Cabin owners get break in land lease increases

By Susan Gallagher - 01/08/2009

cabins will rise only modestly this year, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said Thursday, offering stopgap relief to cabin owners braced for colossal increases tied to reappraisal of national forest parcels.

In challenging the big increases that loomed, cabin owners said a 2000 measure passed by Congress should have prevented steep hikes but missed the mark. Montana Democrat Jon Tester and several U.S. Senate colleagues last month asked Rey to suspend or delay higher fees for cabin sites in national forests around the country. Cabin owners range from "people of modest means who have had a cabin for three generations to (actor) Bruce Willis," who has a cabin in Idaho, said Rey, head of the Forest Service.

"Some of these people are rich, some are not so rich," Tester said Thursday.

The fee increases faced by cabin owners threatened to push some out of the forest getaways, Tester wrote Rey in a letter signed by Sens. Jon Barrasso of Wyoming, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Maria Cantwell of Washington.

Anita Saunders of Bozeman told The Billings Gazette last summer that she had doubts about continued ownership of a Gallatin National Forest cabin because based on an appraisal, the annual land fee of $1,800 was to triple over three years. The rustic cabin on one-third of an acre next to Portal Creek was bought in the 1940s by Saunders' in-laws.

The annual federal fee for cabin sites averages about $1,300, according to the Forest Service.

Increases this year will be tied to inflation, giving cabin owners some stability while Congress has the opportunity to re-examine the Cabin User Fee Fairness Act of 2000, Rey said in a telephone interview.

He said there are about 40,000 cabin sites in national forests around the country. Land for cabins became available through a program begun in 1915.

"We wanted neighbors, so we provided opportunities for people to build cabins in the national forest, but we didn't sell pieces of the national forest, obviously," Rey said.

A federal study in the 1990s found reappraisal of the cabin sites infrequent and the government inadequately compensated. Lands then were reappraised and the Forest Service posted new rates, some reflecting increases of 1,000 percent, Rey said.

"If you're a renter, a 1,000 percent increase will get your attention pretty quick," he said.

In his letter, Tester said the stated purpose of the 2000 cabin law was to "preserve the opportunity for individual and family oriented recreation," a goal to be met by ensuring that lease rates for cabin property were fair.

Cabin owners and the Forest Service disagreed over whether land appraisal should include consideration of the cabin rules imposed as a condition of using a national forest for a vacation home. Among other things the federal rules prohibit offering cabins for rent, set occupancy requirements and limit the alteration of cabins.

Re-examining the 2000 law in the last session of Congress would have been premature because appraisal data were insufficient, the senators said. Now the availability of data has improved, they said.