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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (March 5, 1998)
CONTACTING US NEWSROOM: ADDRESS: (541) 346-5511 Oregon Daily Emerald E-MAIL: P.O. BOX3159 ode@oregon uoregon.edu Eugene, Oregon 97403 ONLINE EDITION: www.uoregon edu/~ode a EDITOR IN CHIEF Sarah Kickler EDITORIAL EDITOR Mike Schmierbach NIGHT EDITOR Sarah Kickler CHRIS HUTCHINSON/Emerald / A proposed $3 per user fee for Terwilliger Hot Springs is part of a harmful trend in social service policy The Register-Guard, an edit about Tuesday afternoon lounging in the warmth of Terwilliger Hot Springs.” At a broader level, it’s also about the future of public lands. Therefore, let’s start with a brief discus sion about Social Security. A recent trend in Social Security plan ning has been to call for reduced benefits or increased taxes for those recipients who are in higher income brackets. On the sur face, it’s a proposal in line with the tradi tions of liberalism and the progressive in come tax. A number of scholars, including one of President Roosevelt’s economists, have suggested this plan may end up benefiting the very rich, however. Their theory is that, after the “comfortable” have been removed from the system, political support for So cial Security will go the way of backing for welfare — the system doesn’t help me, so why should I pay for it? This steady narrowing and then elimina tion of social services is one of two trends in public policy today. The other is applic able to proposals dealing with Terwilliger his is, in the immortal words of “the half-dozen naked people who spent an otherwise-gloomy AN EMERALD EDITORIAL Hot Springs, but the parallels between the two policy notions are alarming. Forest service officials who oversee the Willamette National Forest, where the springs bubble, are proposing to institute a $3-per-person day-use fee for the area. Such fees, which in various forms are be coming common in Oregon, are part of an other theory of public facility management. For those programs that can’t be nar. rowed out of existence or public hands, state and federal governments are striving to charge users for the services they con sume. Like shifting the burdens of Social Security, usage fees make sense on the sur face, until one evaluates their end result. As parks and other facilities become for profit, the rich who may still use them de cide they would rather pay private compa nies for the additional luxuries they provide. Meanwhile, the truly poor can no longer afford to use supposedly “public” lands. This leads to an eventual drop in service use and revenue, which in turn causes even higher fees (after all, those with politi cal power have long switched to private sources for their recreation) that simply worsen the situation. Eventually, the feder al government surrenders to the logic of the marketplace and corporate lobbyists and decides to privatize another chunk of the parks system. Think this is absurd? Look at prisons: At first, federal and state programs called for prisons to pay their own way by instituting forced labor policies; now, an increasing number of prisons across the nation are be coming privately owned and run. In the end, of course, taxpayer money continues to pour into the privately man aged facilities. Privatization of welfare and prisons doesn’t mean the government does n’t pay for the services; it just means the people running the services have an incen tive to cut costs while adding to the num ber of enrolled and the cost to taxpayers. Meanwhile, in the parks system, federal money continues to subsidize resource ex traction such as logging, grazing and min ing. It seems that, in public land manage ment as well as other social services, waste is OK as long as the extra money goes to corporations. Of course, the proposal to institute user fees isn’t troublesome only because it rep resents part of a larger trend toward pro corporate privatization. There is also a sim ple question of fairness: As previously mentioned, companies that permanently scar the environment pay less than their ac tions cost, while $3 a day is almost certain ly more than the price of an individual hot spring user’s impact on the area. Moreover, this proposal seems motivat ed in part by a certain opposition to the counterculture. For one thing, the hot springs are one of the rare free, clothing optional locations in the state. (A fact that led The Register-Guard to delight, as al ways, in the naked state of its interview subjects.) Additionally, many of the people who use the springs will be deterred by a usage fee, even one as small as $3. Finally, by im posing the fee on individuals rather than vehicles, the Forest Service would discour age car pooling and communal enjoyment of the area. The hot springs are not without their problems, but the degree of crime and envi ronmental impact seems greatly overstated. Perhaps this is a result of officials who view the alternative culture that admittedly frequents the area as little more than a bunch of “dirty, homeless hippies.” As a whole, we appreciate the need to maintain and monitor public areas like the hot springs, however. Nevertheless, a user fee as high and broad as the one proposed doesn’t seem to be the best option. Alterna tives could include imposing it only on ve hicles, making it voluntary or even looking for volunteers from local outdoors groups and hot spring frequenters who would be willing to help care for the area. Or perhaps we should just charge The Register-Guard reporters for the opportuni ty to gawk at bathers “wearing nothing but a tattoo." This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald editorial hoard. Responses may be sent to ode@oregon.uoregon.edu Thumbs rs To the release of CIA documents: Although the process is going slow ly and many things re main classified in bla tant violation of the federal freedom of in formation law and President Clinton's or der declassifying most information over 25 years old, a few re vealing documents have come out In par ticular, a report follow ing the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was released that indicated the CIA was largely to blame for the mission's fail ure. Moreover, it went on to suggest that all such destabilizing missions were ill ad vised. If only the CIA had reviewed its own records in the follow ing 35-plus years. Thumbs To continued violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention: Even though the Senate signed the CWC last year, U.S. industry continues to be in violation because Congress has not passed a law compelling pri vate companies to be in compliance. Until these com panies face man dates that force them to carefully document what they export and to open their records to inspection, the United States will be in a poor posi tion to demand for eign nations com ply with international treaties such as the convention.
