Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's plan to turn to surge-pricing at 17 national parks in a move to try to eat away at the National Park System's $11.6 billion maintenance backlog apparently has gone up in smoke following widespread opposition.
Though the secretary said higher entrance fees were needed because there were too many free or discounted passes given to senior citizens, active military, disabled, and even fourth-graders and their families, the proposal drew opposition from Congress, attorneys general, and many others.
Even Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, who was thrilled to see Secretary Zinke recommend that Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments be downsized, and then watched in person as President Trump acted on that recommendation from the steps of the Beehive State's Capitol, told the Interior secretary that surge pricing would "devastate" his small town businesses while having negligible impact on the maintenance backlog.
The proposal would more than double entrance fees at the 17 parks for nearly half the year and raise an estimated $70 million to help address the estimated $11.6 billion maintenance backlog. The proposed $70 fee for a week, if finalized, would apply to Yellowstone, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Denali, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Olympic, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Yosemite, Acadia, Mount Rainier, Joshua Tree, Shenandoah, and Zion national parks.
But scrolling through the more than 109,000 public comments submitted on the plan, words such as "ridiculous," "absurd," "discriminatory," "horrifying," and "horrible" popped up, sometimes more than a few times. Many writers expressed concern about pricing some folks out of the parks with this approach, while others thought Congress needed to do a better job funding the Park Service.
An Interior Department official told the Washington Post, which was first to report that the plan was being discard, that there were concerns that higher entrance fees would cause visitation to fall to the affected parks.
“We’re working to respond to those … thoughtful and well-put comments,” the official said. “Our ultimate goal when it comes to entrance fees is to make sure the parks get 80 percent of that revenue … but we also don’t want to put a burden on our visitors. We believe there is room to increase the fees and the annual passes.”
During appearance last month before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the Interior secretary said too much of entrance fee revenues go back to Washington, D.C.. But under current regulations, 80 percent of the fees collected in a park are supposed to stay there, while the other 20 percent is sent to Washington to be redistributed to other areas, including to parks that do not collect entrance fees.
“As families plan summer visits to their national parks, the Trump Administration should be making those visits easier not harder," said Hannah Malvin, recreation policy associate at The Wilderness Society. "Instead, the steep increase originally planned would have hit low-income families especially hard. That’s especially outrageous when the administration is cutting deals to help oil and gas companies drill our public lands and waters at bargain basement prices.”
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Comments
Make America Great Again!
Although I don't entirely agree with this particular idea, I guess I'm one of a few Americans who believe that if we want the kind, quality, and variety of services we have become accustomed to having, perhaps we need to be ready to pay for them.
I really believe that our lawmakers do a real disservice to all of us when they buy our votes with tax cuts instead of leveling with us and telling the truth. Results of their fibs are being seen now in teacher strikes across the country as consequences of their vote-buying tax policies are being felt in real life.
Whether it's our schools, roads, sewer and water systems, or our parks, the truth is that if we are going to continue to demand them, someone will need to pay for them.
What's really needed is not more empty and false political popularity propaganda but realism. Truly responsible lawmakers would not be making promises that cannot be kept. Instead, they should be working to EDUCATE voters by telling the truth about costs and then asking all of us to decide what services we value and are willing to continue funding and which we are not. Then they need to ensure that our governments at all levels manage in fiscally responsible manners.
But that ain't gonna happen, because we'd have to make America Sane Again before we can make it great again.
Pity
Lee, local teacher salaries have nothing to do with Federal income tax RATE cuts.
In fact in CO, it is estimated that revenues to the state will rise due to the Federal tax cut.
https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2018/02/24/federal-tax-cuts-could-...
Talk about fibs!
In 2016 the lifetime senior pass cost $10. Last year it jumped up to $80. Those of us who use it don't really mind paying, but that was quite the jump! Why not jump it from $10 to $50?
The same thing should happen to the entrance fees. Most people don't mind paying somewhat more to help maintain our parks, but to increase the cost that much in one year does not feel fair and will quite literally keep people from visiting the parks and yes, it will affect those small communities that depend on the tourist revenue.
Raise the user fees, just don't try to make up the maintenance shortfall in one year.
That was mandated by Congress.
https://www.congress.gov/114/crpt/hrpt576/CRPT-114hrpt576-pt1.pdf
for the lifetime of the passholder, at a cost equal to the cost of the National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass purchased under subsection (a).
The parks should receive the entire revenue from entrance fees, rescue reimbursements (if any), and fines (if any) as well as living wages for their staff, adequate equipment and IT to do their jobs, and a decently renovated infrastructure of roads, trails, buildings, camp grounds and other necessary facilities.
The park service has been chronically under-funded and under-staffed since the 1930s.
Esteemed Comrade, I was not writing about Federal tax cuts but the failure of legislators at all levels to provide realistic budgets that will actually pay for services we all use.
The current Federal mess is symptomatic of a much larger problem with unkept and unkeepable promises made to purchase votes from gullible voters. We also see it in many of our states, cities and counties. Teacher strikes and near bankruptcy of several states and cities are direct results of lack of political courage and wisdom.
Both parties are equally at fault.
HERE IS AN IDEA:
AUDIT THE BOOKS AND FOLLOW THE MONEY. WE BELIEVE SOMEONE/FEDS HAD THEIR HANDS IN THE TILL!
OK, Lee - show us where there have been state tax cuts that have led to teacher strikes. You are all rhetoric and totally absent of facts. The only failure has been from people unwilling to provide for themselves and live within their means. If they did, there would be plenty of money for government to do what it is supposed to do.
https://qz.com/1243098/oklahoma-teachers-strike-how-income-tax-cuts-and-...
Kurt - has Oklahoma cut its income tax?
Forgot this....
http://www.governing.com/gov-teachers-winning-historic-tax-hikes.html?fl...
Once again Kurt, you confuse rate cuts with tax cuts. Their tax collections have not seen major cuts.
And, as long as we are off topic, there is no correlation between spending and the quality of education.
https://rossieronline.usc.edu/blog/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infogr...
That is the problem with the left, the answer always is spend more money, make more regulations but the end result is never as intended.
Thanks for helping with some FACTS, Kurt. Here's a paragraph from a report by The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (which is described as a conservative organization that tries to advise state and local governments regarding financial issues) : Tax cuts. Costly and ill-advised tax cuts enacted in recent years are suppressing some states’ tax collections. For example, 11 states have enacted large, phased-in tax cuts since 2011 that will cost a combined $8 billion a year once fully implemented. Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, New Jersey, and New York enacted multi-year tax cuts that continued into 2017, with some of those cuts extending into 2018 and beyond
But I guess we already know that facts will be ignored by some folks . . . meanwhile teachers continue to spend their own money to buy supplies for their students. In Utah, the last number was an average of nearly $1200 per year per elementary teacher.
So how does this relate to our parks? Simple, our lawmakers, through their desire to be re-elected by making unsustainable promises to gullible voters have nearly bankrupted the national parks as they have so many other governmental agencies. Happily, I live in one of the few states that actually requires a balanced budget. A state in which, by the way, there has been a big push for petition signatures to place a citizens' initiative proposal for more spending on education on our ballots. A proposal that our legislature has fought tooth and nail despite the fact that a large majority of citizens say they support the idea.
What we're seeing is politicians feeding and fertilizing their more extreme base voters' Great American Entitlement Mentality instead of taking the risk of trying to educate them on reality.
But I've said my piece, so now I'll shut up and let other readers decide who they believe is correct here.
Actually, the vast majority of the states require or execute a balanced budget.
All the states except Vermont have a legal requirement of a balanced budget. Some are constitutional, some are statutory, and some have been derived by judicial decision from constitutional provisions about state indebtedness that do not, on their face, call for a balanced budget.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/fiscal-policy/state-balanced-budget-require...
Another "fib" to make your invalid point?
Our esteemed comrade has provided "proof" in an article dated from 1999. But it appears he may not have read it carefully.
Here's an updated version from the same source dated 2010: http://www.ncsl.org/documents/fiscal/StateBalancedBudgetProvisions2010.pdf. Kinda looks like those legislators made some changes beause they needed votes, yeah hey?
G'night all.
Thanks for your research, Lee.
Apparently you didn't read the article Rick (or Lee). According to Lee's post 44 states require the governor to submit a balanced budget and 41 require the legislature to pass a balanced budget. I would say 80+% is far closer to my "vast majority" than Lee's "few".
But both of the articles point out that most states administrations and legislatures are quite creative in finding ways to circumvent their own "reqirements." What may be "required" on paper and what is actually done are not necessarily the same. There's a lot of creative accounting.
I encourage the folks on these pages to read the reports. They say no such thing.