Business Fees to Be Raised in National Parks : Environment: Interior Secretary Lujan announces plan to increase licensing prices for concessionaires. The change would give government more revenue and more control over property.

Businesses operating inside the country’s national parks will soon be paying more for the privilege, Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. said Thursday in announcing a new policy to negotiate higher fees from concessionaires.

Lujan said he would like to see the average franchise fee at least double from the current average of 2.5% of gross receipts. Some concessionaires, he said, may have to pay as much as 20% to 25%.

“We are not looking to break anyone,” Lujan said, but added that concessionaires will now be expected to pay a “fair and equitable” fee.

The new policy is designed to increase government revenues and control over profitable businesses, like the Yosemite Park & Curry Co., that operate inside national parks.

Last year, for example, Yosemite Park & Curry, which enjoys the lowest franchise rate in the country, paid $635,000 to the federal government from proceeds of $84.7 million. Currently, 562 businesses collect gross revenues of $500 million and pay the federal government $12.5 million in franchise and user fees.

“I’m very well satisfied with the system, I’m just not satisfied with the (financial) return,” Lujan said.

Lujan said he hopes some of the increased revenues might be reinvested in the parks, but that would require new federal legislation. Concessionaires’ contracts come up for renewal at various times and are negotiated separately.

The government will also encourage more competitive bidding for the concessions, Lujan said, by restricting concessionaires’ preferential right of renewal for contracts and by using private sector analysts to review the bids. Lujan said that he also plans to shorten the terms of the contracts, some of which run for as long as 30 years.

He also said he would ask Congress to enact legislation that would make it easier for the Park Service to acquire facilities by eliminating concessionaires’ “possessory interest” in facilities they build or improve on park property.

Spokesmen for the concessionaires said that they were “disappointed and surprised” by the secretary’s announcement, while environmentalists said the policy should go even further.

“We think that this is not good in the end either for the national parks, for the concessionaires or for the American public,” said Allan Howe, spokesman for the Conference of National Park Concessioners.

Howe said that, although consumer prices within the parks are not likely to rise as a result of the new policy, “There may come a point where businesses ask if it is worth it for them to continue to operate at all.”

He pointed out that all normal business activities--including setting prices--must be approved by the National Park Service. “These are exclusive businesses,” Howe said, “but the price for that is that they are tightly controlled businesses.”

Environmental groups welcomed the steps but stressed that legislative action is necessary.

“What we need is a legislative overhaul that will allow the Park Service to protect natural resources instead of being blocked by the business interests of the concessionaires,” said George T. Frampton, president of the Wilderness Society.

In December, Lujan placed a moratorium on renewals of concession contracts until a task force he had established had reviewed the entire system of national park concessions. The new policy largely adopts the task force recommendations, which were released in April, and reflects concerns included in an Interior Department inspector general’s report this spring.

Lujan announced that he would lift the moratorium and that the department would go to work renegotiating the concessions renewals currently on hold.

The concession contract for Yosemite Park and Curry, a subsidiary of MCA Inc., will come up for renewal in 1993.