Forest Service must be transparent

Public land management is part of everyday life in Teton County. With 97% of acreage managed by five state and federal agencies, our journalistic duty as the free press is to hold those public officials accountable. So a recent policy reversal by regional U.S. Forest Service officials should make everyone pause.

The three ski resorts in Teton County operate partially or fully on public land managed by the Forest Service. Yet in a break from past practice, the Forest Service is refusing to disclose how much those resorts are paying to use the public resource. Imagine a landlord not being told what a tenant is paying for use of his or her property.

For fiscal year 2017, the last time the News&Guide reported on the permit fees paid by resorts, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort paid the Forest Service $1.5 million, while Grand Targhee and Snow King paid about $200,000 and $1,786, respectively. The agency disclosed only gross revenues and fees paid, not the various components of the revenue formula by which fees are calculated. Now the agency is saying it won’t even release the total figures, after Vail Resorts complained that competitors could figure out how much profit it is making.

For every acre of public land that’s leased for commercial use, there must be transparency regarding the financial return to the agency’s coffers — especially if public access is limited or the public must pay additional funds to access public land. There also should be transparency in how the revenues collected benefit the agency’s mission.

Such transparency is common for other commercial uses of public land, including leases with the National Park Service and even the U.S. Forest Service. The public can learn, for instance, how much each logging company is paying for each tree cut in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, nearly five times the size of the Bridger-Teton. Earlier this year, the Bridger-Teton posted a prospectus outlining fees by tree species for proposed timber sales.

The Park Service does an exemplary job of competitively awarding concessionaire agreements and routinely publishes revenues. Grand Teton Lodge Co., a subsidiary of Vail Resorts, took in nearly $65 million in gross revenue last year, for instance.

Imagine if the Wyoming Office of State Lands had confidential leases where the public couldn’t know whether there was $2,800 or $100 million in Kelly parcel revenue at stake for the school children of Wyoming? Imagine if the largest operating agreements the Park Service has with corporations such as Xanterra and Vail were done in the dark of night with private financials?

So why does the ski resort industry deserve special treatment? Most ski resorts can’t operate without leased forest land, and resort impacts on public access and forest budgets are significant.

The Forest Service’s refusal to disclose fees paid by resorts is embarrassing and an affront to good governance of public land. The agency should return to historic norms of providing total figures for each resort, without disclosing specific revenue generators. Our ski resort operators provide a great impact to Teton County’s economy and great enjoyment to skiers and snowboarders. But in the era of $10,000 season locker rentals and $270-a-day lift tickets, there are tens of millions of dollars at stake. At a time when federal public lands funding is under heavy scrutiny, transparency is vital.