A government watchdog agency is calling for recreation fees at parks and other public lands to be more coordinated. Lester Graham reports it could affect how you much you have to pay to get into parklands:
Transcript
A government watchdog agency is calling for recreation fees at parks and other public
lands to be more coordinated. Lester Graham reports it could affect how you much you
have to pay to get into parklands:
For the past nine years, agencies such as the National Park Service, and the Fish
and Wildlife Service have been allowed to come up with new fees and fee collection
programs, with the idea of improving visitor services at certain sites.
The Government Accountability Office studied how recreation entrance fees and user
fees are applied and used. The GAO found that some sites were bringing in more money
than they could use and others didn’t pull in enough money to keep up basic
maintenance. The report also indicated that a new annual visitor’s pass that would allow
you to get into sites regardless of which agency owned it was to be issued starting the
first of next year, but the agencies still haven’t come up with a price for the pass.
Finally, the GAO says many sites don’t have proper controls or audits on collected fees.
Sites say they trust their staff to handle the money properly, but the GAO indicates that’s
not quite good enough.
For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.