Sacramento,
CA -- A scheme crafted by an
environmental activist and the California Parks Foundation to terminate a
40-year partnership with the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management was
signed into law by Governor Brown on June 27, 2012. The "Sustainable Parks
Initiative" has as its core tenet a politically motivated directive that
functionally eliminates the user-pay/user-benefit grant funding from the California State Park's Off-Highway Motor Vehicle
Recreation Division (OHMVRD) to local and federal agencies that manage OHV
recreation.
The state OHV program is 100 percent funded with user generated fees that come
from OHV fuel taxes, registration and unit entry fees. The program was created
by the legislature in 1971 and used pre-program off-road fuel tax refunds to
support management of OHV recreation on local, state, and federal lands. The
local assistance grants program was a critically important element to local and
federal agencies since most OHV-related fuel tax and recreation occurs on
federal lands.
Historically, the grants program has provided funding for OHV-related trail
maintenance, engineered trail construction, facilities, recreation staff,
habitat restoration, law enforcement, search and rescue, public education and
safety training. Many of the OHV recreation sites are in economically depressed
rural areas that depend on the tourism generated by program support. Some
county units are near large population centers such as Santa
Clara County's Metcalf Cycle
Park near San Jose.
Don Amador, Western Representative for the BlueRibbon Coalition, said,
"Contrary to statements made by the plan's champions in the legislature,
neither Senator Joe Simitian, nor Assemblyman Jared Huffman, nor the Foundation
ever came to the OHV community to find solutions to the important budget issues
that could have been addressed without targeting the grants program for
elimination. There was a concerted effort to mislead other legislators, media
and the public that the cuts would not have any impact to OHV and would not
result in any closures or reduced opportunity."
He continued, "It is extremely disappointing to me that the Foundation has
chosen to align itself with an extreme element of the environmental movement in
an effort to drive a wedge between the OHV community and the rest of California
State Parks. Dismantling the OHV Program has been the life-long goal of a few
green activists and the Foundation appears to have helped them succeed. Since
important federal resource protection projects will now have to be shelved, it
proves that advocates of the plan don't care about the environment, but are
simply interested in pushing their far-left political agenda."
Amador concluded, "Sadly, rather than address the real issue here to
devise and apply a legitimate long-term solution, they have exacerbated the
problem by gutting a working, self-sustaining model program."
OHMVR Commission Letter to Governor Brown
http://www.sharetrails.org/uploads/Eric-OHMVR-Commision-Budget-Letter-6-27-12.pdf
