Page 32 - Flathead Beacon // 12.17.14

32 | DECEMBER 17, 2014 OPINION
LETTERS
NATIONAL PARK ENTRANCE FEES DESERVE A HIKE
As the National Park Service approaches its 100-year anniversary in 2016, there is a glaring blemish in a system known for its crown jewels. The agency faces a massive $12 billion backlog in deferred maintenance projects ranging from leaky wastewater systems to deficient roads, bridges, and trails.
This fall, the agency announced plans to raise entrance fees to address its backlog and fund other park programs and services. Thanks to legislation passed in 2004, the fees collected in national parks stay within the national park system instead of being deposited into the U.S. treasury, and 80 percent of the fees remain in the park where they were collected.
Fee revenues allow parks to address critical needs without having to rely on Congress for appropriations. Local park managers, not distant bureaucrats, decide how fee revenues are spent. Yet the proposed fee increases have some questioning whether our national parks are becoming too expensive.
But even with the fee hike, national parks would still be one of the best bargains around. Large parks such as Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier would raise entrance fees by only $5. That means a seven-day visit to Glacier or the Grand Tetons would cost $30 per vehicle – still an incredible deal. Yellowstone is proposing to charge $30 for a three- day pass, and a weeklong pass to both Yellowstone and Grand Teton would cost $50.
These small changes to park fees are not likely to have a significant effect on visitors. Studies in Yellowstone and Yosemite show that entrance fees make up only 1.2 to 1.5 percent of visitors’ overall trip expenditures, with the vast majority going towards food, lodging, and travel.
Higher fees could generate much- needed revenue to help cover the costs of park maintenance. In Yellowstone, the fee increase is expected to raise an additional $3 million per year. The revenue would be spent on campground maintenance, improved restroom facilities, trout restoration, and reconstruction and rehabilitation of several park trails. Park managers in Glacier anticipate an additional $500,000 per year if the fee increases are implemented.
The fee hike would allow national parks to become more self-sufficient, and that has several advantages in today’s political climate. An over- reliance on appropriations only worsens the maintenance backlog and exposes national parks to the whims of Congress. Last year’s government shutdown, which closed national parks around the country, demonstrates what can happen when
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politicians are trusted with the care and maintenance of our national parks.
Routine maintenance projects are not very glamorous, and Congress is often more interested in creating new parks than taking care of its existing parks. As a former House appropriations subcommittee chairman put it, “It’s not very sexy to fix a sewer system or maintain a trail. You don’t get headlines for that.” By generating more revenue from visitors, park managers can fund projects based on their necessity rather than on their political appeal.
The National Park Service is now seeking public input on its proposed fee increases. As a former park ranger, I recognize the important role that visitor fees can play to sustain our parks. The National Park Service faces many challenges as it enters its second century, but the continued financial support of its visitors should not be one of them.
National parks are not too expensive. In 1915, a weeklong pass to Yellowstone cost $10. That’s the equivalent of $235 today. But no one is proposing to raise fees that high. Park managers are simply asking visitors to cover more of the costs of maintaining our national treasures.
Those who visit and enjoy our national parks have a responsibility to care for and fund them. While entrance fees alone won’t solve our national parks’ financial problems, this modest fee hike is a step in the right direction.
Shawn Regan, research fellow Property and Environment Research Center
EPA REGS COME WITH HEFTY PRICE TAG
What would an additional $500 in energy expenses do to your household’s annual budget? Cause you to miss a car payment? Is it a month’s rent or mortgage? The amount of a few little “luxuries” like cable TV or a tablet computer for your kids?
For most Montanans it’s not a trivial amount. But $500 is how much the average Montanan will have to come up with to pay for President Obama’s plan to dismantle and reassemble our nation’s energy system.
A tighter budget may be the new normal sooner than you think if the EPA is successful in implementing an assortment of new regulations, chief among them the controversial plan aimed at carbon dioxide emissions.
A recent, independent analysis of the EPA’s proposals found that they would cause the state’s energy prices to spike by 53 percent over the next six years. That equates to Montana households paying $500 more annually for their energy.
Doesn’t look pretty, does it? And that analysis doesn’t even take into account the macro impacts Montana will suffer to our important energy sector.
The evidence shows that the president’s plan will result in slower economic growth in our state and fewer jobs. Put it all together and the average
Montanan is going to face higher energy prices at the same time our incomes will beless.
The president’s plan has a steep price tag for Montanans, but it’s not all that apparent what we get in return for that pain. The net effect of these complicated regulations will be a reduction in carbon emissions by about 1 percent globally.
The environmental groups and government bureaucrats rooting for the EPA’s plan want to make power production in America an “example of responsibility” for the rest of the world. There’s nothing wrong with the sentiment – the problem is those busybodies want to achieve this goal without any regard for the cost the rest of us will pay.
Climate change is certainly a problem that we must tackle, but the solution to this problem must be at a cost we can afford.
At no time in history have consumers benefitted from government intervening in a market – in this case that intervention is putting the EPA between the consumer and their power provider. It always results in price distortions. And this proposal is the granddaddy of all market interventions – it’s government central planning on a scale to make a Soviet apparatchik blush.
Montana Democrats are going all in behind the president’s radical plan. They’ve already introduced bills for the upcoming Montana legislative session that will result in Montana consumers getting soaked with astronomically higher bills.
That’s not what Montanans want – not because we don’t want to address climate change, but because we have to do it in a responsible manner. It’s clear the Clean Power Plan creates more problems than it fixes, and is simply not the solution we are looking for.
It doesn’t have to be this way. This month nearly every member of the Montana Republican caucus in the Legislature signed on to comments to the EPA in strong opposition to their proposal to hijack Montana’s energy.
The path Republicans would prefer to take is to solve climate change in a fiscally responsible manner – without forcing consumers to break their budgets – by focusing on making coal-fired electricity generation even cleaner than it is today. That has the added benefit to Montana of making our vast coal deposits even more valuable – developing that coal means new jobs, a broader tax base, and more prosperity for our state.
Clean coal technology is the only way we can address climate change and provide power at an affordable rate in our country and around the world. Unfortunately, the Democrats’ Clean Power Plan, as it stands, would stop clean coal tech from being developed. And if they get their way, you’re going to pay the cost.
Sen. Roger Webb, Republican Billings
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CORRECTIONS
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