Cover Page MENU     Contents     Preface     1908-1940     1947-1967     1968-1972     1973-1974      1975-1980     1981-1982     Conclusion     Research Note     Appendix		Visitor Fees in the National Park System: A Legislative and Administrative History V. CONFLICTING PRESSURES; CONGRESS PUTS THE LID ON 1975-1980 Losing Control of the Receipts, 1980 Beginning in 1972, visitor fee revenues no longer went into the Land and Water Conservation Fund but were covered into a special Treasury account to "be available for appropriation, without prejudice to appropriations from other sources for the same purposes, for any authorized outdoor recreation function of the agency by which the fees were collected...." [25] The $10.6 million collected by the Park Service in 1976 was used for visitor transportation system planning and operation, exhibit and audiovisual production by the Harpers Ferry Center, and fee collection cost reimbursement. [26] The special account was envisioned as an incentive for fee collection by the several agencies. In practice, it would prove impossible for the Office of Management and Budget and the Congress to ignore the existence and level of fee receipts in recommending and making appropriations from other sources. Rather than treating fee income as a bonus, OMB came to see it as a means of offsetting the Service's budget requests and pressed for higher fees for just that purpose. Displeased with this trend, the Interior subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee in 1980 recommended abolition of the separate fee accounts maintained for the Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Forest Service: The intent was to encourage fee collection efforts with the reward of additional funding. In practice, however, these indefinite fee accounts have only created bookkeeping and paperwork burdens without actually increasing any agency's overall funding for recreation management and development. The funds are merged with regular appropriations and are even justified under some agencies' operating accounts. The ensuing Interior Appropriations Act for fiscal 1981 required all entrance and user fee revenues to be deposited once again in the Land and Water Conservation Fund, thereby limiting their application to land acquisition and state planning and development grants. [27] The effect was to virtually eliminate whatever financial incentive remained for park managers to collect visitor fees: they were uncompensated for their costs and benefited little or not at all from the proceeds. End of Chapter 5 26"Analysis of the National Park Service Recreation Fee System." 27Senate Report 96-985, Sept. 23, 1980, p. 9; P.L. 96-514, Dec. 12, 1980, 94 Stat. 2960.
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