CA>OHV's why your trails may be disappearing

["steven" <trails@jps.net>]

Hi Folks: This may interest many of you that do not have the insight which
some of us have on the use and priorities given to trails, and trail use in
California.
If we do not actively work together to save our trails, they will be
bartered away with deals such as this.
Yes I know that so will say, I/we get along real good with the AUTHORITIES,
all must be aware of the power and ability for these same people to chip
away over the long haul. steven


Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 1999 10:51 PM
Subject: OHV's


>  SacramentoB  E  E    E  D  I  T  O  R  I  A  L :
>
> Off-road questions: Why is state giving feds money for off-road parks?
> Aug. 24, 1999)
>
>                        Off-road vehicle enthusiasts for years have
>                        enjoyed financially stable government programs
>                        that have maintained and expanded their access
>                        to public lands. Suddenly these programs find
>                        themselves mired in a strange,
>                        government-declared "emergency" that may
>                        prevent the annual infusion of millions in state
>                        funds supporting off-road activities on federal
>                        lands. Resolving this short-term crisis is as
>                        important as confronting some longer-term
>                        policy questions about the entire program.
>
>                        Thanks to a long-standing law that was pushed
>                        by the off-road industry, a small portion of the
>                        state's gasoline tax goes directly to the
>                        Department of Parks and Recreation's
>                        Off-Highway Vehicle Division. This percentage
>                        is supposed to match the fuel consumed in
>                        California by off-highway vehicles, including
>                        those properly registered and those -- estimates
>                        range as high as 50 percent -- that are not. This
>                        is a highly unusual diversion of gasoline taxes,
>                        which traditionally have flowed to the
>                        Transportation Department to build and maintain
>                        state roads.
>
>                        Equally unusual is how the state gives some of
>                        this fuel tax to the federal government. The
>                        parks department operates eight state vehicle
>                        recreational areas. Yet with about $45 million in
>                        total revenues annually, it simply has more
>                        money than it alone can spend. A parks
>                        commission annually distributes anywhere from
>                        $12 million to $16 million as grants to nonstate
>                        programs, mostly on federal land managed by
>                        the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land
>                        Management or Bureau of Reclamation.
>
>                        Back in 1992, some off-road critics wondered
>                        how the state could be giving away all this
>                        money without regulations defining the
>                        appropriate uses of the funds. They wrote a
>                        letter asking this very question to the state
Office of
>                        Administrative Law, the arbiter of regulatory
>                        issues.
>
>                        A mere seven years later, OAL responded. OAL
>                        agreed, saying last October that regulations
>                        were, indeed, necessary. Then this June, OAL
>                        told the parks department that unless it
>                        submitted "emergency" regulations, it couldn't
>                        disburse any grants this fiscal year. The
>                        department has quickly scrambled together
>                        some proposed emergency wording. OAL must
>                        decide by this week whether this subsidy,
>                        indeed, constitutes an emergency under
>                        Sacramento's regulatory definition of the noun.
>
>                        What a mess.
>
>                        Once this short-term crisis is settled, the Davis
>                        administration should confront some policy
>                        questions that the previous regime ducked for
>                        years:
>
>                        Is it appropriate to divert gasoline taxes from
>                        basic government services to a recreational
>                        program? Should the state underwrite these
>                        federal off-road programs and federal land
>                        acquisitions? Or do these subsidies make
>                        sense compared to alternatives that may end up
>                        doing more harm to public lands than good?
>
>                        Off-roading is an established part of the
>                        California cultural landscape. The question is:
>                        Who should pay to manage the popular activity,
>                        and how.

> "Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation.
> He has sought to insulate himself in his cities of steel and concrete...."
> Rachel Carson
>


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