Forest Service to Use Fee Demo Funds to Fight Fires

June 26th, 2002: The Washington Post reports that the government's funding for fire fighting is nearly burned up. According to the Post the Forest and Park Services are planning on drawing funds from are Recreation Fees, collected under Fee Demo.

The Post reports that:

"The money game is a problem for at least three Western senators - Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.; Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.; and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. - who say that too often the borrowed money is not paid back and programs suffer."

"The Forest Service has a poor track record with respect to repaying accounts," the senators wrote in a letter to White House budget director Mitch Daniels on Tuesday.

Instead of borrowing, the senators want money added to an emergency spending bill stalled in the Senate - a proposal resisted by the White House.

American Whitewater's Access Director Jason Robertson noted "While the fire fighting efforts need to be supported, Senators Kyl, Domenici, and Bingaman have the right idea in advocating for sufficient funding via an emergency spending bill, rather than recreation fees."

Robertson met with the Senate Resources Committee on the 26th and discussed ways to narrow the use of recreation fees in the future to ensure that they would be used as Congress intended to address the maintenance backlog in the national forests and parks, rather than extra-curricular operations such as firefighting. The extra-curricular activities are supposed to funded by the taxpayers and timber sales, rather than the recreation community.

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Link to the complete Washington Post article at:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51616-2002Jun26.html