Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.Last week, conservatives joined liberals in the Nebraska Legislature to overwhelmingly override the governor's veto of a bill proposing a 25 percent increase in user fees for Nebraska parks.
Great Goldwater's Ghost! Conservatives supporting a 25 percent cost increase? In this economy?
One conservative who obviously did not support the fee increase was Gov. Dave Heineman, whose veto was trampled 42-5.
The governor would not stand for my accusation that he vetoed the bill to make a political point.
“I know we want our parks to be gems,” Heineman said. “This is just not the right time to put more of a burden on Nebraskans.”
The measure increases the cost of a season pass by $5 and a day pass by $1. It still leaves Nebraska's parks as the cheapest in the nation.
Heineman offered me a quick course in his Finance 101:
“How do you sell more? You definitely don't raise the price.”
And there we were — the point in the whole park-fee debate:
How could so many avowed fiscal conservatives in the Legislature come to what seemed to be a significantly different conclusion on a government funding issue from our fiscally conservative governor?
I offered another shade of basic finance to Heineman:
People won't pay to come to a park that's falling apart.
“I'm very mindful of that, and I understand the concept of depreciating infrastructure,” he said. “But there is a right time and a wrong time to address that. I just feel this is the wrong time.
“People are saying ‘Hey, I'm controlling my spending, you need to control yours,' ” he said. “We did that all over our budget. We made tough priority cuts.”
Nebraska Game and Parks has lost 41 jobs over the past two years. State Sen. Mark Christensen of Imperial, a conservative's conservative, argued that Nebraska's parks already are showing signs of neglect. He said that without fee increases as fuel and other prices rise, more employees of an already-overstretched staff would have to be cut.
State Sen. Tony Fulton of Lincoln, another fiscal conservative, said he voted against a fee hike for Game and Parks two years ago “because of overwhelming opposition from my constituents.”
This year, though, he said, it had become clear that Game and Parks funding had been reduced so many times over recent years that the agency no longer could perform some of its essential duties.
“I know from experience they just couldn't keep up with all they had to do,” Fulton said. “They've been cut and cut. But once you cut and see blood, you've gone too far.”
Fulton said his constituents saw the increase as fair. He said he preferred the idea of increasing user fees for two reasons:
“The user is paying for the service,” he said. “Also, we draw people from outside the state to many of our parks. With user fees, they can help pay for our parks rather than pulling more of the money from our general fund.”
That, Fulton predicted, would have happened in the next state budget to keep Game and Parks operating “at the level we've come to expect.”
“They need the money,” he said. “I don't want to see our sales tax and income tax, which are already the highest in the area, get raised to fund this.
“You have a critical need, you don't want to raise taxes, so you look to user fees, fees that still are the lowest in the country. In my mind, that is fiscally conservative.”
Contact the writer:
402-444-1129, robert.nelson@owh.com
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