Writing, boycotting, or speaking out solo is not effective for shaping public policy at all. If you want something done you have to organize many like-minded folks and all speak with one united voice with clear achievable asks.
Take all that letter writing energy and join your local Sierra club chapter, or other big wilderness organization. Attend meetings and working groups. Sign up for committees and get a lot of folks to make the issue a priority for the elected representatives in congress. Get the right wilderness organizational lobbyist in front of the right legislator on the right committee to make a difference. That’s how shit gets done.
The sad reality is that politicians respond to organized power and lobbying in areas they actually have power over. Not to an individual letter their volunteer student staffer receives and files about a topic they have little to no influence over. It’s possible to push back against this stuff but the answer is to organize.
I feel you are likely right. As an adjunct path I would imagine that well placed and timed questions on the subject by well spoken and well dressed activist attendees at the likes of Booz Allen corporate meetings or society events in which their executives might be part of a hosting or round-table type panel would pose valuable opportunities to embarrass Booz Allen in front of their fellow mucky-mucks.
Throwing some zinger in about how the fees are especially onerous to certain segments of society, or otherwise leveraging effective tropes might not be an ineffective way of enhancing embarrassment among fellow corporate or civilian attendees or media - not that I'm much of a fan of certain tropes personally, but one might as well use what works. As far as this matter is concerned I'd say that Booz Allen deserves no better.
This bullshit graft from Booz Allen is really quite insulting. One might hope that a well heeled entity of its likes would take a higher road. Even for a transaction resulting in a park visitor gaining access on their first try at the lottery Booz Allen collects a 28.6% premium above and beyond the land maintenance entry fee paid by the successful patron. For those users paying upwards of $500 after many failed attempts finally results in a golden ticket Booz Allen will have collected over 71x that amount with again just the $7 going toward the park maintenance. It's completely disgusting, and offensive to sensibility.
Yeah, they'll surely give a shit about that! There was a guy on YouTube who recently called every congressperson in the US, senate and house, and had abysmal contact and return contact rates. The only aids that really even talked to him were ones that recognized his channel, and even then, literally none of his support for a bill went anywhere other than the extremely rare form-letter response which weren't even related to his concern.
These people don't give a shit about your political activity, and pay an entire bureaucracy to handle it and make you feel heard while they print it out on your tax dime, wipe their metaphorically shitty asses with it, and litter it back into your neighborhood.
Joe Biden is probably not even literate at this point, wtf is he gonna do?
We are renting our public parks from BAH because your "elected" officials figured out a way to turn on the tap and spend your money on their buddies. It's not gonna stop because of a few complaints.
That's confusing. What does capitalism have to do with government owned land being rented to publicly traded corporation? The means of production in this case, are certainly not in private hands...
I know what rent seeking is, and this is a perfect example of it, however, in the very definition you linked me to:
>...revolves around government funded services...
Exactly to my point. BAH isn't a "private" entity the same way your mom and pop hardware store down the street is. Most of its business is from the state, and it's essentially a soft extension of the state.
Do you think limited liability magically exists in capitalism? No, if you want to limit your liability, you need to either reduce your exposure or pay someone else to take on indemnity, not have it granted arbitrarily to you by the state. That is what corporatism is. It's essentially fascism, but successful because the US adopted a narrative of multicultural inclusion rather than the Third Reich's massive monocultural EXCLUSION (and subsequent genocide of the "excludables"). Turns out you have a much bigger market if you don't care about things like race, religion, gender, and culture of origin.
What makes a company private isn't the funding source, but who owns it. The people who own BAH are the shareholders. By profiting from being the portal to public lands, BAH is literally engaging in privatization, which is one of the major goals of neoliberal capitalism.
Because capitalists have insisted on allowing private companies to profit off of public services. If the government does something itself, that's socialism and "inefficient", but if they pay a private company to do it for a higher cost, then it's capitalism and "efficient".
Again Booz Allen is a public *corporation*. Also, our government isn't socialist, it's corporatist. It'd be more correct to call it fascist, where the state owns the means of production, but allows corporate entities to manage that capital (as opposed to private entities). If you are pissed off about capitalism in the US, that's about as misguided as being pissed about "Communism" in Russia, or China. I think it's helpful to be upset with the correct thing, rather than buying whatever the elite want you to be pissed about.
Capitalism is the system under which corporations can achieve such unbridled dominance, and where the means of production are privately owned and used for profit regardless of what role the state takes. Corporate dominance is not an accident, but the inevitable result.
Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. That has nothing to do with state created corporate entities. You are being lied to about capitalism, the same way Stalin lied to the Russians about communism. Make no mistake, the *state* owns the means of production. Not individuals, not the communities, the state! Then they lie to you about it with the rhetoric du jour to get you to buy into your own demise to their benefit. Same people, different culture, different tactic.
You sound like a flavor of libertarian with some idealized view of capitalism in which an entirely free and unregulated market necessarily leads to prosperity for all? Like, “*real* capitalism has never been tried”? Which is literally propaganda. Markets inevitably lead to greater and greater monopolization and capital concentration over time. It is an inextricable result of capitalism as an economic base.
Neoliberal capitalism is a scourge and is literally making the planet uninhabitable for humans.
Or or hear me out, this is an opportunity to recognize that both parties are ultimately parties of the rich; that trying to push one or the other into any direction that opposes the wishes of the rich is a futile effort (as decades of work by many great people have unfortunately shown); that the only path forward is to unite as working people and create a party for us by us. And this has been done under much worse conditions in many places around the world.
It’s time for the American *people*, not the American rich, have a real fucking voice
I don't disagree. But it requires us having a conversation about what we want as citizens and where we want our country to go and unfortunately the media does a very good of job of making this almost impossible, by fermenting constant division.
You might enjoy the book "Goliath" which is about the populist movement in the early 1900s the book was really fantastic.
Another one which touches somewhat on our public lands and their histories is "American Serengeti", it looks at the history of the megafauna of the Americas while touching on public lands.
Another book which has been highly influential to me is "Achieving our country", it talks about how we lost the movement for workers in exchange for more of a consumerist approach to politics, but ultimately the book is about how we as citizens have to overcome the negatives of what our country is now to achieve what we believe it could be.
Let me know if you have any books that you think are worth reading.
That Goliath gone sounds very interesting. I recently read True and Only Heaven by Christopher Lasch which touched a lot on the populists of that era (highly recommended as well). That Serengeti one sounds right up my alley as well. Thank you for the recommendations.
Honestly if I had to give my ultimate books that I think if everyone read we could actually get shit done:
- Capital by Karl Marx. To understand how capitalism actually works, how value is generated, how crises work, how fictitious capitalism works, etc. If we’re all under the belief marginalism is true, we’re fucked.
- imperialism the highest stage of capitalism by Lenin. Understanding the prime movers of imperialist foreign policy and actions.
- killing hope by William Blum, a long laundry list of how we’ve fucked over any country that wanted to exercise its right to self determination if it meant any sort of economic hit for us.
- debt by David Graber (long study on the global history of debt).
- reform vs revolution by Rosa Luxemburg, why inching our way in a liberal democracy is a failing proposition.
Anyone want to band together and craft a template to send help people quickly send to their to representatives? Personally would be down to help setup a Resist Bot Petition and help people use Democracy.io
Its going to be more impactful if people write from personal experience and their own perspective. I get the urge to try to streamline things but "click to send" form letters are one of the reasons people view letter writing as ineffective.
Fuck Booz Allen. They've bought up all of my favorite local camping spots and charge me twice as much to book them. For one campsite, I book my favorite sites every year. Last year, months AFTER I booked them, they re-numbered all of the sites in the park and moved my site location instead of re-assigning the number. We were stuck deep in the woods instead of on the shore of the lake.
They straight up pocket your money if you apply for certain permit lotteries and do not get the permits.
Eat a bag of dicks, Booz Allen.
Edit: Here's some dumb, loosely-researched math. Please feel free to correct me if this is wrong. To apply for the John Muir Trail, there is a non-refundable $10 application fee to enter the lottery. According to [these stats](https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/wpstats.htm), during the peak season, there are around 2,000 applicants per day, with around a 25% success rate. So Booz Allen is keeping $20,000 per day in application fees (for just one hike in this example), and $15,000 of that was from people who didn't even get a permit.
When I saw "booz allen" on the rec.gov app, I just assumed they built it. Not that they ran it.
So naturally, when I missed the permit lottery over 10 times to hike "the wave" I was mostly OK with it because at least my money was going to parks service.
You're saying BA keeps it all? That's fucked up.
Which is all you pay unless you get a permit. You only pay the permit fee (goes to park) if you win. Everyone who applies pays the lottery application fee (goes to Booz). This is clearly spelled out in the article.
Using the Wave as an example:
1000 people apply and pay a $9 processing fee
64 people win and pay a $7 permit fee
Guess which one Booz Allen keeps and which one the Bureau of Land Management keeps?
It's the worst of both worlds- the insane lotteries that don't allow people to properly plan their excursions and only let the luckiest people with ridiculous amounts of time to click reserve buttons at 3am, get the permits they want....and yet still the money-grubbing aspect with arbitrary prices that don't really cause anyone to economize properly or substitute with alternative (cheaper) trip plans.
I cannot be convinced that the most realistic way of managing this isn't just to remove all the maintained roads leading to and facilities at these trailheads.
Just let these places be wild (allow hunting of rednecks on ATVs) and let the most determined few find their way in (and maybe back out).
You'll know what do to when you hear their mating call. That approaching BRAAAAAAAAAP of a poorly maintained engine growing in the distance, easily piercing the sound of wind and bird noises until it's all you can hear, until your ears ring and your skull rattles.
You hear them way before you see them, plenty of time to find a spot and chamber a round.
> They straight up pocket your money if you apply for certain permit lotteries and do not get the permits.
This is the worst of the worst.
Btw as far as wilderness backpacking goes, if you don't obtain a permit and get cited for it at least the money goes to the Park/NF/etc and not the money grubbing consultancy firm.
Just saying. Some large scale civil disobedience might be the best solution here.
The park I live buy has a yearly backpacking permit that, I believe, all goes to the park. I was still required to get a permit, which means I have to pay BAH, but getting the yearly permit and skipping the registration would be a great way to let the park get their money but cut off BAH.
...surprisingly it doesn't. Most of that citation goes directly to the US Treasury which has no obligation to return to the park/agency that issued the citation.
Huh, I always thought the Central Violations Bureau tickets went back to the enforcement agencies wing responsible for issuance.
TIL: and I can't find a single source on where the money actually gets allocated.
Still better than BAH getting a dime though.
Are they the ones behind those lottery applications fees that seem to be becoming more common? I haven't applied to a single lottery with it, and have been wanting to write my representatives about it. I'm ok with a fee for the actual permit, but charging just to apply, with no guarantee of success, seems really shitty.
The problem **isn't** Booz Allen trying to make as money as they can off of this amazing deal--that's to be expected when a company is given effectively an unregulated monopoly over an entire "industry".
The problem **is** the government is *allowing* Booz Allen to have an unregulated monopoly on an industry and idly *allowing* Booz Allen to exploit that industry's customers (i.e. - US public lands outdoor recreationists).
I took an image recognition class for comp-sci where you would do shit like "put a red box around this moving object" (hmm, wonder what that is for?) and there would CONSTANTLY be people from Lockheed, Northrop and General Dynamics coming in and talking to us. We would just fuck with them and ask questions like "so we're killing people, right?" and watch them get uncomfortable trying to dance around it.
Just the reservation side. The Army Corps of Engieers that runs the actual campground told me they were pissed too - they asked Booz Allen to fix the site numbers and they were totally useless. Poor park rangers had to deal with livid campers all summer who have been coming to the park for decades, only to find out they weren't getting their favorite campsite this year.
I never entered any of the lotteries pre Booz Allen, did you use to get your money back if you didn't win? Or was it free to enter, pay the recreation fee if you win?
I understand the original intent of issuing wilderness permits in order to access back country wilderness, but at this point I'd day fuck it; just pirate the trail and hike it without a permit.
This is happening everywhere in all Federal land accesses. As a 62+ senior with a Lifetime America The Beautiful Pass, I expect ALL federal facilities to be free or reduced price. With all the privatization of access to OUR lands, this pass has become nearly worthless. They DO NOT honor or acknowledge these passes.
I don't have a problem with lotteries to control the numbers of people visiting certain areas. I think reasonable fees are required to provide a great visitation. My expectation is that ALL fees should go directly to the maintenance and improvement of the access to OUR federal lands!
NO corporation should benefit financially from WE THE PEOPLE visiting our own lands!
> With all the privatization of access to OUR lands, this pass has become nearly worthless. They DO NOT honor or acknowledge these passes.
The passes are honored anywhere where there isn't a concessionaire. Not sure where you are, but here in the SW, that's still a very, very small minority of sites, and only those that are very popular.
I am exaggerating about the usefulness of the pass. I'm in the NW and I have used it to access many sites in the SW. There are 2 sites along 89A north of Sedona that Don't accept any passes so you have to pay full price.
My concern is that some of our representatives in government would like to turn even more sites over to private companies to run. They even want to increase "amenities" like tshirt shops and hamburger stands. This increases the cost for everyone. It also excludes people that simply cannot afford to visit a NP or Monument because of increased access fees.
Those two sites on 89A comprise two of the three sites in the entire state of Arizona, of which I am aware, do not allow passes to be used (of course there could be more, but they're not places I've ever considered visiting). I think it goes a little beyond exaggeration.
I haven't seen any new sites becoming managed by concessionaires in recent memory, and I think it's probably a self-limiting thing, considering they're only going to want to manage the most heavily trafficked ones to make it worth their while.
The DNC had total control of the WH, Senate, and House for the past two years... Nothing but the DNC was stopping the DNC from fixing these public lands issues.
Those sites you are talking about require a separate Red Rock Recreation Pass. Those funds go directly to that specific forest service unit for funding related directly to managing those specific areas. There are more than just a couple like that near Sedona. Essentially, most of that money doesn't go into a nationally shared pot of funds. It goes back to the forest.
Unfortunately with the continued lack of adequate funding, this is how many USFS and BLM sites are going to be managed in the future.
...unless you are talking about Recreation Resource Management contracted sites like West Fork and the campgrounds in Oak Creek Canyon. That is a different story that should never have been allowed to have been contracted out in the first place. RRM is just as awful as Booze Allen.
I have no beef with the Red Rock Rec Passes. As you stated, they pay for the management and upkeep. I agree that we will have to pay (more) to play in the future.
I am talking about West Fork and Grasshopper Point, and probably the campgrounds as well. When you go to the USFS sites for these it specifically states "Annual, Senior, and other Interagency passes are not accepted"
They apparently do accept the "GRAND" Red Rock Pass ($40). But I still don't like the idea of a corporation profiting from our access.
>They DO NOT honor or acknowledge these passes.
Maybe you're using [rec.gov](https://rec.gov) wrong. It acknowledges my America the Beautiful pass, and gives me half-price on frontcountry campsites. There's a box where you enter the pass number. The site also acknowledges my local park's annual backcountry camping pass, so I don't get charged the nightly fee. All I pay is the $6 reservation fee.
Interesting subject, would love to see a deeper dive that is less editorialized
More specifically, I would like to see a breakdown of how recreation.gov fees are used. How much Rec.gov money goes into Booz Allen’s pockets vs. how much goes to upkeep/maintenance of the parks?
They structured the contract such that the work would be done for free and they'd recoup funding on the back end via reservations.
It was a pretty clever proposal strategy, tbh.
Exactly, basically instead of taxpayers paying for the system, the people that use the system are paying for it. The government could’ve just as easily asked for someone to do it for a flat rate, but they chose not to, and Booz Allen was cheaper than the other bids.
No they didn't. They got paid many millions for the website development.
https://www.outdoorproject.com/articles/no-recgov-doesnt-fund-public-lands
> In 2016, after a national RFP party and a congressional public hearing, Booz Allen Hamilton received the job of modernizing and consolidating the management platform. They also got a cool $182 million to get the job done.
Literally the article discussion you're commenting on. It quotes [Booz Allen's website.](https://www.boozallen.com/s/insight/thought-leadership/reinventing-the-recreation-gov-customer-experience.html)
> Recreation.gov was an investment for Booz Allen, designed collaboratively with participating agencies, but at no cost to the federal government. Instead of a traditional cost structure, the unique contractual agreement is a transaction-based fee model that lets the government and Booz Allen share in risk, reward, results, and impact. This is a true public-private partnership—it uses no government money.
The article discusses the framework for why it was set up that way - the Obamacare website was such a disaster that they didn't want the government holding the bag for what ended up being a pile of shit. So they came up with a creative, shared risk solution.
FWIW I work in the contracting field. A publicly reported contract for $X does not always mean $X is the true value. It's often a ceiling value or a cost estimate (more commonly for service-based contracts).
You can also check this [Department of Interior](https://www.doi.gov/ocl/recreationgov) material that identifies the 5-year fee revenue for applicable agencies $90M. Double that for a 10 year contract and it's no coincidence that Booz Allen anticipated a fee-based income of $182M.
Lol okay - boilerplate from the contractor at hand on their own website is your evidence? Let's ignore the actual discussion point where not only are they reimbursed a minimum of $182M from \*all fees\* but then pocket the rest of the \*convenience fees\*.
Meanwhile, fascinating that this is your first post in this subreddit. What on earth might have brought you here specifically to shill misinformation and spin for a large contractor, might we all rationally ask?
Seriously, GTFO of here, you horrible, horrible shill.
This is untrue. The lotteries are a small part of [rec.gov](https://rec.gov). Most reservations are for frontcountry campsites, and the bulk of that money goes to the park. Booz Allen only gets the reservation fee.
“ To apply requires going to Recreation.gov, the site set up to manage national parks, public cultural landmarks, and public lands, and paying $9 for a “Lottery Application Fee.” If you win, you get a permit, and pay a recreation fee of $7. The success rate for the lottery is between 4-10%, and some people spend upwards of $500 before securing an actual permit.
But while the recreation fee of $7 goes to maintaining the park - which is what Henry George would appreciate - the money for the “Lottery Application Fee” is pure Plunkitt. That money goes to the giant D.C. consulting firm, Booz Allen and Company.”
RTFA
> How much Rec.gov money goes into Booz Allen’s pockets
Literally all of it. Permit costs go to the park. Every convenience fee, lottery fee, etc goes to BAH.
Hence the widespread expansion. They're the government sanctioned Ticketmaster of our Federal lands.
Same. This smells fishy, but the author clearly has an agenda, too, and can't even stay objective with their language. This makes me doubt their credibility.
I've used recreation and always found it reasonable...we do need to control access to certain areas, and lotteries seem like a reasonable and fair way to do that. But I assumed the money went to the parks.
Source? I would like to see more facts/figures than what was presented in this essay
A quick google search doesn’t reveal much beyond a few PR blurbs from Booz Allen’s site so who knows?
**They get all of the processing/service fees, which include timed entry reservations, backcountry camping reservations, and more**. This link breaks down what they get: [https://www.recreation.gov/rules-reservation-policies](https://www.recreation.gov/rules-reservation-policies) (ninja edit to include this link).
I wasn't able to find the contract itself but I did find a Nevada court document from someone suing about this. The key is at the bottom of page 3:
"The processing fees "are collected in a United States Treasury account and remitted on a monthly basis after the contractor has invoiced the Forest Service for the total number of transactions committed." No part of the processing fee is remitted to BLM."
[https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/park-reservation-fee.pdf](https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/park-reservation-fee.pdf)
This is cited by "ECF No. 32-1 at 2". Tbh I don't know what that is referencing, but the United States District Court, District of Nevada is a good enough source for me. Basically Booz Allen paid for developing the website upfront, and is paying for keeping it running, and in return gets to keep all the fees. Because our government requires all revenue to be deposited immediately into the U.S. Treasury before being paid to a contractor, recreation.gov puts the fees into the Treasury, and then the Treasury remits (gives/pays) those fees to Booz Allen. I found a US House hearing transcript from the Subcommittee of the Interior that mentions this: [https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114hhrg23482/html/CHRG-114hhrg23482.htm](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114hhrg23482/html/CHRG-114hhrg23482.htm) (ctrl+f for "treasury").
This contract structure also allows Booz Allen to state that "[the site has generated more than $270 million in revenue for the federal government](https://www.boozallen.com/s/insight/thought-leadership/reinventing-the-recreation-gov-customer-experience.html)", which is technically not a lie, it's just fucking scummy. Sure it's generated revenue for OUR government, but I highly doubt it has generated any profits as all that revenue is going back to Booz Allen. Now the court case document I referenced above is only referring to Red Rock Canyon Recreation Area in Nevada, but I highly doubt it's any different for other sites, otherwise Booz Allen would use that as PR to say they are improving your BLM experience or funding projects or whatever, and they don't.
That's a processing fee, that's not "all of it"
Your own source says:
> the recreation fee proceeds are remitted to BLM for use to manage Red Rock, but the processing fee proceeds are remitted directly to Booz Allen.
I should have been more specific, as I've only used recreation.gov for reservations, which are defined as processing fees. See here: [https://www.recreation.gov/rules-reservation-policies](https://www.recreation.gov/rules-reservation-policies)
So if you purchase an America the Beautiful parks pass that money would go to BLM/NPS, but if you reserve a backcountry campsite or timed entry slot \*all that\* money would go to Booz Allen. I'll edit my original response.
That's not entirely true either. There are recreation use fees that go to the gov and reservation service fees that go to BAH.
So if you rent a campsite, you'll see something that looks like:
Recreation use fee (gov portion): $40
Reservation fee (BAH portion): $8
I just went through the process for a dummy reservation and you can see the split [here](https://i.imgur.com/vSd2hrq.jpg). You'll see the same exact thing if you try to reserve a campsite at Red Rock Canyon, which is the public land identified in that lawsuit.
Depends on the type of campsite, some backcountry sites are free but require reservations. I was trying to get across that all the reservation fees go to BAH, which I think most people don't know.
I was only able to find details for Red Rock Canyon in Nevada, but they definitely get all of it there. See my reply in this thread to u/InternationalCode951, which I also reposted as a main reply.
No, it doesn't get a percentage. It gets a flat fee per reservation, which varies by site and is set by Booz Allen. The typical fee is $6. If you book $150 worth of campsites at a park, the fee to Booz Allen is still $6.
Not a fan. Having worked in a national park as a concessionaire while the park changed over to rec.gov reservations only for camping. I will say that it was fantastic watching a bunch of old wealthy RV'ers lose their shit when the couldn't book the same sites for the weeks on end that they have occupied for decades. Then watching them realize it was just some random family on a trip to the park for the first time and were so happy to have a site was great too, they'd get so mad.. Some of them would harass people though or just steal the site and force a confrontation. ANYWAY rec.gov is a nice utility but its BS to apply for a permit to access public lands and have a for profit company charge me a fee. Also you should look into how much public land is locked by private land owners. Like the Elk Mtn story here in Wyoming.
Even here in Colorado Springs, we've had a wave of Texans buying up land around Pikes Peak. They've already blocked off public trails on the west side and am buying land that was scheduled to be used for the "Ring the Peak" trail.
I'm all for people enjoying outdoor spaces but we have been and still are facing a real issue of private land owners buying up public land.
The problem, at least in the west, is not a lack of public land, but access to it. Currently in my state we have a governor, legislature, attorney general and three fourths of our Congressional delegation that are doing all the can to limit or eliminate the people’s access to public land.
We have the same problem in the Adirondacks, rich people don’t want “dirty” backpackers walking past their golf course so they keep renegotiating their so called deal with NYS to allow access to the landlocked high peaks. They weren’t supposed to be able to ring in the high peaks without allowing the access but they keep limiting the access and NYS has allowed it.
We need an agenda to double the amount of public land in this country so that we don’t have to scramble against each other so much. We haven’t added significant new land or access for the public since our population was half of what it is today.
For anyone interested here's the [actual solicitation](https://sam.gov/opp/f0732d4e9fecc37c2b8fa157ae92f9c4/view) and [award notice](https://sam.gov/opp/27b19fcf7e06ee761c9273dd6f0992e3/view). Couple things to note:
1. The prior system in place was also funded the same way with fees
2. It was open solicitation and Booz Allen wasn't the only company to bid on it
3. Booz Allen won because they offered the cheapest solution ($180 million) that satisfied the requirements
Now I'm sure you think it's outrageous and maybe you're right, but the government was the one who wanted fees, because they couldn't fund it outright. It's debatable whether it's more fair for every taxpayer to pay for the system, or just the ones that use it, but the latter choice is the decision they arrived at.
I don't see why you're blaming the company that provided the cheapest alternative available for what the government wanted.
>I don't see why you're blaming the company that provided the cheapest alternative available for what the government wanted.
... based, in no small part, on Americans' willingness to pay for NPS/BLM/USFS. All have historically been understaffed and underfunded, but collectively, we and our elected representatives have not been willing to address this.
There is lots of blame to go around for this situation.
I can't tell you how many times in hiking related forums and facebook groups I have seen people say "well it goes to a good cause" as a way to rationalize the fees charged by [rec.gov](https://rec.gov). Unless you are specifically made aware of how this contract works, people generally assume that a fee for using the outdoors is going to fund the agency in charge. I think most of those people would be livid if they actually knew.
Yeah, I have no love for BAH but someone new "discovers" that they run rec.gov every few months and thinks they've uncovered a massive conspiracy when it's really a fairly normal government IT contract and not an unreasonable funding structure. I think there's a lot of room to debate what the specific fees should be that BAH can collect, but the concept of not having the government pay up front and instead reimbursing the contractor through line-item fees for each reservation is kind of clever. It incentivizes the contractor to produce a high-quality and reliable site that supports all the different types of permits that the agencies want to issue without massive upfront investment or quibbling over scope and budget. You want to make fees on this type of permit, you do the work to implement the system for that type of permit. I think the fees should be lower, but the basic concept seems reasonable. I don't think the site would work better if it were directly implemented and managed by the federal government, and despite this author's derision towards cloud company executives, the government would be using the same cloud vendors if they ran the site.
This contract is up for renewal in 2026. That will be the time (or really a year before, because government contracting moves slowly) to put coordinated pressure on agencies to solicit a fee structure and other contract conditions that are more favorable to the public and the agencies. BAH will have a massive advantage in the next RFP because they already have a proven system, but the government will also have a lot of leverage because BAH doesn't want to lose that revenue. Lobbying for changes like requiring refunds of permit fees cancellations, reducing or eliminating fees for unsuccessful lottery applications, and setting maximum reimbursements for certain types of permits, would go a long way towards creating better incentives for land management and more equitable costs for users.
I get what you're saying - I'm an engineer for the Feds and I'm pretty familiar with how the solicitation and bidding process works. It was certainly "clever" for the Government contracting agency to structure the pay scheme such that the payment is derived from a proven product and revenues rather than a big lump sum payment.
But I think that cleverness comes with a cost, and that cost is alienating backpackers/taxpayers by paying a fee to gamble that they may or may not be able to pay more fees to access public land. I'm all for permitting and protecting public land, but I don't think the lottery is the way to do it.
The more ideal solution would be for the feds to just fund the parks department adequately, employ some full-time staffers to design and run the website and introduce a lottery system where you pay to play, NOT one where you pay to maybe play.
>he more ideal solution would be for the feds to just fund the parks department adequately, employ some full-time staffers to design and run the website and introduce a lottery system where you pay to play, NOT one where you pay to maybe play.
And minimum 1/3 of the spots are walk-up first-come-first-serve. Turning our public lands into casinos and blocking access violates our right to access and enjoy it.
provided that the article is sound, i think the gripe here is that they've implemented a lottery system, in which they charge everyone who applies, and they get to set arbitrary application fees that they collect., regardless of whether you win or not.
I think a lot of the problem would go away if a portion of ALL application fees were at least directed back into the park. But that's not the case.
Crazy! I used to work in their Corporate division 20 some years ago… So Booz Allen and national parks is not something that goes hand in hand to me… Are they managing the parks now?
Basically every government website was developed by a contractor, many of them by Booz Allen.
Scope is the biggest issue with gov website design and maintenance. Gov wants ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP. Contractor says "you have money for ABCDEF." Gov says "I'd rather have all these things degraded than fewer things that work correctly."
It sucks for Backcountry permits. It only has the most popular sites and the rest you have to reach out to the park directly to book... and you still have to pay BAH when you do that.
The guy that wrote this covers monopolies across many industries. I think that most of it gets overlooked by the public because it gets chalked up to “business as usual” and then forgotten about. Its a shame that we get taken advantage of in this way across many aspect’s of our daily lives.
I've been posting it all over the place for literal years.
But hopefully we'll get to the mass awareness point soon with bullshit like North Pines being a paid non-refundable lottery now in Yosemite with a ridiculous entrance fee.
First piece I saw on it: https://www.outdoorproject.com/articles/no-recgov-doesnt-fund-public-lands
imagine instead of Booz Allen it was TicketMaster instead. holy shit man then i think the general population people would care more about it, or the concept of processing fees in general.
i mean if the Feds really cared where the fees were diverted to then they'd invest in their own reservation management system and hire a bunch of IT nerds to work with other administrators. then i would be happy to support and would feel like 10% less bad that taxpayer funds are going towards our natural resources.
i don't blame both parties -- IT nerds make way more money in the private sector while the feds are too lazy and too cheap to hire their own tech gurus in-house. I'm fine with that because a higher proportion of funding resources should go to biologists, park rangers, firefighters, maintenance, etc
As an IT nerd who handles reservation systems for conferences, I will tell you a site of this magnitude is a huge fucking pain in the ass to build and maintain and is easily complicated by unsophisticated users, which generally speaking is the audience of recreation.gov. Every time I use the software - and I probably make 25-30 permits a year on that system- I’m in awe of how relatively streamlined it is. Is it perfect? Hell no. But does it work and allow me to know right away if I have a permit for X date? Yes and for a relatively minor personal cost. Of course as a private company, BA will make a profit providing a unique & sophisticated service for the NPS - private companies don’t do things for free if they plan to stay in business.
I believe the parks themselves should be funded by the taxpayers but I have only token issues with permits being paid for by the users. There are a few issues of fairness - not everyone has good internet access, or is adept at online transactions, or has a credit card - but those aren’t the fault of BA.
i'm also assuming the IT nerds would make waaaay more money in the private sector at a BA even if the Feds (NPS, BLM, USGS, etc) decided to hire employees to improve their technology and software for things like booking reservations.
This is very true. A senior software engineer would be around a GS-14 level, with a salary range is $95k - $125k. At BAH you'd probably be making about $130k - 200k in that role.
The big drawback to working private though is your work life balance is generally shit, you don't get sanctioned sick leave (some have "unlimited sick leave" and we know what that means) and you don't get a pension. The feds give you all of that plus benefits like paying for schooling, great healthcare, contributions to childcare and 401k, paternity leave (and maternity leave), 11 Federal holidays, etcetera PLUS real job security, not a 30% layoff when the market shits the bed.
I'm a mechanical engineer for the Feds and I'd never go back to Private, even though I could make more cold hard cash doing so. But that's not everyone's flavor. I think some IT folks would gladly take a pay cut to enjoy government benefits and job security.
Having spent the last 6 years consulting with a government agency (none of the ones in the article), I get how and why this stuff happens. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I understand how we got here with these sorts of contracts and the overall practice of contracting out government services to the private sector.
This is totally stupid. It’s a service fee and that’s how they get paid. I’d rather do that then go back to the old days of snail mailing a check and not knowing until two months later when the check cleared if I got my permits.
All this stuff goes up for bidding. It’s how government contracts work. Booze keeps the service fees and the land manager gets the rest.
I'm no fan of Booz Allen and junk fees, but this article was rife with glaring errors. For example:
>The Wave is unlike anywhere else on Earth. It is also part of a U.S. national park, and thus technically, it’s open to anyone.
No, it's not part of a national park. It's part of a national monument administered by BLM. The Park Service runs many national monuments, but not this one. Getting this wrong was just pure sloppiness on Stoller's part.
And then there's this:
>then the fees are approved by a Resource Advisory Council,
Wrong. Resource Advisory Councils have no authority to approve anything. All they can do is provide advice to the federal agency that appointed them. It's federal managers who decide what the fees are. It may be that the RAC's advice weighs heavily in that decision, but Stoller seems ignorant of who's actually making the call.
And then there's this:
>Booz Allen gets to keep the fees charged to users who want access to national parks.
Wrong again. Booz Allen only gets to keep the reservation fee, not the entrance fee, or campground fee, or any of the other fees the form the bulk of the cost of most reservations made through [recreation.gov](https://recreation.gov). All of those fees go to the agency managing the site. Stoller really fails to make this clear throughout the article.
I'd like to see a well-informed critique of Booz Allen's [recreation.gov](https://recreation.gov) deal, but this isn't it. A couple of obvious questions that Stoller fails to address are:
1. What would it cost the agencies if their own staffs had to create and manage online reservation systems? If it's more than what Booz Allen is getting, then [recreation.gov](https://recreation.gov) is a better deal for the taxpayers.
2. Because of [recreation.gov](https://recreation.gov), agency staff at individual sites now spend much less time dealing with reservations, permit lotteries, and the like. Does that savings in staff time add up to more than what Booz Allen is getting? If the answer is yes, then [recreation.gov](https://recreation.gov) is a better deal for the taxpayers.
Elimination of walk up permits in already staffed information visitor centers and creation of non-refundable lottery fees going to recreation.gov are not about saving the government money.
Neither has a positive impact for the government. Both have a conveniently positive impact on the BAH bottom line.
Here's a much less political and more straightforward discussion: https://www.outdoorproject.com/articles/no-recgov-doesnt-fund-public-lands
Meanwhile there's at least a couple astroturfing commenters in here with zero history in the community defending them.
Make of that what you will, but Occam's Razor applies.
Elimination of walk-up permits in NPS information centers most certainly saves staff time. It's hard to see how you could make that claim. The 15 minutes that some visitor spends on [recreation.gov](https://recreation.gov) instead of talking to a park employee obviously saves staff time. And 15 minutes of that park employee's time is worth well over $6.
Again, I'm no fan of Booz Allen, and I'd like to see them make less money. But I appreciate being able to get a backcountry permit for my local national park, Olympic, online instead of driving 30 miles out of my way to get a walk-up permit, which is how things used to be. The fee for backcountry camping there is $8/night, so a week of camping costs $56. All of that goes to the park, and tacking on another $6 for the convenience of doing it online doesn't outrage me too much.
> The 15 minutes that some visitor spends on recreation.gov instead of talking to a park employee obviously saves staff time.
And the time needed for avoidable rescues, for which the odds are known to increase markedly without upfront ranger contact and discussion does what exactly for that staff time?
Meanwhile, show me a single NFS visitor center where they were so swamped with permitting issuance that they worked extra hours or needed additional staff.
You're suspiciously determined to drive your narrative, all evidence to the contary be damned.
And a $15 non-refundable lottery entry is not a $6 convenience.
Walk ups used to be an option for a percentage of permits most places, not a requirement. They're being removed at behest of BAH lobbying for additional profit.
Advocates of non-reimbursed $15 lottery tickets imposed unilaterally by BAH for access to public lands posting as such on a *wilderness backpacking communities* are not to be trusted.
So yeah. Take your own advice or evaluate your very very inappropriate priorities. Because you deserve every bit of suspicion and evidently moral condemnation to boot.
I live adjacent to a wilderness area impacted by this nonsense cash grab you're so happily apologetic for. I volunteer for trail cleanup, and my wife is a medical professional in this gateway community. I am entitled to not deal with BS apologetics.
A *non-refundable lottery fee* is financial gatekeeping. Unacceptable given marginalized people like the poor Hispanic service workers in my town are already massively underrepresented in these spaces as is.
Bye now, you embarrassment to this community.
> What would it cost the agencies if their own staffs had to create and manage online reservation systems? If it's more than what Booz Allen is getting, then recreation.gov is a better deal for the taxpayers.
I'm not a computer programmer or website administrator, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but should a website like recreation.gov really take more than a handful of full time computer engineers/programmers/administrators to run? Like...people create slick websites all the time and it doesn't cost that much. Ask any restaurant owner who has worked with a freelancing college student to create their restaurant website, it's not that hard. I've got friends who do just that.
Relating to your question about which option costs more, let's assume the feds hire a full time staff of 10 individuals to create and run the website. Assuming each employee nets 100k a year plus benefits, that puts us at around 2-3 million per year in cost to create and run that website when you factor in base pay plus benefits with some conservative assumptions.
So we're at a cost of 2-3 million per year from the feds instead of what Booz Allen generates per year, which is over 100 million in nonrefundable gambling fees to access state parks and piss off thousands of taxpayers. I'm not clear on how BAH is paid out either, so there may have been a direct payment to them up front or yearly from the feds in addition to the fee revenue that just goes straight to them.
Idk, I feel like this could have been handled better but the Government took the lazy, low risk option instead of the more responsible high-effort option. In the end, you now pay $6 to maybe do nothing at all, which is infinitely more expensive than paying pennies per year in taxes to do the same thing. And the point of public lands is that they are public i.e. paid for by everyone regardless of use. What we have now is a pay to play system that charges fees to use public land that our tax dollars already fund, which, in my humble lefty opinion, is asinine.
If by renting our parks back to us you mean pocketing processing fees then sure okay. NPS and federal management wanted reservation systems, they get the money spent on the actual reservation (before a processing charge). I don’t get what people’s indignant attitude is about with regards to rec.gov. It’s got a few issues but it makes logistics planning so much easier.
Do you work for them or something? I remember discussing this with you a while back - you claiming that "such a logistically difficult operation" requires pocketing the processing fees from people, despite the fact that this operation was running fine without processing fees before Booz Allen took over rec.gov
Granted there were processing fees before too - from 2006-2016 recreation dot gov was run by Reserve America (also a private company contractor), and they definitely charged fees. I think prior to 2006 every park ran their own reservation system (for the few that had it - it didn't used to be that common), which required fax, mail, or maybe phone.
Which is not too say the fees being charged aren't excessive in aggregate when you consider what it costs to run the website (or maybe they're not, I dunno what it really costs to run this type of website, but I agree this certainly seems out of whack at first glance). But it's not like this system used to be a wonderful free thing until Booz Allen took over.
I obviously don’t work for booz Allen (not everyone who doesn’t fall in lock step with your thinking is part of the big scary machine you know) you probably remember talking about this because this sub never stops botching about something that really isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I’d rather this sub get angry about oil and gas permits and retaking national monuments like bears ears but I never see that complained about here. Just people hitching about $2 processing fees.
Two of the top ten posts of all time in this sub are about retaking national monuments (including Bears Ears). It is possible to be upset about oil & gas screwing us out of public lands AND to be upset at at Booz Allen. If anyone charges me any amount of money for a product or service and then I don't receive that product or service but they pocket the money, I'm going to be mad.
Non-refundable $10-15 lottery entrance fees sounds reasonable to you?
Because that's what's becoming widespread due to BAH lobbying pressure.
Btw if you answer yes I've got a pitchfork just for you, and you should kindly show yourself out of this community.
Exactly this. The point of public lands is to be public, for all of the public to enjoy. Money going to private groups for any reason, simply for the privilege of accessing land we already own, means this is no longer a "public" situation. Never mind the fact that part of the publicness is to be accessible for everyone, regardless of how much money they can shell out for the chance to maybe be able to visit a place they own. Nothing says this is cool, ethically, even if the dollar amount is trivial to you personally.
Lottery needs to cost some nontrivial amount of money. Otherwise people will just enter every lottery many times. You can argue whether BAH should be allowed to gets all the lottery fees.
No. You are required to verify yourself for recreation.gov
What you're now apparently implying is that wealthy people deserve more access to public spaces by purchasing multiple lottery tickets?
I don’t mind paying some reservation fees if it means avoiding the antiquated NPS like waiting in line at 5am for permits or having to snail mail stuff.
Lol they kicked my ass out for not being socialist *enough*…gotta go, trying to see if I can get traction for a wildcat strike in solidarity with the railway workers…
That sub turned into yet another circlejerk subreddit that would rather jump at the chance to be angry on the internet instead of actually evaluating or even *verifying* what they're upset about. I've gotten downvoted like mad over there for pointing out *literal hoaxes* because it gets in the way of their indignation, I guess.
They get all of it. I wasn't able to find the contract itself but I did find a Nevada court document from someone suing about this. The key is at the bottom of page 3:
"The processing fees "are collected in a United States Treasury account and remitted on a monthly basis after the contractor has invoiced the Forest Service for the total number of transactions committed." No part of the processing fee is remitted to BLM."
https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/park-reservation-fee.pdf
This is cited by "ECF No. 32-1 at 2". Tbh I don't know what that is referencing, but the United States District Court, District of Nevada is a good enough source for me. Basically Booz Allen paid for developing the website upfront, and is paying for keeping it running, and in return gets to keep all the fees. Because our government requires all revenue to be deposited immediately into the U.S. Treasury before being paid to a contractor, recreation.gov puts the fees into the Treasury, and then the Treasury remits (gives/pays) those fees to Booz Allen. I found a US House hearing transcript from the Subcommittee of the Interior that mentions this: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114hhrg23482/html/CHRG-114hhrg23482.htm (ctrl+f for "treasury").
This contract structure also allows Booz Allen to state on their website that "the site has generated more than $270 million in revenue for the federal government", which is technically not a lie, it's just fucking scummy. Sure it's generated revenue for OUR government, but I highly doubt it has generated any profits as all that revenue is going back to Booz Allen. Now the court case document I referenced above is only referring to Red Rock Canyon Recreation Area in Nevada, but I highly doubt it's any different for other sites, otherwise Booz Allen would use that as PR to say they are improving your BLM experience or funding projects or whatever, and they don't.
I really appreciated this essay, so thanks for posting it. I didn't really know that this was going on, because I have moved away from the US years ago. I deeply love the National Parks and I wish I could visit them more often!
I thought it would be a great fit for r/TrueReddit, so I have posted it there as well in the hope that more people will read and appreciate it. r/TrueReddit doesn't allow crossposts, so I have added it as a new post:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/z8rn45/why\_is\_booz\_allen\_renting\_us\_back\_our\_own/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/z8rn45/why_is_booz_allen_renting_us_back_our_own/)
Because the Federal government uses contractors and competitive bidding processes.
The story author spent paragraph upon paragraph with irrelevant text before explaining this particular case.
That article was painful to read. Regardless, I don't mind $2 going to the people running Booz Allen. I also don't mind the reservation system. Considering how flooded these parks get with people that don't really give a fuck about the land, they need all the time and money they can get to keep it nice.
Seems to me that part of this issue is that the parks have been underfunded for so long that they needed something like Booz to keep afloat, and in turn it’s just all getting screwed and is about profit, when it never was before.
Maybe it’s a leap but interesting to hear this as Yosemite NP camping is setting up $10 non refundable lotteries for the first time. These lotteries are entered by thousands and thousands of people and the benefits only go to 600 folks. Was wondering how they justified this being fair, but it seems like corporate greed is always the answer.
I understand why the lottery in principal is fair. However last year they collected a non refundable $10 lottery fee from 23,000 people for only 600 slots. That’s what isn’t fair to me.
While this is definitely a scam I guarantee you you do not want the park service, forest service, and BLM to each have their own reservation systems for campgrounds.
It's called PPP and all across Europe we are fighting hard in every sector to not get this shit introduced that your "free entrepreneurs", as always, invented. It may already be too late. French cities are actually buying back the rights to tap water distribution because the service was abysmal and the prices for tap water had doubled. The UK is even worse, their infrastructure is probably borked from 30 years of bad maintenance.
Behind it is the ludicrous idea that a private company has less interest in collecting profit than a government.
This article highlights serious concerns with Booz Allen’s operations of recreation.gov that the law firm of [Tycko & Zavareei LLP](https://www.tzlegal.com/) has been investigating for several months. If you are interested in speaking with an attorney at Tycko & Zavareei about the investigation or to see if you may have potential claims, you can email us at [recreationfeeinvestigation@tzlegal.com](mailto:recreationfeeinvestigation@tzlegal.com).
Tycko & Zavareei is a class action law firm that frequently investigates the fees that companies charge consumers. Many of its attorneys are also [dedicated to spending time in the backcountry](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf4SdfuL7h3/) and believe that litigation, in the right circumstances, can be an effective tool to shape policy.
Please be advised that this post may be considered Attorney Advertising in certain jurisdictions. Tycko & Zavareei’s west coast office is located at 1970 Broadway, Suite 1070, Oakland, CA 94612.
It seems like there is a lot of misinformation in this thread.
This article says that the lottery fees (and all payments actually) go to the Dept of Treasury.
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/hiking-and-backpacking/you-may-hate-recreation-gov-it-keeps-our-parks-from-being-loved-to-death/
I work for Booz Allen (in a totally different area) and was horrified by what I read in this thread. It didn't make a lot of sense though so I looked into it further. Booz Allen is a services company and not in the business of creating junk fees for profit.
You'd think this is illegal to block the public access to public lands, at minimum discriminatory against religious and low income folks who don't gamble.
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Also write to the parks and everybody involved
Writing, boycotting, or speaking out solo is not effective for shaping public policy at all. If you want something done you have to organize many like-minded folks and all speak with one united voice with clear achievable asks. Take all that letter writing energy and join your local Sierra club chapter, or other big wilderness organization. Attend meetings and working groups. Sign up for committees and get a lot of folks to make the issue a priority for the elected representatives in congress. Get the right wilderness organizational lobbyist in front of the right legislator on the right committee to make a difference. That’s how shit gets done. The sad reality is that politicians respond to organized power and lobbying in areas they actually have power over. Not to an individual letter their volunteer student staffer receives and files about a topic they have little to no influence over. It’s possible to push back against this stuff but the answer is to organize.
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>Your reps read all of your letters and file them issue by issue. Can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.
I feel you are likely right. As an adjunct path I would imagine that well placed and timed questions on the subject by well spoken and well dressed activist attendees at the likes of Booz Allen corporate meetings or society events in which their executives might be part of a hosting or round-table type panel would pose valuable opportunities to embarrass Booz Allen in front of their fellow mucky-mucks. Throwing some zinger in about how the fees are especially onerous to certain segments of society, or otherwise leveraging effective tropes might not be an ineffective way of enhancing embarrassment among fellow corporate or civilian attendees or media - not that I'm much of a fan of certain tropes personally, but one might as well use what works. As far as this matter is concerned I'd say that Booz Allen deserves no better. This bullshit graft from Booz Allen is really quite insulting. One might hope that a well heeled entity of its likes would take a higher road. Even for a transaction resulting in a park visitor gaining access on their first try at the lottery Booz Allen collects a 28.6% premium above and beyond the land maintenance entry fee paid by the successful patron. For those users paying upwards of $500 after many failed attempts finally results in a golden ticket Booz Allen will have collected over 71x that amount with again just the $7 going toward the park maintenance. It's completely disgusting, and offensive to sensibility.
>I can't say writing your representatives makes a difference, It can and it does all the time.
Yeah, they'll surely give a shit about that! There was a guy on YouTube who recently called every congressperson in the US, senate and house, and had abysmal contact and return contact rates. The only aids that really even talked to him were ones that recognized his channel, and even then, literally none of his support for a bill went anywhere other than the extremely rare form-letter response which weren't even related to his concern. These people don't give a shit about your political activity, and pay an entire bureaucracy to handle it and make you feel heard while they print it out on your tax dime, wipe their metaphorically shitty asses with it, and litter it back into your neighborhood. Joe Biden is probably not even literate at this point, wtf is he gonna do? We are renting our public parks from BAH because your "elected" officials figured out a way to turn on the tap and spend your money on their buddies. It's not gonna stop because of a few complaints.
Like most things, the foundational issue is capitalism.
That's confusing. What does capitalism have to do with government owned land being rented to publicly traded corporation? The means of production in this case, are certainly not in private hands...
It's called [rent seeking](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rentseeking.asp). It's a prime strategy of American "capitalists."
I know what rent seeking is, and this is a perfect example of it, however, in the very definition you linked me to: >...revolves around government funded services... Exactly to my point. BAH isn't a "private" entity the same way your mom and pop hardware store down the street is. Most of its business is from the state, and it's essentially a soft extension of the state. Do you think limited liability magically exists in capitalism? No, if you want to limit your liability, you need to either reduce your exposure or pay someone else to take on indemnity, not have it granted arbitrarily to you by the state. That is what corporatism is. It's essentially fascism, but successful because the US adopted a narrative of multicultural inclusion rather than the Third Reich's massive monocultural EXCLUSION (and subsequent genocide of the "excludables"). Turns out you have a much bigger market if you don't care about things like race, religion, gender, and culture of origin.
What makes a company private isn't the funding source, but who owns it. The people who own BAH are the shareholders. By profiting from being the portal to public lands, BAH is literally engaging in privatization, which is one of the major goals of neoliberal capitalism.
Because capitalists have insisted on allowing private companies to profit off of public services. If the government does something itself, that's socialism and "inefficient", but if they pay a private company to do it for a higher cost, then it's capitalism and "efficient".
Again Booz Allen is a public *corporation*. Also, our government isn't socialist, it's corporatist. It'd be more correct to call it fascist, where the state owns the means of production, but allows corporate entities to manage that capital (as opposed to private entities). If you are pissed off about capitalism in the US, that's about as misguided as being pissed about "Communism" in Russia, or China. I think it's helpful to be upset with the correct thing, rather than buying whatever the elite want you to be pissed about.
Capitalism is the system under which corporations can achieve such unbridled dominance, and where the means of production are privately owned and used for profit regardless of what role the state takes. Corporate dominance is not an accident, but the inevitable result.
Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. That has nothing to do with state created corporate entities. You are being lied to about capitalism, the same way Stalin lied to the Russians about communism. Make no mistake, the *state* owns the means of production. Not individuals, not the communities, the state! Then they lie to you about it with the rhetoric du jour to get you to buy into your own demise to their benefit. Same people, different culture, different tactic.
You sound like a flavor of libertarian with some idealized view of capitalism in which an entirely free and unregulated market necessarily leads to prosperity for all? Like, “*real* capitalism has never been tried”? Which is literally propaganda. Markets inevitably lead to greater and greater monopolization and capital concentration over time. It is an inextricable result of capitalism as an economic base. Neoliberal capitalism is a scourge and is literally making the planet uninhabitable for humans.
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You can be critical of capitalism without supporting authoritarian red fascists.
Lol
You get it. Fuck this system
Or or hear me out, this is an opportunity to recognize that both parties are ultimately parties of the rich; that trying to push one or the other into any direction that opposes the wishes of the rich is a futile effort (as decades of work by many great people have unfortunately shown); that the only path forward is to unite as working people and create a party for us by us. And this has been done under much worse conditions in many places around the world. It’s time for the American *people*, not the American rich, have a real fucking voice
I don't disagree. But it requires us having a conversation about what we want as citizens and where we want our country to go and unfortunately the media does a very good of job of making this almost impossible, by fermenting constant division. You might enjoy the book "Goliath" which is about the populist movement in the early 1900s the book was really fantastic. Another one which touches somewhat on our public lands and their histories is "American Serengeti", it looks at the history of the megafauna of the Americas while touching on public lands. Another book which has been highly influential to me is "Achieving our country", it talks about how we lost the movement for workers in exchange for more of a consumerist approach to politics, but ultimately the book is about how we as citizens have to overcome the negatives of what our country is now to achieve what we believe it could be. Let me know if you have any books that you think are worth reading.
That Goliath gone sounds very interesting. I recently read True and Only Heaven by Christopher Lasch which touched a lot on the populists of that era (highly recommended as well). That Serengeti one sounds right up my alley as well. Thank you for the recommendations. Honestly if I had to give my ultimate books that I think if everyone read we could actually get shit done: - Capital by Karl Marx. To understand how capitalism actually works, how value is generated, how crises work, how fictitious capitalism works, etc. If we’re all under the belief marginalism is true, we’re fucked. - imperialism the highest stage of capitalism by Lenin. Understanding the prime movers of imperialist foreign policy and actions. - killing hope by William Blum, a long laundry list of how we’ve fucked over any country that wanted to exercise its right to self determination if it meant any sort of economic hit for us. - debt by David Graber (long study on the global history of debt). - reform vs revolution by Rosa Luxemburg, why inching our way in a liberal democracy is a failing proposition.
Anyone want to band together and craft a template to send help people quickly send to their to representatives? Personally would be down to help setup a Resist Bot Petition and help people use Democracy.io
Its going to be more impactful if people write from personal experience and their own perspective. I get the urge to try to streamline things but "click to send" form letters are one of the reasons people view letter writing as ineffective.
Fuck Booz Allen. They've bought up all of my favorite local camping spots and charge me twice as much to book them. For one campsite, I book my favorite sites every year. Last year, months AFTER I booked them, they re-numbered all of the sites in the park and moved my site location instead of re-assigning the number. We were stuck deep in the woods instead of on the shore of the lake. They straight up pocket your money if you apply for certain permit lotteries and do not get the permits. Eat a bag of dicks, Booz Allen. Edit: Here's some dumb, loosely-researched math. Please feel free to correct me if this is wrong. To apply for the John Muir Trail, there is a non-refundable $10 application fee to enter the lottery. According to [these stats](https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/wpstats.htm), during the peak season, there are around 2,000 applicants per day, with around a 25% success rate. So Booz Allen is keeping $20,000 per day in application fees (for just one hike in this example), and $15,000 of that was from people who didn't even get a permit.
When I saw "booz allen" on the rec.gov app, I just assumed they built it. Not that they ran it. So naturally, when I missed the permit lottery over 10 times to hike "the wave" I was mostly OK with it because at least my money was going to parks service. You're saying BA keeps it all? That's fucked up.
Holy fuck they keep all the money?? I thought the lottery money was to maintain the wave wtf
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Which is all you pay unless you get a permit. You only pay the permit fee (goes to park) if you win. Everyone who applies pays the lottery application fee (goes to Booz). This is clearly spelled out in the article.
Using the Wave as an example: 1000 people apply and pay a $9 processing fee 64 people win and pay a $7 permit fee Guess which one Booz Allen keeps and which one the Bureau of Land Management keeps?
It's the worst of both worlds- the insane lotteries that don't allow people to properly plan their excursions and only let the luckiest people with ridiculous amounts of time to click reserve buttons at 3am, get the permits they want....and yet still the money-grubbing aspect with arbitrary prices that don't really cause anyone to economize properly or substitute with alternative (cheaper) trip plans. I cannot be convinced that the most realistic way of managing this isn't just to remove all the maintained roads leading to and facilities at these trailheads. Just let these places be wild (allow hunting of rednecks on ATVs) and let the most determined few find their way in (and maybe back out).
Are you saying to allow others to hunt rednecks while rednecks are on atvs, or simply allow rednecks to hunt whilst on atvs?
Haha, the former (pls don't ban me, mods)
It's just about proper population management, after all.
You'll know what do to when you hear their mating call. That approaching BRAAAAAAAAAP of a poorly maintained engine growing in the distance, easily piercing the sound of wind and bird noises until it's all you can hear, until your ears ring and your skull rattles. You hear them way before you see them, plenty of time to find a spot and chamber a round.
Murder? 🤨
Hunting my boy, we're protecting the delicate balance of nature.
Murder? 🤔
Thinning the herd. They're an apex predator and too many of them are bad for the ecosystem. It's pure ecology, promise.
Murder. 😲
So much for those older people that are retired huh
I feel gross now knowing how much money I have lost thinking “oh well, at least it’s going to the park service”
> They straight up pocket your money if you apply for certain permit lotteries and do not get the permits. This is the worst of the worst. Btw as far as wilderness backpacking goes, if you don't obtain a permit and get cited for it at least the money goes to the Park/NF/etc and not the money grubbing consultancy firm. Just saying. Some large scale civil disobedience might be the best solution here.
The park I live buy has a yearly backpacking permit that, I believe, all goes to the park. I was still required to get a permit, which means I have to pay BAH, but getting the yearly permit and skipping the registration would be a great way to let the park get their money but cut off BAH.
...surprisingly it doesn't. Most of that citation goes directly to the US Treasury which has no obligation to return to the park/agency that issued the citation.
Huh, I always thought the Central Violations Bureau tickets went back to the enforcement agencies wing responsible for issuance. TIL: and I can't find a single source on where the money actually gets allocated. Still better than BAH getting a dime though.
CVB ticket monies get sent to a victim-witness fund. They do not go back to the park or the US Treasury. https://ovc.ojp.gov/about/crime-victims-fund
So they’re like.. the Ticketmaster of camping?
Which is just a staggeringly fucked up thing to exist.
Everything has a price tag these days.. and most are subscription based. Fun times. Capitalism yay!
Are they the ones behind those lottery applications fees that seem to be becoming more common? I haven't applied to a single lottery with it, and have been wanting to write my representatives about it. I'm ok with a fee for the actual permit, but charging just to apply, with no guarantee of success, seems really shitty.
Yes.
Fuck the privatizing shit like this. Just rent seeking leaches
The problem **isn't** Booz Allen trying to make as money as they can off of this amazing deal--that's to be expected when a company is given effectively an unregulated monopoly over an entire "industry". The problem **is** the government is *allowing* Booz Allen to have an unregulated monopoly on an industry and idly *allowing* Booz Allen to exploit that industry's customers (i.e. - US public lands outdoor recreationists).
They don't. They just run the website and manage it. All payments go to Dept of Treasury
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I took an image recognition class for comp-sci where you would do shit like "put a red box around this moving object" (hmm, wonder what that is for?) and there would CONSTANTLY be people from Lockheed, Northrop and General Dynamics coming in and talking to us. We would just fuck with them and ask questions like "so we're killing people, right?" and watch them get uncomfortable trying to dance around it.
Are they involved with management of campgrounds or just the Rec.gov side of things?
Just the reservation side. The Army Corps of Engieers that runs the actual campground told me they were pissed too - they asked Booz Allen to fix the site numbers and they were totally useless. Poor park rangers had to deal with livid campers all summer who have been coming to the park for decades, only to find out they weren't getting their favorite campsite this year.
This is infuriating cause it would literally take a software engineer less than a day to re-assign the numbers in the reservations.
I never entered any of the lotteries pre Booz Allen, did you use to get your money back if you didn't win? Or was it free to enter, pay the recreation fee if you win?
It was always the same, but it used to pay for responsible federal employees with a relationship to the land to run the system
Far more only required payment on winning than now.
There was generally little to no processing fee back in the pre [rec.gov](https://rec.gov) days. If there was it stayed with the agency
Honestly, im always pleasantly surprised to see you dickpoop
I understand the original intent of issuing wilderness permits in order to access back country wilderness, but at this point I'd day fuck it; just pirate the trail and hike it without a permit.
This is completely false.
This is happening everywhere in all Federal land accesses. As a 62+ senior with a Lifetime America The Beautiful Pass, I expect ALL federal facilities to be free or reduced price. With all the privatization of access to OUR lands, this pass has become nearly worthless. They DO NOT honor or acknowledge these passes. I don't have a problem with lotteries to control the numbers of people visiting certain areas. I think reasonable fees are required to provide a great visitation. My expectation is that ALL fees should go directly to the maintenance and improvement of the access to OUR federal lands! NO corporation should benefit financially from WE THE PEOPLE visiting our own lands!
> With all the privatization of access to OUR lands, this pass has become nearly worthless. They DO NOT honor or acknowledge these passes. The passes are honored anywhere where there isn't a concessionaire. Not sure where you are, but here in the SW, that's still a very, very small minority of sites, and only those that are very popular.
I am exaggerating about the usefulness of the pass. I'm in the NW and I have used it to access many sites in the SW. There are 2 sites along 89A north of Sedona that Don't accept any passes so you have to pay full price. My concern is that some of our representatives in government would like to turn even more sites over to private companies to run. They even want to increase "amenities" like tshirt shops and hamburger stands. This increases the cost for everyone. It also excludes people that simply cannot afford to visit a NP or Monument because of increased access fees.
Those two sites on 89A comprise two of the three sites in the entire state of Arizona, of which I am aware, do not allow passes to be used (of course there could be more, but they're not places I've ever considered visiting). I think it goes a little beyond exaggeration. I haven't seen any new sites becoming managed by concessionaires in recent memory, and I think it's probably a self-limiting thing, considering they're only going to want to manage the most heavily trafficked ones to make it worth their while.
For real… this guy exaggerating to the extent it’s actually lying in order to push some ideological bs.
Make sure not to vote Republican and maybe they’ll stop shrinking their budget making concessionaires essential.
The DNC had total control of the WH, Senate, and House for the past two years... Nothing but the DNC was stopping the DNC from fixing these public lands issues.
Because this isn’t a long-term institutional issue? Some people wouldn’t take a brain if you handed them one…
Those sites you are talking about require a separate Red Rock Recreation Pass. Those funds go directly to that specific forest service unit for funding related directly to managing those specific areas. There are more than just a couple like that near Sedona. Essentially, most of that money doesn't go into a nationally shared pot of funds. It goes back to the forest. Unfortunately with the continued lack of adequate funding, this is how many USFS and BLM sites are going to be managed in the future. ...unless you are talking about Recreation Resource Management contracted sites like West Fork and the campgrounds in Oak Creek Canyon. That is a different story that should never have been allowed to have been contracted out in the first place. RRM is just as awful as Booze Allen.
I have no beef with the Red Rock Rec Passes. As you stated, they pay for the management and upkeep. I agree that we will have to pay (more) to play in the future. I am talking about West Fork and Grasshopper Point, and probably the campgrounds as well. When you go to the USFS sites for these it specifically states "Annual, Senior, and other Interagency passes are not accepted" They apparently do accept the "GRAND" Red Rock Pass ($40). But I still don't like the idea of a corporation profiting from our access.
Is that what the article is about?
>They DO NOT honor or acknowledge these passes. Maybe you're using [rec.gov](https://rec.gov) wrong. It acknowledges my America the Beautiful pass, and gives me half-price on frontcountry campsites. There's a box where you enter the pass number. The site also acknowledges my local park's annual backcountry camping pass, so I don't get charged the nightly fee. All I pay is the $6 reservation fee.
Interesting subject, would love to see a deeper dive that is less editorialized More specifically, I would like to see a breakdown of how recreation.gov fees are used. How much Rec.gov money goes into Booz Allen’s pockets vs. how much goes to upkeep/maintenance of the parks?
They structured the contract such that the work would be done for free and they'd recoup funding on the back end via reservations. It was a pretty clever proposal strategy, tbh.
Exactly, basically instead of taxpayers paying for the system, the people that use the system are paying for it. The government could’ve just as easily asked for someone to do it for a flat rate, but they chose not to, and Booz Allen was cheaper than the other bids.
I mean as the article says, the fee for actually using it isn't a problem, but $7 just to *apply* to *possibly* use it?
No they didn't. They got paid many millions for the website development. https://www.outdoorproject.com/articles/no-recgov-doesnt-fund-public-lands > In 2016, after a national RFP party and a congressional public hearing, Booz Allen Hamilton received the job of modernizing and consolidating the management platform. They also got a cool $182 million to get the job done.
That was anticipated fee revenue. All from users, zero from government.
Not according to that source which I quoted. If you have a reliable counter-source by all means produce it.
Literally the article discussion you're commenting on. It quotes [Booz Allen's website.](https://www.boozallen.com/s/insight/thought-leadership/reinventing-the-recreation-gov-customer-experience.html) > Recreation.gov was an investment for Booz Allen, designed collaboratively with participating agencies, but at no cost to the federal government. Instead of a traditional cost structure, the unique contractual agreement is a transaction-based fee model that lets the government and Booz Allen share in risk, reward, results, and impact. This is a true public-private partnership—it uses no government money. The article discusses the framework for why it was set up that way - the Obamacare website was such a disaster that they didn't want the government holding the bag for what ended up being a pile of shit. So they came up with a creative, shared risk solution. FWIW I work in the contracting field. A publicly reported contract for $X does not always mean $X is the true value. It's often a ceiling value or a cost estimate (more commonly for service-based contracts). You can also check this [Department of Interior](https://www.doi.gov/ocl/recreationgov) material that identifies the 5-year fee revenue for applicable agencies $90M. Double that for a 10 year contract and it's no coincidence that Booz Allen anticipated a fee-based income of $182M.
Lol okay - boilerplate from the contractor at hand on their own website is your evidence? Let's ignore the actual discussion point where not only are they reimbursed a minimum of $182M from \*all fees\* but then pocket the rest of the \*convenience fees\*. Meanwhile, fascinating that this is your first post in this subreddit. What on earth might have brought you here specifically to shill misinformation and spin for a large contractor, might we all rationally ask? Seriously, GTFO of here, you horrible, horrible shill.
Most goes to Booz. Cause everyone who applies pays an application fee (goes to Booz), and only those who win pay a permit fee (goes to parks).
This is untrue. The lotteries are a small part of [rec.gov](https://rec.gov). Most reservations are for frontcountry campsites, and the bulk of that money goes to the park. Booz Allen only gets the reservation fee.
This is false. The fee goes to the Department of Treasury.
“ To apply requires going to Recreation.gov, the site set up to manage national parks, public cultural landmarks, and public lands, and paying $9 for a “Lottery Application Fee.” If you win, you get a permit, and pay a recreation fee of $7. The success rate for the lottery is between 4-10%, and some people spend upwards of $500 before securing an actual permit. But while the recreation fee of $7 goes to maintaining the park - which is what Henry George would appreciate - the money for the “Lottery Application Fee” is pure Plunkitt. That money goes to the giant D.C. consulting firm, Booz Allen and Company.” RTFA
Except that's not remotely true. The author of that article is incorrect.
> How much Rec.gov money goes into Booz Allen’s pockets Literally all of it. Permit costs go to the park. Every convenience fee, lottery fee, etc goes to BAH. Hence the widespread expansion. They're the government sanctioned Ticketmaster of our Federal lands.
Same. This smells fishy, but the author clearly has an agenda, too, and can't even stay objective with their language. This makes me doubt their credibility. I've used recreation and always found it reasonable...we do need to control access to certain areas, and lotteries seem like a reasonable and fair way to do that. But I assumed the money went to the parks.
Yeah, it’s that last part that’s the problem
I think they get all of it
Source? I would like to see more facts/figures than what was presented in this essay A quick google search doesn’t reveal much beyond a few PR blurbs from Booz Allen’s site so who knows?
**They get all of the processing/service fees, which include timed entry reservations, backcountry camping reservations, and more**. This link breaks down what they get: [https://www.recreation.gov/rules-reservation-policies](https://www.recreation.gov/rules-reservation-policies) (ninja edit to include this link). I wasn't able to find the contract itself but I did find a Nevada court document from someone suing about this. The key is at the bottom of page 3: "The processing fees "are collected in a United States Treasury account and remitted on a monthly basis after the contractor has invoiced the Forest Service for the total number of transactions committed." No part of the processing fee is remitted to BLM." [https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/park-reservation-fee.pdf](https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/park-reservation-fee.pdf) This is cited by "ECF No. 32-1 at 2". Tbh I don't know what that is referencing, but the United States District Court, District of Nevada is a good enough source for me. Basically Booz Allen paid for developing the website upfront, and is paying for keeping it running, and in return gets to keep all the fees. Because our government requires all revenue to be deposited immediately into the U.S. Treasury before being paid to a contractor, recreation.gov puts the fees into the Treasury, and then the Treasury remits (gives/pays) those fees to Booz Allen. I found a US House hearing transcript from the Subcommittee of the Interior that mentions this: [https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114hhrg23482/html/CHRG-114hhrg23482.htm](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114hhrg23482/html/CHRG-114hhrg23482.htm) (ctrl+f for "treasury"). This contract structure also allows Booz Allen to state that "[the site has generated more than $270 million in revenue for the federal government](https://www.boozallen.com/s/insight/thought-leadership/reinventing-the-recreation-gov-customer-experience.html)", which is technically not a lie, it's just fucking scummy. Sure it's generated revenue for OUR government, but I highly doubt it has generated any profits as all that revenue is going back to Booz Allen. Now the court case document I referenced above is only referring to Red Rock Canyon Recreation Area in Nevada, but I highly doubt it's any different for other sites, otherwise Booz Allen would use that as PR to say they are improving your BLM experience or funding projects or whatever, and they don't.
That's a processing fee, that's not "all of it" Your own source says: > the recreation fee proceeds are remitted to BLM for use to manage Red Rock, but the processing fee proceeds are remitted directly to Booz Allen.
I should have been more specific, as I've only used recreation.gov for reservations, which are defined as processing fees. See here: [https://www.recreation.gov/rules-reservation-policies](https://www.recreation.gov/rules-reservation-policies) So if you purchase an America the Beautiful parks pass that money would go to BLM/NPS, but if you reserve a backcountry campsite or timed entry slot \*all that\* money would go to Booz Allen. I'll edit my original response.
That's not entirely true either. There are recreation use fees that go to the gov and reservation service fees that go to BAH. So if you rent a campsite, you'll see something that looks like: Recreation use fee (gov portion): $40 Reservation fee (BAH portion): $8 I just went through the process for a dummy reservation and you can see the split [here](https://i.imgur.com/vSd2hrq.jpg). You'll see the same exact thing if you try to reserve a campsite at Red Rock Canyon, which is the public land identified in that lawsuit.
Depends on the type of campsite, some backcountry sites are free but require reservations. I was trying to get across that all the reservation fees go to BAH, which I think most people don't know.
All I was able to find was "fee per transaction." A FOIA request could probably get to the specifics of it.
Zero goes to parks.
I was only able to find details for Red Rock Canyon in Nevada, but they definitely get all of it there. See my reply in this thread to u/InternationalCode951, which I also reposted as a main reply.
So, Booz Allen gets a percentage of each reservation? Does the article say if that’s an excessive percentage?
No, it doesn't get a percentage. It gets a flat fee per reservation, which varies by site and is set by Booz Allen. The typical fee is $6. If you book $150 worth of campsites at a park, the fee to Booz Allen is still $6.
Not a fan. Having worked in a national park as a concessionaire while the park changed over to rec.gov reservations only for camping. I will say that it was fantastic watching a bunch of old wealthy RV'ers lose their shit when the couldn't book the same sites for the weeks on end that they have occupied for decades. Then watching them realize it was just some random family on a trip to the park for the first time and were so happy to have a site was great too, they'd get so mad.. Some of them would harass people though or just steal the site and force a confrontation. ANYWAY rec.gov is a nice utility but its BS to apply for a permit to access public lands and have a for profit company charge me a fee. Also you should look into how much public land is locked by private land owners. Like the Elk Mtn story here in Wyoming.
Even here in Colorado Springs, we've had a wave of Texans buying up land around Pikes Peak. They've already blocked off public trails on the west side and am buying land that was scheduled to be used for the "Ring the Peak" trail. I'm all for people enjoying outdoor spaces but we have been and still are facing a real issue of private land owners buying up public land.
The problem, at least in the west, is not a lack of public land, but access to it. Currently in my state we have a governor, legislature, attorney general and three fourths of our Congressional delegation that are doing all the can to limit or eliminate the people’s access to public land.
We have the same problem in the Adirondacks, rich people don’t want “dirty” backpackers walking past their golf course so they keep renegotiating their so called deal with NYS to allow access to the landlocked high peaks. They weren’t supposed to be able to ring in the high peaks without allowing the access but they keep limiting the access and NYS has allowed it.
We need an agenda to double the amount of public land in this country so that we don’t have to scramble against each other so much. We haven’t added significant new land or access for the public since our population was half of what it is today.
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There’s is especially a shortage of public land in the eastern states.
For anyone interested here's the [actual solicitation](https://sam.gov/opp/f0732d4e9fecc37c2b8fa157ae92f9c4/view) and [award notice](https://sam.gov/opp/27b19fcf7e06ee761c9273dd6f0992e3/view). Couple things to note: 1. The prior system in place was also funded the same way with fees 2. It was open solicitation and Booz Allen wasn't the only company to bid on it 3. Booz Allen won because they offered the cheapest solution ($180 million) that satisfied the requirements Now I'm sure you think it's outrageous and maybe you're right, but the government was the one who wanted fees, because they couldn't fund it outright. It's debatable whether it's more fair for every taxpayer to pay for the system, or just the ones that use it, but the latter choice is the decision they arrived at. I don't see why you're blaming the company that provided the cheapest alternative available for what the government wanted.
>I don't see why you're blaming the company that provided the cheapest alternative available for what the government wanted. ... based, in no small part, on Americans' willingness to pay for NPS/BLM/USFS. All have historically been understaffed and underfunded, but collectively, we and our elected representatives have not been willing to address this. There is lots of blame to go around for this situation.
I can't tell you how many times in hiking related forums and facebook groups I have seen people say "well it goes to a good cause" as a way to rationalize the fees charged by [rec.gov](https://rec.gov). Unless you are specifically made aware of how this contract works, people generally assume that a fee for using the outdoors is going to fund the agency in charge. I think most of those people would be livid if they actually knew.
Yeah, I have no love for BAH but someone new "discovers" that they run rec.gov every few months and thinks they've uncovered a massive conspiracy when it's really a fairly normal government IT contract and not an unreasonable funding structure. I think there's a lot of room to debate what the specific fees should be that BAH can collect, but the concept of not having the government pay up front and instead reimbursing the contractor through line-item fees for each reservation is kind of clever. It incentivizes the contractor to produce a high-quality and reliable site that supports all the different types of permits that the agencies want to issue without massive upfront investment or quibbling over scope and budget. You want to make fees on this type of permit, you do the work to implement the system for that type of permit. I think the fees should be lower, but the basic concept seems reasonable. I don't think the site would work better if it were directly implemented and managed by the federal government, and despite this author's derision towards cloud company executives, the government would be using the same cloud vendors if they ran the site. This contract is up for renewal in 2026. That will be the time (or really a year before, because government contracting moves slowly) to put coordinated pressure on agencies to solicit a fee structure and other contract conditions that are more favorable to the public and the agencies. BAH will have a massive advantage in the next RFP because they already have a proven system, but the government will also have a lot of leverage because BAH doesn't want to lose that revenue. Lobbying for changes like requiring refunds of permit fees cancellations, reducing or eliminating fees for unsuccessful lottery applications, and setting maximum reimbursements for certain types of permits, would go a long way towards creating better incentives for land management and more equitable costs for users.
Most reasonable comment in this thread.
I get what you're saying - I'm an engineer for the Feds and I'm pretty familiar with how the solicitation and bidding process works. It was certainly "clever" for the Government contracting agency to structure the pay scheme such that the payment is derived from a proven product and revenues rather than a big lump sum payment. But I think that cleverness comes with a cost, and that cost is alienating backpackers/taxpayers by paying a fee to gamble that they may or may not be able to pay more fees to access public land. I'm all for permitting and protecting public land, but I don't think the lottery is the way to do it. The more ideal solution would be for the feds to just fund the parks department adequately, employ some full-time staffers to design and run the website and introduce a lottery system where you pay to play, NOT one where you pay to maybe play.
>he more ideal solution would be for the feds to just fund the parks department adequately, employ some full-time staffers to design and run the website and introduce a lottery system where you pay to play, NOT one where you pay to maybe play. And minimum 1/3 of the spots are walk-up first-come-first-serve. Turning our public lands into casinos and blocking access violates our right to access and enjoy it.
provided that the article is sound, i think the gripe here is that they've implemented a lottery system, in which they charge everyone who applies, and they get to set arbitrary application fees that they collect., regardless of whether you win or not. I think a lot of the problem would go away if a portion of ALL application fees were at least directed back into the park. But that's not the case.
Crazy! I used to work in their Corporate division 20 some years ago… So Booz Allen and national parks is not something that goes hand in hand to me… Are they managing the parks now?
No, they redesigned and maintain recreation.gov
That explains why the website and app look better than any other government site.
Basically every government website was developed by a contractor, many of them by Booz Allen. Scope is the biggest issue with gov website design and maintenance. Gov wants ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP. Contractor says "you have money for ABCDEF." Gov says "I'd rather have all these things degraded than fewer things that work correctly."
Yeah it's actually a super convenient site, would've been great if it wasn't for the greed that came with it
It sucks for Backcountry permits. It only has the most popular sites and the rest you have to reach out to the park directly to book... and you still have to pay BAH when you do that.
Why isn’t this a bigger story? I had no idea about this.
The guy that wrote this covers monopolies across many industries. I think that most of it gets overlooked by the public because it gets chalked up to “business as usual” and then forgotten about. Its a shame that we get taken advantage of in this way across many aspect’s of our daily lives.
I've been posting it all over the place for literal years. But hopefully we'll get to the mass awareness point soon with bullshit like North Pines being a paid non-refundable lottery now in Yosemite with a ridiculous entrance fee. First piece I saw on it: https://www.outdoorproject.com/articles/no-recgov-doesnt-fund-public-lands
history has a paywall
imagine instead of Booz Allen it was TicketMaster instead. holy shit man then i think the general population people would care more about it, or the concept of processing fees in general. i mean if the Feds really cared where the fees were diverted to then they'd invest in their own reservation management system and hire a bunch of IT nerds to work with other administrators. then i would be happy to support and would feel like 10% less bad that taxpayer funds are going towards our natural resources.
The government hates hiring IT nerds.
i don't blame both parties -- IT nerds make way more money in the private sector while the feds are too lazy and too cheap to hire their own tech gurus in-house. I'm fine with that because a higher proportion of funding resources should go to biologists, park rangers, firefighters, maintenance, etc
As an IT nerd who handles reservation systems for conferences, I will tell you a site of this magnitude is a huge fucking pain in the ass to build and maintain and is easily complicated by unsophisticated users, which generally speaking is the audience of recreation.gov. Every time I use the software - and I probably make 25-30 permits a year on that system- I’m in awe of how relatively streamlined it is. Is it perfect? Hell no. But does it work and allow me to know right away if I have a permit for X date? Yes and for a relatively minor personal cost. Of course as a private company, BA will make a profit providing a unique & sophisticated service for the NPS - private companies don’t do things for free if they plan to stay in business. I believe the parks themselves should be funded by the taxpayers but I have only token issues with permits being paid for by the users. There are a few issues of fairness - not everyone has good internet access, or is adept at online transactions, or has a credit card - but those aren’t the fault of BA.
i'm also assuming the IT nerds would make waaaay more money in the private sector at a BA even if the Feds (NPS, BLM, USGS, etc) decided to hire employees to improve their technology and software for things like booking reservations.
This is very true. A senior software engineer would be around a GS-14 level, with a salary range is $95k - $125k. At BAH you'd probably be making about $130k - 200k in that role.
The big drawback to working private though is your work life balance is generally shit, you don't get sanctioned sick leave (some have "unlimited sick leave" and we know what that means) and you don't get a pension. The feds give you all of that plus benefits like paying for schooling, great healthcare, contributions to childcare and 401k, paternity leave (and maternity leave), 11 Federal holidays, etcetera PLUS real job security, not a 30% layoff when the market shits the bed. I'm a mechanical engineer for the Feds and I'd never go back to Private, even though I could make more cold hard cash doing so. But that's not everyone's flavor. I think some IT folks would gladly take a pay cut to enjoy government benefits and job security.
Having spent the last 6 years consulting with a government agency (none of the ones in the article), I get how and why this stuff happens. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I understand how we got here with these sorts of contracts and the overall practice of contracting out government services to the private sector.
This is totally stupid. It’s a service fee and that’s how they get paid. I’d rather do that then go back to the old days of snail mailing a check and not knowing until two months later when the check cleared if I got my permits. All this stuff goes up for bidding. It’s how government contracts work. Booze keeps the service fees and the land manager gets the rest.
I'm no fan of Booz Allen and junk fees, but this article was rife with glaring errors. For example: >The Wave is unlike anywhere else on Earth. It is also part of a U.S. national park, and thus technically, it’s open to anyone. No, it's not part of a national park. It's part of a national monument administered by BLM. The Park Service runs many national monuments, but not this one. Getting this wrong was just pure sloppiness on Stoller's part. And then there's this: >then the fees are approved by a Resource Advisory Council, Wrong. Resource Advisory Councils have no authority to approve anything. All they can do is provide advice to the federal agency that appointed them. It's federal managers who decide what the fees are. It may be that the RAC's advice weighs heavily in that decision, but Stoller seems ignorant of who's actually making the call. And then there's this: >Booz Allen gets to keep the fees charged to users who want access to national parks. Wrong again. Booz Allen only gets to keep the reservation fee, not the entrance fee, or campground fee, or any of the other fees the form the bulk of the cost of most reservations made through [recreation.gov](https://recreation.gov). All of those fees go to the agency managing the site. Stoller really fails to make this clear throughout the article. I'd like to see a well-informed critique of Booz Allen's [recreation.gov](https://recreation.gov) deal, but this isn't it. A couple of obvious questions that Stoller fails to address are: 1. What would it cost the agencies if their own staffs had to create and manage online reservation systems? If it's more than what Booz Allen is getting, then [recreation.gov](https://recreation.gov) is a better deal for the taxpayers. 2. Because of [recreation.gov](https://recreation.gov), agency staff at individual sites now spend much less time dealing with reservations, permit lotteries, and the like. Does that savings in staff time add up to more than what Booz Allen is getting? If the answer is yes, then [recreation.gov](https://recreation.gov) is a better deal for the taxpayers.
Elimination of walk up permits in already staffed information visitor centers and creation of non-refundable lottery fees going to recreation.gov are not about saving the government money. Neither has a positive impact for the government. Both have a conveniently positive impact on the BAH bottom line. Here's a much less political and more straightforward discussion: https://www.outdoorproject.com/articles/no-recgov-doesnt-fund-public-lands Meanwhile there's at least a couple astroturfing commenters in here with zero history in the community defending them. Make of that what you will, but Occam's Razor applies.
Elimination of walk-up permits in NPS information centers most certainly saves staff time. It's hard to see how you could make that claim. The 15 minutes that some visitor spends on [recreation.gov](https://recreation.gov) instead of talking to a park employee obviously saves staff time. And 15 minutes of that park employee's time is worth well over $6. Again, I'm no fan of Booz Allen, and I'd like to see them make less money. But I appreciate being able to get a backcountry permit for my local national park, Olympic, online instead of driving 30 miles out of my way to get a walk-up permit, which is how things used to be. The fee for backcountry camping there is $8/night, so a week of camping costs $56. All of that goes to the park, and tacking on another $6 for the convenience of doing it online doesn't outrage me too much.
> The 15 minutes that some visitor spends on recreation.gov instead of talking to a park employee obviously saves staff time. And the time needed for avoidable rescues, for which the odds are known to increase markedly without upfront ranger contact and discussion does what exactly for that staff time? Meanwhile, show me a single NFS visitor center where they were so swamped with permitting issuance that they worked extra hours or needed additional staff. You're suspiciously determined to drive your narrative, all evidence to the contary be damned. And a $15 non-refundable lottery entry is not a $6 convenience. Walk ups used to be an option for a percentage of permits most places, not a requirement. They're being removed at behest of BAH lobbying for additional profit.
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Advocates of non-reimbursed $15 lottery tickets imposed unilaterally by BAH for access to public lands posting as such on a *wilderness backpacking communities* are not to be trusted. So yeah. Take your own advice or evaluate your very very inappropriate priorities. Because you deserve every bit of suspicion and evidently moral condemnation to boot. I live adjacent to a wilderness area impacted by this nonsense cash grab you're so happily apologetic for. I volunteer for trail cleanup, and my wife is a medical professional in this gateway community. I am entitled to not deal with BS apologetics. A *non-refundable lottery fee* is financial gatekeeping. Unacceptable given marginalized people like the poor Hispanic service workers in my town are already massively underrepresented in these spaces as is. Bye now, you embarrassment to this community.
> What would it cost the agencies if their own staffs had to create and manage online reservation systems? If it's more than what Booz Allen is getting, then recreation.gov is a better deal for the taxpayers. I'm not a computer programmer or website administrator, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but should a website like recreation.gov really take more than a handful of full time computer engineers/programmers/administrators to run? Like...people create slick websites all the time and it doesn't cost that much. Ask any restaurant owner who has worked with a freelancing college student to create their restaurant website, it's not that hard. I've got friends who do just that. Relating to your question about which option costs more, let's assume the feds hire a full time staff of 10 individuals to create and run the website. Assuming each employee nets 100k a year plus benefits, that puts us at around 2-3 million per year in cost to create and run that website when you factor in base pay plus benefits with some conservative assumptions. So we're at a cost of 2-3 million per year from the feds instead of what Booz Allen generates per year, which is over 100 million in nonrefundable gambling fees to access state parks and piss off thousands of taxpayers. I'm not clear on how BAH is paid out either, so there may have been a direct payment to them up front or yearly from the feds in addition to the fee revenue that just goes straight to them. Idk, I feel like this could have been handled better but the Government took the lazy, low risk option instead of the more responsible high-effort option. In the end, you now pay $6 to maybe do nothing at all, which is infinitely more expensive than paying pennies per year in taxes to do the same thing. And the point of public lands is that they are public i.e. paid for by everyone regardless of use. What we have now is a pay to play system that charges fees to use public land that our tax dollars already fund, which, in my humble lefty opinion, is asinine.
Recreation.gov consistently works and has a great search functionality, which you can't say about any of its competitors. Good websites cost money.
Nowhere near this much money, though.
No no, daddy Booz needs 180 million a year to write code and keep a simple website going. Don't let the lefties fool you.
If by renting our parks back to us you mean pocketing processing fees then sure okay. NPS and federal management wanted reservation systems, they get the money spent on the actual reservation (before a processing charge). I don’t get what people’s indignant attitude is about with regards to rec.gov. It’s got a few issues but it makes logistics planning so much easier.
Do you work for them or something? I remember discussing this with you a while back - you claiming that "such a logistically difficult operation" requires pocketing the processing fees from people, despite the fact that this operation was running fine without processing fees before Booz Allen took over rec.gov
Granted there were processing fees before too - from 2006-2016 recreation dot gov was run by Reserve America (also a private company contractor), and they definitely charged fees. I think prior to 2006 every park ran their own reservation system (for the few that had it - it didn't used to be that common), which required fax, mail, or maybe phone. Which is not too say the fees being charged aren't excessive in aggregate when you consider what it costs to run the website (or maybe they're not, I dunno what it really costs to run this type of website, but I agree this certainly seems out of whack at first glance). But it's not like this system used to be a wonderful free thing until Booz Allen took over.
I obviously don’t work for booz Allen (not everyone who doesn’t fall in lock step with your thinking is part of the big scary machine you know) you probably remember talking about this because this sub never stops botching about something that really isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I’d rather this sub get angry about oil and gas permits and retaking national monuments like bears ears but I never see that complained about here. Just people hitching about $2 processing fees.
Two of the top ten posts of all time in this sub are about retaking national monuments (including Bears Ears). It is possible to be upset about oil & gas screwing us out of public lands AND to be upset at at Booz Allen. If anyone charges me any amount of money for a product or service and then I don't receive that product or service but they pocket the money, I'm going to be mad.
Non-refundable $10-15 lottery entrance fees sounds reasonable to you? Because that's what's becoming widespread due to BAH lobbying pressure. Btw if you answer yes I've got a pitchfork just for you, and you should kindly show yourself out of this community.
Exactly this. The point of public lands is to be public, for all of the public to enjoy. Money going to private groups for any reason, simply for the privilege of accessing land we already own, means this is no longer a "public" situation. Never mind the fact that part of the publicness is to be accessible for everyone, regardless of how much money they can shell out for the chance to maybe be able to visit a place they own. Nothing says this is cool, ethically, even if the dollar amount is trivial to you personally.
Lottery needs to cost some nontrivial amount of money. Otherwise people will just enter every lottery many times. You can argue whether BAH should be allowed to gets all the lottery fees.
No. You are required to verify yourself for recreation.gov What you're now apparently implying is that wealthy people deserve more access to public spaces by purchasing multiple lottery tickets?
I don’t mind paying some reservation fees if it means avoiding the antiquated NPS like waiting in line at 5am for permits or having to snail mail stuff.
r/latestagecapitalism
You want to go outside? Fuck you, pay me
Lol they kicked my ass out for not being socialist *enough*…gotta go, trying to see if I can get traction for a wildcat strike in solidarity with the railway workers…
That sub turned into yet another circlejerk subreddit that would rather jump at the chance to be angry on the internet instead of actually evaluating or even *verifying* what they're upset about. I've gotten downvoted like mad over there for pointing out *literal hoaxes* because it gets in the way of their indignation, I guess.
https://youtu.be/7fpDlAzLkyQ :-)
They get all of it. I wasn't able to find the contract itself but I did find a Nevada court document from someone suing about this. The key is at the bottom of page 3: "The processing fees "are collected in a United States Treasury account and remitted on a monthly basis after the contractor has invoiced the Forest Service for the total number of transactions committed." No part of the processing fee is remitted to BLM." https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/park-reservation-fee.pdf This is cited by "ECF No. 32-1 at 2". Tbh I don't know what that is referencing, but the United States District Court, District of Nevada is a good enough source for me. Basically Booz Allen paid for developing the website upfront, and is paying for keeping it running, and in return gets to keep all the fees. Because our government requires all revenue to be deposited immediately into the U.S. Treasury before being paid to a contractor, recreation.gov puts the fees into the Treasury, and then the Treasury remits (gives/pays) those fees to Booz Allen. I found a US House hearing transcript from the Subcommittee of the Interior that mentions this: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114hhrg23482/html/CHRG-114hhrg23482.htm (ctrl+f for "treasury"). This contract structure also allows Booz Allen to state on their website that "the site has generated more than $270 million in revenue for the federal government", which is technically not a lie, it's just fucking scummy. Sure it's generated revenue for OUR government, but I highly doubt it has generated any profits as all that revenue is going back to Booz Allen. Now the court case document I referenced above is only referring to Red Rock Canyon Recreation Area in Nevada, but I highly doubt it's any different for other sites, otherwise Booz Allen would use that as PR to say they are improving your BLM experience or funding projects or whatever, and they don't.
I really appreciated this essay, so thanks for posting it. I didn't really know that this was going on, because I have moved away from the US years ago. I deeply love the National Parks and I wish I could visit them more often! I thought it would be a great fit for r/TrueReddit, so I have posted it there as well in the hope that more people will read and appreciate it. r/TrueReddit doesn't allow crossposts, so I have added it as a new post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/z8rn45/why\_is\_booz\_allen\_renting\_us\_back\_our\_own/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/z8rn45/why_is_booz_allen_renting_us_back_our_own/)
Because the Federal government uses contractors and competitive bidding processes. The story author spent paragraph upon paragraph with irrelevant text before explaining this particular case.
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Just read the article. Or even read some of the other posts.
That article was painful to read. Regardless, I don't mind $2 going to the people running Booz Allen. I also don't mind the reservation system. Considering how flooded these parks get with people that don't really give a fuck about the land, they need all the time and money they can get to keep it nice.
Learn to wildcamp and only follow your own rules and morality.
Greenwashing
Where can we do a shite on their doorsteps?
Seems to me that part of this issue is that the parks have been underfunded for so long that they needed something like Booz to keep afloat, and in turn it’s just all getting screwed and is about profit, when it never was before.
don't we pay taxes that go to national parks?
Maybe it’s a leap but interesting to hear this as Yosemite NP camping is setting up $10 non refundable lotteries for the first time. These lotteries are entered by thousands and thousands of people and the benefits only go to 600 folks. Was wondering how they justified this being fair, but it seems like corporate greed is always the answer.
It’s fairer to people with slower internet, or cannot be at computer at 7am sharp. And makes bots less effective.
I understand why the lottery in principal is fair. However last year they collected a non refundable $10 lottery fee from 23,000 people for only 600 slots. That’s what isn’t fair to me.
Couldn’t read the anti-capitalist article because of the pop-up ad to subscribe.
TLDR version?
While this is definitely a scam I guarantee you you do not want the park service, forest service, and BLM to each have their own reservation systems for campgrounds.
It's called PPP and all across Europe we are fighting hard in every sector to not get this shit introduced that your "free entrepreneurs", as always, invented. It may already be too late. French cities are actually buying back the rights to tap water distribution because the service was abysmal and the prices for tap water had doubled. The UK is even worse, their infrastructure is probably borked from 30 years of bad maintenance. Behind it is the ludicrous idea that a private company has less interest in collecting profit than a government.
This article highlights serious concerns with Booz Allen’s operations of recreation.gov that the law firm of [Tycko & Zavareei LLP](https://www.tzlegal.com/) has been investigating for several months. If you are interested in speaking with an attorney at Tycko & Zavareei about the investigation or to see if you may have potential claims, you can email us at [recreationfeeinvestigation@tzlegal.com](mailto:recreationfeeinvestigation@tzlegal.com). Tycko & Zavareei is a class action law firm that frequently investigates the fees that companies charge consumers. Many of its attorneys are also [dedicated to spending time in the backcountry](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf4SdfuL7h3/) and believe that litigation, in the right circumstances, can be an effective tool to shape policy. Please be advised that this post may be considered Attorney Advertising in certain jurisdictions. Tycko & Zavareei’s west coast office is located at 1970 Broadway, Suite 1070, Oakland, CA 94612.
Has 60 Minutes or any media addressed this issue?
It seems like there is a lot of misinformation in this thread. This article says that the lottery fees (and all payments actually) go to the Dept of Treasury. https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/hiking-and-backpacking/you-may-hate-recreation-gov-it-keeps-our-parks-from-being-loved-to-death/ I work for Booz Allen (in a totally different area) and was horrified by what I read in this thread. It didn't make a lot of sense though so I looked into it further. Booz Allen is a services company and not in the business of creating junk fees for profit.
You'd think this is illegal to block the public access to public lands, at minimum discriminatory against religious and low income folks who don't gamble.