Certainly, that will help speed up the trend towards generally decreasing government regulations affecting all industries. But at the Forest Service plans are underway for changes that will directly and specifically affect ours.
Roy Feuchter, director of recreation management, told SAM that these changes are on the horizon:
• An end to the current inspection program. Instead Forest Service personnel will simply check to make sure that the ski areas have their own safety inspection routine and that it is being carried out.
“What we would like to do is get out of the inspection business,” Feuchter said, “and have the ski area operator establish a system to insure that adequate maintenance is being accomplished. Our role would be to see to it that the system is functioning.”
Feuchter said his office has been working with NSAA’s B-77 committee to develop such a program.
• The Forest Service is nearly ready to issue an updated version of the graduated rate fee system, which should make it easier for ski area operators to determine fees charged for the use of federal land.
An earlier proposal met with industry resistance because it would have meant significantly higher fees for many areas. Feuchter said the new proposal will be simpler in many respects, but that some fees will go up and some will go down, depending on a number of variables, including: the age of improvements, where they are in terms of depreciation, how they have been handled for tax purposes (whether they have been expensed or treated as investments.), the business mix (whether the area offers lifts and tows only, ski schools, restaurants, lodging, and more complete facilities).
Feuchter said the new plan should be ready for announcement early in 1981.
• The Forest Service is moving towards establishing a free market situation, where competition rather than government bureaucrats establish service fees.
Feuchter said that the policy, established in 1980, of permitting ski areas on government land to set their fees according to those charged by comparable areas on private land has been successful. But, he added, he would like to move even more towards reducing regulations regarding service fees and end Forest Service control.
“It could happen in 1981,” Feuchter said. “The new administration certainly will be moving in that direction. However, we’ll never be out of it totally. We do have a responsibility to keep a watchful eye that usury prices don’t develop. We don’t want to become an exclusive place for the very rich.”
If things continue as they have, Feuchter added, “we would be out of it—except for a watchdog kind of thing. We’ll try to back away more and more as we can.”
Feuchter pointed out that there is a cost to regulations that must be met by the ski area operator, and those costs, he acknowledged, must be passed on to the consumer.
American Ski Federation President Joe Prendergast said ASF has been working with the Forest Service to achieve the reduced regulatory activity that Feuchter talks about. With regard to service fees, he said, “What we want come January is to let the market take care of itself.”
Prendergast looks forward to 1981 as a year when the industry will be faced with fewer problems of government regulation overall because of the change in administrations and in control of the Senate.
He cited as an example of what’s ahead the action by the House on the Alaska lands legislation shortly after the lame duck session of Congress convened. Rep. Morris Udall, D-Ariz., the chairman of the House Interior Committee, accepted a Senate-approved bill that placed in wilderness categories far fewer acres of land than the House had previously sought.
“That never would have passed the House of Representatives except for the fact that Mo Udall knew he wouldn’t get anything better from the Senate next year,” Prendergast said.
