Hastings seeks fairness in USFS lease fees for cabins

YAKIMA, Wash. -- Rep. Doc Hastings will intro-duce legislation next week to bring what he calls certainty and fairness to owners of cabins on U.S. Forest Service land, where fees to lease the land have been skyrocketing with reappraisals at market values.

"No one is arguing there shouldn't be some payment, but it has to be done in a fair way," the Pasco Republican told a Yakima news conference Friday that drew about 30 cabin owners from Central Washington, including Rimrock Lake and Chinook Pass.

Hastings said cabin owners have been put at risk because of what he termed subjective appraisals by the Forest Service under the Cabin Fee Fairness Act of 2000.

The law requires that the appraisals compare the forest land to private property without consideration for the limits and restrictions on the use of the cabins, Hastings said. As a result, fees under the law have jumped by more than 500 percent a year.

The Forest Service leases land under the cabins for a yearly fee of 5 percent of fair market value, on renewable, transferable 20-year contracts. The agency regulates paint color and size and owners must let the public onto the land for camping and hiking.

The practice dates to 1915 when the Forest Service, using a lottery system, invited private cabins into remote areas, partic-ularly in the West. In Washington and Oregon, there are about 2,800 cabins. In Yakima County, there are an estimated 253 cabin owners.

But over the years, environ-mental and free-market critics have called the leases sweetheart deals leftover from a bygone era, which led to a new round of appraisals that began last fall.

Cabins around Lake Wenatchee have seen annual lease fees spike from $1,400 to more than $17,000. Some cabin owners are walking away from their property or tearing down their cabins, according to recent news accounts.

Ralph Berthon of Yakima said the fee on land at a Bumping Lake cabin that's been in his family for 49 years recently jumped from $350 to $2,000.

Berthon asked Hastings to keep an eye on the Forest Service.

"Most of the time we still feel we've been railroaded down this process," he said.

Hastings, ranking Republican on the House Natural Resources Commit-tee, said his legislation has
bipartisan support but he
couldn't predict when it
might be taken up by Con-gress. He said many details have yet to be worked out.

Hastings said the proposed legislation stems from his belief that Forest Service lands -- with the exception of wilderness -- should be available for multipurpose uses.

The bill would establish a tiered yearly fee structure based on current appraisals and tied to increases in inflation. The five tiers would range from $500 to $4,000. Hastings said most cabins would fall into the third tier, which would be a $2,000 annual fee.

The dollar amounts were chosen so that the effect of the legislation on Forest Service revenues would be neutral, he said.

A new transfer fee would be assessed when cabins are sold or ownership is transferred within a family. A flat transfer fee of $1,000 would be applied to all cabin sales with an additional 5 percent on sales between $250,000 and $500,000 and 10 percent on sales over $500,000.

National Forest Home-owners, a group of cabin owners from across the country, said Hastings' legislation will "preserve a program that for nearly a century has provided outdoors recreation for thousands of American families."

Forest Service officials were not immediately available to comment Friday. But Jim Sauser, a Forest Service official who oversees the cabin program in the Northwest, told the Seattle Times in September that the appraisals are time-consuming and result in fees that are either too high or too low.

"It's an old real estate principle -- location, location, location," Sauser said. "Ultimately some can't afford it. Everyone wants to go back in time when things were kinder and gentler and cheaper. I'd like to go back and buy a $3,900 brand-new car again."

* Leah Beth Ward can be reached at 509-577-7626 or lward@yakimaherald.com.