Booz Allen Hamilton, which operates Recreation.gov for the federal government, is seeking dismissal of a lawsuit that accuses it of reaping millions of dollars from "junk fees" attached to the reservations site/Kurt Repanshek file
Booz Allen Hamilton, the company that operates Recreation.gov for the federal government, has asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit against it, arguing in part that it doesn't charge any fees for use of the site that manages a wide array of recreational pursuits across public lands, from camping and hiking permits to climbing permits and cabin rentals.
In the motion to dismiss (attached below), filed March 10, the company stated that the plaintiffs who sued the company over claims that many of the fees tied to using the website are "junk fees" intended to line the company's pockets don't understand the contractual nature of the operation.
"The reality is that Booz Allen does not charge any fees to the users of Recreation.gov, including the Plaintiffs in this case. Booz Allen operates Recreation.gov pursuant to the terms of the Contract," the motion points out. "The federal agencies that use Recreation.gov to post available recreation opportunities for reservation decide whether and for how much to charge fees to the users who make those reservations. Indeed, the Contract between Booz Allen and the USDA plainly states that [t]he Government has the sole discretion at applying fees. Plaintiffs’ claims thus attack the conduct of the U.S. Government—specifically, the way in which the federal government manages access to federal lands."
The lawsuit filed against Booz Allen in January raised the question of whether Recreation.gov in effect has privatized public lands for the benefit of the government contractor. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Virginia, it asked the court to order Booz Allen to refund to consumers processing, lottery, and cancellation fees charged on the Recreation.gov website and mobile app. The lawsuit was brought by seven outdoor enthusiasts who are seeking to have the matter certified as a class-action matter covering “[A]ll individuals in the United States who were charged a Junk Fee on the Recreation.gov website and/or App.”
“We are not challenging the use fees that go toward funding access to federal lands. We are challenging the transactional junk fees that are being paid 100 cents on the dollar to Booz Allen,” plaintiffs’ attorney, Wesley M. Griffith, told the Traveler last month.
But Ashley Howard, a spokesperson for Booz Allen, told the Traveler in an email Monday that not only doesn't the company charge fees for use of Recreation.gov, it also doesn't receive any fees from those who book reservations via the site.
"Booz Allen is paid by the government in accordance with the terms of the contract," she wrote, without divulging the financial terms of the contract. "America’s public lands, national parks, and cultural landmarks unite us and define who we are as a nation. We are honored to support Recreation One Stop’s efforts to preserve and enhance the public’s access to these national treasures. Our work supporting the Recreation.gov technology platform helps safely and equitably accommodate the growing demand on these resources, benefitting the government and, ultimately, American taxpayers."
The motion to dismiss states that under the terms of the contract, Booz Allen is paid "a unit price for various types of transactions. ... However, the government's per-transaction payments to Booz Allen are not conditioned in any way on the fees charged by the federal agencies to the users of Recreation.gov."
But Richard B. DeLappe, a National Park Service employee who works on the Recreation.gov program, in a 2021 lawsuit challenging a processing fee charged to access the reservation system to visit a national conservation area managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said under oath that "no part of the processing fee charged by Recreation.gov ... is returned to the BLM."
"The processing fees are collected in a U.S. Treasury account and remitted on a monthly basis after the contractor has invoiced the Forest Service for the total number of transactions committed," he added.
There are multiple categories of fees charged for using Recreation.gov, including:
- $15 nonrefundable application fee to float the Yampa and Green Rivers in Dinosaur National Monument
- $10 cancellation fee for campsite cancellations
- $10 change fee to add or remove a night’s campsite stay or to move to a different site
- $10 reservation fee to secure a backcountry permit
- $6 nonrefundable reservation fee to obtain a climbing permit at Acadia National Park’s Otter Cliffs
- $2 nonrefundable administrative fee for vehicle trips to Cadillac Summit at Acadia National Park
- $1 application fee for all lottery applicants to view fireflies at Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Among the points raised by Booz Allen in seeking dismissal were:
- The federal government is immune from the claims made by the plaintiffs, and since the government authorized all of Booz Allen's actions, the company also is immune.
- The lawsuit failed to include the federal agencies in the action.
Plaintiffs’ claims attack U.S. Government conduct—not only the charging of fees, but also the alleged failure by the federal agencies to comply with various procedural requirements before charging certain fees for access to national parks and other federal lands. And Plaintiffs’ requests for relief are aimed at altering or altogether halting the government’s conduct, not Booz Allen’s. As such, both Booz Allen and the government would be severely prejudiced were this case to proceed without the federal agencies. But because the agencies cannot feasibly be joined—they are immune from suit—the claims must be dismissed.
- Since the federal government sets the fee scale, not Booz Allen, the plaintiffs have failed to state a valid claim.
Representatives for the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service who work on the Recreation.gov program have not responded to Traveler inquiries about the terms of the contract. While the Traveler has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain a copy of the contract, that request has not been fulfilled.
Until just recently, many national parks handled their own backcountry reservations and accepted the fees themselves. But in recent years parks have been pushed into the Recreation.gov system. Among the parks that recently transitioned to Recreation.gov for reservations were Yellowstone National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, Hot Springs National Park, and Rocky Mountain National Park.
At Congaree National Park, officials attributed a recent increase in campsite reservation fees to the cost of using Recreation.gov to manage reservations.
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Comments
Thank you for your coverage on this. It is clear BAH is trying to obfuscate to continue keeping their sweet and profitable contract which literally steals from our poorly funded public lands and their poorly paid employees. BAH should be ashamed.
Booz is absolutely trying to obfuscate. It appears they regularly use the language 'fees' as to imply "hey we don't charge the public anything, the forest service says it's $15 to stay at that campsite, that's all we charge" --- "anything else is just part of the contract!"
But it wouldn't surprise me if the FS is fully cognizant of these fees--I would like to see the table of fees per booking type that is referenced as an exhibit. The FS probably wants to pretend they're not responsible for that and is fine with Booz saying they're not responsible either. Yeah, nobody is responsible for a private company profitting off the public's access to public lands. If I had to choose one I'd put it on the public agencies as the bar should be higher for them for disclosure and including these junk fees in the public commenting period under FLREA when they're proposing them. Which they're not.
I agree with Kurt. We need to see the contract before we cast aspersions. Thanks Kurt for pushing for the transparency.
So let me get this straight, a federal agency creates an RFP, outlines what kind of system they want, what they want it to do, how it should operate, financially how the contractor who builds and operates it will be paid. A contractor bids on and wins that contract, performs the work to the government's liking, and operates under the terms outlined by the government. This, in your mind, amounts to theft and the contractor is an evil money grubbing scrooge character shamefully pillaging the poor victim government? How naive can one person be?
Yes. Do you think a federal contractor is really doing this out of a benevolent civic duty? It's to make money off the government and public.
The contract is highly redacted unfortunately but we can see that Booz wants to drive transactions and proposes their own fee schedule BACK to the government and we the public cannot even see it nor be engaged in the accountability of it.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2023-03/AG-3187-C-16-9000FIN...
So, with a proposed fee schedule full of fees that do not benefit outdoor lands at all, it would appear they have a peverse incentive to driving increased transactions on their portal.. so interesting.
If you have experience with these agencies. You probably know that RFPs. Especially federal RFPs, aren't always have to be neutral or fair. In fact. They can be highly political, where companies win and lose 100% on the basis of political considerations (ie, you have some Senator champion the project, or ensure the funding gets added to the budget). Some projects are basically corporate welfare and have only a loose connection to doing the work on time and under budget.
Just two years ago, the engineering firm I work at went after a California state agency RFP. We later found out the RFP had been authored almost entirely by a consultant. That consultant later bid on the RFP they partially wrote, and won. The RFP was written in such a way that basically this one consultant was the only company that met all the qualifications. We really should have known better reading that RFP, it was so oddly specific, but we fell for it. We only recently found this stuff out.
I'm not even going to get into the horrible examples of shennanigans we've seen in the press with BLM contracting. Or even worse, contracting in defense industry, which is horribly corrupt and wasteful. So, This stuff happens, especially with our business culture today, where players like Booz Allen can leverage political power to tip the scales and corrupt the process. Then when you call them on it, they have an absurdly well funded legal team that vigorously defends them.
Point being, the RFP process does not always ensure fair play. Not to mention, Booz Allen is basically a monopoly in certain industries and services. The DoJ has an antitrust suite against them right now for violating the Clayton Act by buying up a competitor. This is a brutal company that plays for keeps, not some collection of outdoors enthusiasts and software engineers who want to do a public service. They are here to make money. And they're not happy with a 10% markup, they want to wring as much money as they can out of people using our parks, they want to push the market to absolute limit of what it will bare.
I'm sure if the lawsuit gets rolling, it will come out that the RFP was shady.
The other thing, too, is that the RFP is just about doing the work. The RFP might not say anything about how you're getting paid. That could all have been negotiated after Booz Allen was selected.
My guess is that Booz Allen, who are more than anything, a bunch of financiers looking for low hanging fruit, proposed the crazy payment scheme we see today, where they don't charge the government anything for operating the website, but they get paid on all these insane and unjust fees they charge. There's just no way the federal government came up with that. Maybe they were bamboozled, or they thought it was a fair deal for the agency, without understanding the arrangement was going to allow Booz Allen to price gouge.
Our national parks should be open to everyone. We all have shared ownership in them. Public resources like our parks are a refuge for many families who can't afford more luxurious vacations. My own family was poor as heck, but we still went camping every year when I was a kid. We all lose when these parks are turned into a way to siphon money from Americans, all so Booz Allen financiers can squander it.
And yet in the Federal contract, the fee schedule is redacted.. Did the federal government really redact their own fee scale from public viewing? Or did Booz propose an array of fees on various transaction and purchase types and the government accepted it?
Today, July 2, 2024, I cancelled a reservation that I had previously modified and paid a $10 change fee at the time of the change. For this cancellation today, I was charged a $10 cancellation fee and RE-CHARGED the $10 change fee previously paid, total of $20 to cancel!! No double charge the last time I cancelled, so I guess this is a new way to dig deep in our wallets for more money.
Their Cancellations and Fees policy clearly states there is a "$10 change fee, but no additional charges for "adding or remvoing nights to your stay, or changing to a different campsite, For cancellations one can cancel the reservation anytime before the date of scheduled arrival and receive a refund minus a $10 cancellation fee, any reservation fees if paid when booking and any previous change fees." I've never expected to be refunded the change fee nor have I expected to be charged for it AGAIN? I felt like my pockets had been picked.
When I complained the representative offered to submit a request to have the $10 change fee refunded, which is supposedly approved/denied by the campground; I agreed to the request. I also asked to speak to a supervisor and was told no supervisors were available, but was told to call the campground and speak with them about the $10 refund. How convenient.
Campers, use Reservation.gov at your own risk.
Life happens, plans change...and we're penalized for Booz Allen's profit.