Recreation fee no walk in the park

By The Associated Press

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EUGENE, Ore. — The appeal of what was essentially a $50 parking ticket has so far cost Bend entrepreneur Patrick Kruse $300 and more than 200 hours of his time. And he's not done yet.

Kruse was cited for failing to pay a $5 recreation fee at a remote campground in the Mount Hood National Forest in April.

He claims he wasn't at the site but was kayaking on the nearby White River when a friend borrowed his Subaru wagon and parked it at the spot that requires a Northwest Forest Pass.

A federal magistrate found Kruse, 43, guilty and ordered him to pay $35. Kruse appealed to federal court in Eugene, arguing that prosecutors failed to prove he was in the fee area.

A district judge sent the case back to the magistrate, who again found him guilty.

Kruse is appealing a second time and said he's prepared to press his case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

It's an extraordinary but not unprecedented step in the recreation-fee rebellion.

The case reveals the level of indignation that some people have for federal fees on public lands. It also shows the lengths they'll go to challenge a program that Congress has extended repeatedly since creating what was supposed to be a two-year pilot project in 1996.

The fees are required at thousands of trailheads, boat ramps, rustic camp sites, interpretive centers and other day-use areas on public lands across the country, with at least 80 percent of the proceeds going back to those sites for upkeep.

In Oregon and Washington, the Northwest Forest Pass costs $5 a day or $30 a year and is required at more than 1,000 sites, though that number will drop to about 680 on May 1.
 
As the fees have become a fixture, federal officers have boosted enforcement. And with that, recreation-fee opponents have stepped up their resistance. Scores of Northwest residents have appeared before federal judges to proclaim their innocence, complain about how officers issued the citations or make other arguments.

It's unclear how many cases are winding up in federal courtrooms because the courts lack a clear tracking system. But the number of open Northwest cases on the federal Central Violations Bureau's list has swelled into the hundreds over the past couple of years.

And though some people ignore the tickets, many others are making their cases in court.

The burden-of-proof right was upheld in a 2001 ruling by a federal magistrate in Arizona who said the Forest Service couldn't issue a citation to an unattended vehicle.

But last year in Washington, a magistrate in Spokane disregarded the same argument in the case of Blair Kipple, a Poulsbo resident who works at the Navy shipyard in Bremerton.

Kipple's car was cited in the Wenatchee National Forest in 2002, and like Kruse, he's on his second appeal.

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