A ‘processing fee’
For many thousands of local households, the single greatest return on all their tax dollars is the weekend trip to the park. Families can come and go as they please and enjoy the outdoors in the company of their neighbors, known and unknown. These facilities, built and managed by governments, were created with the hope that they would be used for both planned and spontaneous recreation.
But imagine if, after arranging to meet all of your daughter’s schoolmates at an unmarked field for a game of soccer, you were confronted by a meddlesome bureaucrat who informed you that your friendly contest constituted an “organized activity.”
Because your game could have adverse environmental impacts on the turf, you need a permit. Other bureaucrats must spend long hours processing the appropriate documents to evaluate the permit application, he says. And the presence of so many children mandates the supervision of a “recreation planner,” just to make sure park rules are followed.
The bureaucrat types at his pocket calculator for a few minutes and informs you that continuing your soccer game will cost you … $5,490.08.
Preposterous? Michael Voegele and Steve Syzdek had to cancel their outing because of just such a heavy-handed tax.
Mr. Voegele and Mr. Szydek are members of the Southern Nevada Land Cruisers, off-road enthusiasts who enjoy traveling the rugged, back-country roads of rural Clark County. For decades, they’ve taken frequent trips on public trails under the jurisdiction of the federal Bureau of Land Management without much interference — or any substantial charge.
But they’ve had to cancel their group’s annual fall trail ride and campout because the agency determined the permit for the event required a $5,490.08 “processing fee.” A BLM spokeswoman said staff spent more than 50 hours processing the permit application. That work includes environmental and species habitat reviews, as well as anticipating the costs of having at least one ranger and recreation planner follow along to make sure the off-road vehicles don’t go, well … off the unpaved roads.
The Land Cruisers had spent $90 on their permit each of the past three years. But the punitive fee increase reflects a new, strict interpretation of agency policy regarding “organized groups.”
“We find it incomprehensible that you are able to manipulate agency requirements to the point that citizens of the United States, desiring to drive in a group on public lands on existing roads, can be prevented from doing so by the imposition of impossible fees,” Mr. Voegele wrote in his July 5 appeal to the BLM decision.
But that’s the whole idea behind the fees. Off-road driving, even on existing back-country roads and trails, is extremely unpopular with hard-core environmentalists, many of whom collect taxpayer-funded salaries working for the Department of the Interior or various colleges and universities. When so much of our tax structure is built to discourage certain behaviors — smoking, for example — it’s not surprising that the BLM would actively work to prevent the public from enjoying the outdoors in ways that offend agency bureaucrats.
The BLM has staff specifically tasked with handling use permits. To suggest that these publicly funded positions need to be reimbursed for their time is to advocate double taxation.
The Southern Nevada Land Cruisers aren’t staging a race, attracting an unusual number of people to public lands or seeking to make a profit from a commercial endeavor. They’re a group of area residents who want to enjoy the local landscape together.
The government’s position that such planning “leaves the realm of casual use” and warrants special regulatory attention is absurd.