Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the: (1) laws and policies governing recreation concession operations on federal lands; (2) total number and types of concession agreements; (3) total return to the government from concession operations; and (4) federal recreation resources management practices of the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, Forest Service, and Army Corps of Engineers.
GAO found that: (1) no single law authorizing concession operations existed; (2) none of the agencies maintained a complete database identifying the number and types of concession agreements; (3) the agencies could not determine total compensation to the federal government for the use of federal recreational resources, due to incomplete financial data and unreported nonfee considerations; (4) the agencies identified 11 different laws governing concession agreements and operations, many of which were agency-specific and allowed for broad discretion in establishing policies; (5) complete financial data were available for only 60 percent of over 9,000 concession agreements reported by the agencies; (6) some agencies permitted field offices to accept such nonfee compensation as capital improvements from concessioners, but the offices generally did not report such agreements to headquarters; (7) from those concessioners who reported complete financial data in 1989, the federal government received about $35 million in concession fees, with gross concession revenues of about $1.4 million, representing an average return to the government of about 2 percent; and (8) various fee approaches by the six agencies resulted in concessioners paying different fees to operate similar activities.
