	Demonstration Program Successful in Raising Revenue, but Improvements Can Be Made

The demonstration program affords opportunities to collect new and increased fees to the major agencies that provide the public with recreational opportunities on federal land—the Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Fish and Wildlife Service (all within the Department of the Interior), and the Forest Service (within the Department of Agriculture). Now, I would like to discuss several areas in which we think improvements can be made to the demonstration program. Demonstration sites may be reluctant to coordinate fees partly because the program’s incentives are geared towards increasing their revenues. This is a significant and sensitive issue that involves balancing important features of the program. In contrast, the projects being done by the other three agencies—the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Forest Service—have not had these additional levels of scrutiny. Capacity of the Agency to Handle Large Volume of Projects Limits Spending

Another factor limiting the pace of the Park Service’s spending relative to the other agencies in the program has been the agency’s ability to handle the large volume of projects that are now in the pipeline. Impact of the Fee Program on Park Service Maintenance Needs

Given the substantial increase in funding that the Park Service will receive under the demonstration fee program, now more than ever the agency will have to be accountable for demonstrating its accomplishments in improving the maintenance of Park Service facilities with these additional resources. Nonetheless, the Park Service still does not have accurate information on its maintenance needs. However, this is just a first step. The Congress has attempted to help the Park Service address its deferred maintenance and other program needs in recent years by providing additional appropriations and revenue from the recreational fee program.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the National Park Service's Recreational Fee Demonstration Program, focusing on the: (1) rate at which the Park Service spends revenue collected under the program in comparison with the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Forest Service; and (2) impact of the fee program on the Park Service's maintenance needs.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) the overall message about the demonstration program is positive; (2) the program is providing hundreds of millions of dollars to improve visitor services and address the backlogs of unmet needs in the four land management agencies; (3) in addition, those who pay the fees generally support the program, and it has not appeared to have adversely affected visitation rates; (4) nonetheless, it is appropriate to focus on several areas in which changes or improvements may be needed; (5) specifically, these issues include the need for greater coordination of fees by the agencies, greater innovation, and flexibility in revenue distribution; (6) these issues are important because the demonstration program is still at a stage where experimentation is encouraged; (7) most of GAO's observations relate to doing just that--experimenting more to determine what works best; (8) regarding the Park Service, GAO found that the agency's spending of demonstration program revenue has lagged substantially behind the other three agencies in the first 2 years of the program; (9) this has been due primarily to the larger number and scale of Park Service projects and additional scrutiny these projects are receiving within the agency and the Department of the Interior; (10) further, the Park Service has not yet developed accurate and reliable information on its total deferred maintenance needs; and (11) until this is done, determining the impact that the revenue from the fee program is having on these needs is not possible.