Re: {Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders} Re: Raising Shenandoah Entrance Fee to $70?

Oh, and of your three points, I fully agree with 1 & 3, not so sure about #2. Allowing more LWCF funding to help maintain parks, instead of just expand them, that might get me on board with #2. 

On Friday, October 27, 2017 at 3:18:02 PM UTC-4, October Caddis wrote:

On Friday, October 27, 2017 at 1:40:30 PM UTC-4, Miles wrote:

I agree about the 'secret plot' not being real, insofar as it's not at all secret.

"Zinke told members of the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association last week that "as the secretary, I don't want to be in the business of running campgrounds. My folks will never be as good as you are." The proposal to privatize campgrounds is part of Zinke's goal to alleviate an $11 billion backlog of maintenance projects" https://theweek.com/speedreads/705425/interior-secretary-proposes-privatizing-campgrounds

Here's an article from the Hill about the fairly public lobbying effort to do exactly that: http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/340181-hospitality-industry-pushes-trump-for-bigger-role-in-national-parks

GAO reports don't always give you the bigger picture, and it's telling that this report barely mentions concessioners operating in the parks. Here's another piece of the picture: those concessioners pay $85 million to the NPS for use of the park, compared to $186 million in user fees and $94 million in philanthropy. http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-166

What do concessioners get for their $85 million? Gross of more than a billion dollars. As for the backlog: "A closer look at the projects that make up the backlog, however, reveals that the NPS itself should not be responsible for many of these costs and that some of the projects are higher priority than others." https://www.adventure-journal.com/2017/03/opinion-trump-privatize-national-parks/

So the problem isn't that the backlog is huge or the money isn't there to fix it - it's just not being collected from the concessioners. And the fact that it isn't being collected is being used by our government - in public, not in secret - to justify fee rate hikes and further privatization of park assets.

I had not heard of the LWCF, but I spent a little while reading up on it. Specifically, I was looking at how much money is collected and how much is spent on parks. It turns out a does not equal b: 

"Although the LWCF is authorized up to $900 million annually, since 1999, appropriations for Federal land acquisition and State grants have ranged from $149 million to $573 million. Fully funding the program would comprise only 11.5% of all oil and gas revenues." https://www.nps.gov/subjects/lwcf/congressionalacts.htm

Check me on this, but the math on that works out to 7.8 billion dollars of offshore drilling revenues. That is rough fit for  the 2014 figure of 7.4 billion dollars here: http://ocsgovernors.org/ocs101/#7 -- but last year saw only 2.78 billion in revenues. So a range of 11.5% to 33%.

And even the $900 million authorization is rarely appropriated (twice, since 1977, when the $900 million peg was set). Since the GOP took over Congress appropriations have been fairly flat, at less than $400 million - which, granted, in the face of declining revenues can be seen as a positive. Still, at most 14% of OCS gas revenues are actually making to the LWCF. Most of the money just goes into the U.S. Treasury, as far as I can tell, for Congress to do whatever.

Concerning the decline in revenues, we should be clear about why that occurred: most of it is likely due to President Obama's ban on new drilling after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. (Some portion is likely due to OPEC's push to lower crude oil prices, which is beyond our scope here.) If Congress gives the Trump administration the authority to reverse that ban, and he uses that power, there is zero guarantee that the LWCF will see any more money appropriated. And that's assuming the LWCF is reauthorized at all - it's due to expire in 2018, and some (specifically GOP) members of Congress want to get rid of it.

Again: the money is there. It's just not being collected or appropriated. We should be asking our Congressors to 1) make the LWCF permanent, 2) raise the authorization to 2.5 billion, and 3) appropriate the full amount.

Miles

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