Though the financial burden for the impending battles will be met through a special assessment of those directly affected, make no mistake about it: the outcomes are of immense concern to everyone in the ski industry, because the wrong outcomes could have profound impacts on the health and growth potential of all of us in that industry.
The details are too complex to detail here, but at the risk of over-simplifying, here is a broad-brush picture of the present snake pit.
Areas on Forest Service land pay fees on the basis of the Graduated Rate Fee System (GRFS, referred to as “Griffis”). There has been a small tempest brewing in Congress over a perception that concessionnaire fees paid to other public lands administrators (e.g., by concessionnaires to the Park Service of the Department of Interior) are too low. Furthermore, the politicians have raised issues of overseas (read “Japanese” mostly) control over such landmark concessions as Yosemite. In the public — and therefore the political — mind, all public lands are the same, so the assumption is made that recreation-use eases of Forest Service land must be revised to bring the fees up to “fair market value.”
The Forest Service, a bureaucracy of its own that is organizationally a part of the Department of Agriculture, is buffeted by various interests which come at them in constantly shifting coalitions, none of which, to put it mildly, have the interests of the skier or ski industry at heart. No-growth environmentalists are at their back; oil, grazing and timber interests keep their respective pressures on; Congress, especially in the persons of Senator Metzenbaum and Representative Synar, has been critical, as has the General Accounting Office (GAO). The bureaucratic instinct when under fire is to run for cover, and the Forest Service seems to be doing just this, by taking the “safe” course of shoving it to ski areas.
Incredible mischief can be done, some of it long-lasting, in this sort of a climate, and what worries us is that our industry in its present somewhat disarrayed state is not all that well equipped to look out for itself.
Among other things, it is under-gunned. Our lobbying arm, the American Ski Federation, is really just two people, albeit very able: Joe Pendergast and Carrie Bowers. But they are carrying the industry ball on so many projects — environmental education and action, tariff issues etc. — that GRFS fee issues would seem to be potentially overwhelming.
The industry seems to be taking the appropriate measures — negotiation, legal challenge, legislative response — and we have great confidence in Jerry Blann, chairman of the Public Lands Committee, who is orchestrating these efforts.
There is surely a critical need for strong leadership here, and we hope it is exercised. Those directly affected must pull together; there must be no divisiveness. Their efforts need and deserve our industry support.
