provided by Forest Service headquarters. This
guidance advises local forest managers to spend fee demonstration
revenues on needs that have been identified by forest visitors and to
maintain existing facilities rather than initiate new construction
projects.
On the basis of priorities identified by local users, the Forest
Service has spent fee demonstration revenues on a wide range of
projects at national forests throughout the country. The legislation
authorizing the fee demonstration program permitted all the
participating agencies to spend fee revenues on certain categories of
activities to increase the quality of the visitor experience and
enhance the protection of resources. GAO‘s review at selected Forest
Service sites found that expenditures were consistent with authorizing
legislation and agency spending priorities.
The Forest Service does not have a process for measuring the impact of
fee demonstration expenditures on reducing the deferred maintenance
backlog. Further, while the agency acknowledges that it has a
significant deferred maintenance problem, it has not developed a
reliable estimate of its deferred maintenance needs.
Consistent with the authorizing legislation for the fee demonstration
program, the Forest Service keeps its fee revenue in accounts separate
from other appropriated funds. The agency also tracks its fee revenues
and expenditures separately from its appropriated funds.
www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-1161T.
To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click
on the link above. For more information, contact Barry T. Hill at
(202) 512-3841 or hillbt@gao.gov.
[End of section]
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
I am pleased to be here today to discuss our most recent report on the
Forest Service's management of the Recreational Fee Demonstration
Program.[Footnote 1] Since 1996, federal land management agencies have
collected over $900 million in recreation fees from the public under an
experimental initiative called the Recreational Fee Demonstration
Program. The Forest Service's part is about $160 million. The Forest
Service is one of the four federal land management agencies authorized
by Congress to charge fees to visitors and to retain the revenues for
use in addition to other appropriated funds.[Footnote 2] The Congress
originally authorized the program for 3 years and has extended it
several times. The authority to collect these fees currently expires at
the end of fiscal year 2004.
As the program enters its seventh year, the fees continue to be
controversial at some sites, and critics question the extent to which
program expenditures directly benefit visitors. Many of the concerns
involve the Forest Service, which, unlike the National Park Service,
had not historically charged fees to enter its public lands or to use
amenities such as trails prior to the fee demonstration program.
Moreover, the Forest Service introduced a variety of new recreation
fees aimed at a range of visitor uses, including fees for dispersed
recreation, such as trail access or backcountry camping, or for general
access. Although this experimentation provided valuable information
about the types of fees that were feasible, it also fueled questions
about the Forest Service's administration of the program. Accordingly,
as you requested, my testimony today will address the following issues:
(1) how the Forest Service determines spending priorities for the
revenues generated by the fee program; (2) how the agency has spent its
fee demonstration program revenues; (3) what the agency is doing to
measure the impact of the recreation fee revenues on reducing its
deferred maintenance backlog; and (4) how it accounts for its fee
demonstration program revenues.
Results in Brief:
Local forest managers largely determine Forest Service spending
priorities for the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program. Given broad
discretion in deciding how to use fee demonstration revenues, local
forest managers retain between 90 and 100 percent of the fee
demonstration revenue at the sites where fees are collected. Local
managers are expected to establish spending priorities consistent with
general program guidance provided by Forest Service headquarters. This
guidance advises local managers to spend fee demonstration revenues on
needs that have been identified by forest visitors; it also directs
local managers to spend the resources on maintaining existing
facilities rather than initiating new construction projects.
On the basis of priorities identified by local users, the Forest
Service has spent fee demonstration revenues on a wide range of
projects at national forests throughout the country. The legislation
authorizing the fee demonstration program permits the participating
agencies to spend fee revenues on a broad range of activities aimed at
increasing the quality of the visitor experience and enhancing the
protection of resources such as providing visitor services, maintaining
and enhancing facilities, fee collections, and enforcing laws. To
verify how the fee revenue was being spent we visited a number of
Forest Service sites across the country and found that expenditures
were consistent with the authorizing legislation for the program and
agency spending guidance and priorities.
The Forest Service has not developed a process for measuring the impact
of fee demonstration expenditures on reducing the deferred maintenance
backlog. According to agency officials, there are several reasons for
this--for example, the temporary status of the program and the fact
that the legislation establishing the program does not require that the
impact be measured. Further, while officials acknowledge that the
Forest Service has a significant deferred maintenance problem, the
agency has not developed a reliable estimate of its deferred
maintenance needs.
Consistent with the authorizing legislation for the fee demonstration
program, the Forest Service keeps its fee revenue in Treasury accounts
separate from other appropriated funds. The agency also tracks its fee
revenue and expenditures separately from its appropriated funds.
Background:
The Forest Service is responsible for managing over 192 million acres
of public lands in the United States. In carrying out its
responsibilities, the Forest Service has traditionally been a
decentralized organization, whose programs are administered through
nine regional offices, 155 national forests, and over 600 ranger
districts (each forest has several districts).
The Forest Service began implementing the Recreational Fee
Demonstration Program in fiscal year 1996 with four demonstration sites
that generated a total of $43,000 during the year.[Footnote 3] The
program has steadily grown over the past 6 years and now covers 92
sites in 114 national forests and grasslands. These sites generated
about $38 million in revenue in fiscal year 2002. A demonstration site
may consist of an individual forest; a group of forests, such as the
National Forests in Texas; or a specific area or activity within a
forest, such as Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument in the
Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington.
Local Forest Service Officials Determine Spending Priorities:
Spending priorities for the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program are
largely determined by local forest managers who are given broad
discretion in deciding how to use fee demonstration revenues. Forest
Service headquarters provides general program guidance that advises the
local managers to focus their spending priorities on two things. First,
local managers are to identify what the visitors want because the
Forest Service believes that users will more likely accept having to
pay fees if they see that their money is spent on improving services in
the forests they visit. Second, existing facilities such as restrooms
and visitor centers should be maintained because the agency prefers to
use fee revenue to maintain such facilities rather than to initiate new
capital projects that would increase its inventory of assets and add to
operating and maintenance costs.
In the three Forest Service regions that we visited, local forest
managers told us that they establish priorities on the basis of visitor
desires that are identified through visitor comment cards, visitor
surveys, local user groups, associations, and regional boards.[Footnote
4] According to these officials, visitors generally desire spending
priorities that address health and safety needs; maintenance needs; and
improved visitor services, such as interpretative services.
Further, local forest managers told us that visitors expect that fee
demonstration revenues be retained and used at the sites where fees are
collected. In this regard, the Forest Service retains between 90 and
100 percent of fee revenues for use at the collection sites. The
portion of fee revenues that is not retained on site is used by the
regional offices for a variety of program-related activities, such as
providing start-up money for new demonstration sites, providing fee
demonstration program signs and brochures, initiating regional pass
sales, and supporting marketing activities.
Revenues Are Spent on a Wide Range of Activities:
In the authorizing legislation for the Recreational Fee Demonstration
Program, the Congress provided the Forest Service and the other land
management agencies broad authority in deciding how to spend fee
demonstration revenues. The 1996 authorizing legislation[Footnote 5]
permitted the agencies to spend fee demonstration revenues for:
backlogged repair and maintenance projects, interpretation, signage,
habitat or facility enhancement, resource preservation, annual
operation (including fee collection), maintenance, and law enforcement
relating to the public use of lands. Our analysis at a sample of sites
participating in the fee demonstration program showed that fee revenue
was being spent on a wide range of projects that were consistent with
the authorizing legislation the program and agency spending priorities.
For fiscal year 2001, the Forest Service reported that it collected
about $35 million in fees and spent about $29.3 million, with about
half of the expenditures going toward visitor services and operations
and maintenance activities.
We reviewed the activities at a sample of demonstration sites in three
Forest Service regions that have generated the most revenue to
determine how funds were spent, the appendix lists the specific regions
and sites we visited. The types of projects being funded at the sites
we visited included:
* constructing a boat launch area along the Nantahala River, a world-
class whitewater river that attracts about 250,000 people annually in
the National Forests of North Carolina;
* operating a wastewater treatment plant that serves the visitor center
at Multnomah Falls, located within 30 miles of Portland, Oregon, and
one of the most popular attractions in the Columbia River Gorge
National Scenic Area, which receives over 2 million visitors per year;
and:
* acquiring fire rings, cooking grills, and picnic tables at Kisatchie
National Forest in Louisiana to improve campground services.
On the basis of our review and on-site observations, we found that the
fee demonstration program expenditures were consistent with the
legislative authority provided for the program and with agency spending
priorities.
The Forest Service Has No Process for Measuring the Impact of Fee
Revenues on Deferred Maintenance:
The Forest Service has used a portion of its fee program revenues to
help address its deferred maintenance backlog. However, the agency does
not have a process for measuring how much has been spent on deferred
maintenance or the impact of the fee revenue program has had on
reducing its deferred maintenance needs. In addition, while the agency
acknowledges that it has a significant deferred maintenance problem, it
has not developed a reliable estimate of its deferred maintenance
needs. As a result, even if the agency knew how much fee revenue it
spent on deferred maintenance, it would not know the extent to which
its total deferred maintenance needs were being reduced.
The legislation authorizing the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program
permits the Forest Service and the other participating agencies to
spend fee revenues on deferred maintenance needs. In fact, at each of
the locations we visited, the site managers told us that they were
using a portion of fee revenues to implement a variety of projects that
addressed deferred maintenance needs such as replacing worn and rotted
picnic tables at a campground in Klamath National Forest in California,
fixing eroded hiking trails in the Nantahala Gorge in the North
Carolina National Forest, and replacing deteriorating restrooms in
Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana.
Forest Service officials told us that there are a number of reasons why
the agency has not developed a process to track deferred maintenance
expenditures from fee demonstration revenues. First, the agency chose
to use its fee demonstration revenue to improve and enhance on-site
visitor services rather than to use its revenue in developing and
implementing a system for tracking deferred maintenance spending.
Second, because the fee demonstration program is still temporary,
agency officials said that they have concerns about developing an
additional process for tracking deferred maintenance. Finally, the
agency faced no specific requirement was to measure the impact of fee
revenues on deferred maintenance.
Forest Service officials acknowledge that the agency has a significant
deferred maintenance problem. In fiscal year 2001, the agency estimated
that its total deferred maintenance backlog was in the billions of
dollars, most of which was for forest roads and bridges. According to
the Forest Service, the recreation-related component of this estimate
was in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
However, in March 1999, the Department of Agriculture's Inspector
General testified that the Forest Service did not have a reliable
estimate of the amount of its deferred maintenance backlog.[Footnote 6]
Further, the Inspector General pointed out that the agency had no
systematic method for compiling the information needed to provide
managers or the Congress with reliable estimates. Although the Forest
Service has since implemented an initiative to help gather and develop
better information on the amount of its deferred maintenance backlog,
the findings of the Inspector General's report are still valid. Forest
Service officials acknowledge that they are still in the process of
developing a reliable estimate of the agency's deferred maintenance
backlog.
The Forest Service Accounts for Its Fee Demonstration Program Revenues
and Expenditures Separately from Other Funds:
The authorizing legislation for the fee demonstration program requires
the participating federal agencies to maintain fee revenue in separate
Treasury accounts and to account for fee expenditures separately from
other appropriated fund expenditures. Consistent with the requirement,
the Forest Service maintains its fee revenues in separate Treasury
accounts and tracks fee revenue and expenditures separately from other
appropriated funds. For example, officials at the Gifford Pinchot
National Forest in the Pacific Northwest Region used a combination of
fee demonstration revenues and other appropriated funds to replace a
bridge on the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail in 2001. For this
project, agency officials accounted for revenues and expenditures from
the fee demonstration program separately from the revenues and
expenditures from other appropriated funding sources.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be happy to
respond to any questions that you or Members of the Subcommittee may
have.
GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments:
For further information about this testimony, please contact me at
(202) 512-3841. Nancy Crothers, Cliff Fowler, Amy Webbink and Arvin Wu
made key contributions to this statement.
[End of section]
Appendix I: Demonstration Sites Visited:
[See PDF for image]
Source: GAO based on Forest Service data.
Note: We did not visit the Kisatchie National Forest site because it
was closed due to a hurricane at the time we were conducting our
fieldwork. We did, however, obtain documentation from the site manager
on each of our review objectives.
[A] The Enterprise Forest project covers four national forests in
Southern California: the Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres, and San
Bernardino forests. We visited the Angeles and San Bernardino National
Forests.
[End of table]
FOOTNOTES
[1] U.S. General Accounting Office, Recreation Fees: Information on
Forest Service Management of Revenue from the Fee Demonstration
Program, GAO-03-470 (Washington, D.C: Apr. 25, 2003).
[2] The other three land management agencies authorized to charge fees
under the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program are the National Park
Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land
Management.
[3] Although the Forest Service refers to fee demonstration sites as
projects throughout this statement, we call them sites. Under the
original Recreational Fee Demonstration Program legislation, between 10
and 50 sites per agency were permitted to establish, charge, and
collect recreation fees (P.L. 104-134, title III, Sec. 315 [1996]). In
fiscal year 1997 appropriations, the Congress increased the number of
authorized sites to 100 per agency (P.L. 104-208, title III, Sec. 319
[1996]). In fiscal year 2002 appropriations, the Congress eliminated
the 100 demonstration sites per agency limitation (P.L. 107-63, title
III, Sec. 312 (b)[2001]).
[4] Regional boards, which consist of members with recreation, forest,
law enforcement, fiscal, and economic backgrounds, are used to help
oversee the fee demonstration program within each region of the Forest
Service.
[5] Omnibus Consolidated Rescissions and Appropriations Act of 1996,
P.L. No. 104-134, title III, Sec.315(c)(3).
[6] Testimony of Roger Viadero, Inspector General, U.S. Department of
Agriculture, before the Committee on Agriculture, Subcommittee on
Department Operations, Oversight, Nutrition, and Forestry, House of
Representatives, Concerning the Financial Accountability of the Forest
Service (Mar. 11, 1999).
