Tax Cuts and User Fees

A number of recent letters condemn various fees for using public facilities, ranging from parking fees at Ventura Harbor to fees for entering national forests. I readily understand anger over fees for services that were, until recently, free. However, these fees are a natural consequence of voting for politicians and ballot propositions that cut our taxes.

With reduced revenues for maintaining parking lots, hiking trails and other government facilities, fees are needed to cover the shortfall.

Remember your anger over fees next year when you vote for Congress and the president. Will you vote for those who would cut taxes further and make higher fees necessary?

As for special free passes for Ventura County residents to enter Los Padres National Forest (Ventura County letters, Sept. 5), remember that our national forests are funded from both fees paid by visitors and federal taxes. Thus, our local forests are also funded by taxpayers who live in Maine and Florida.

The most significant factor contributing to the need for fees for our national forests, however, is the subsidized use of federal lands by the lumber, paper and cattle industries, all of which use those lands without paying either the full costs or the fair market prices for that use. The current majority in Congress keeps blocking attempts by the Interior Department to update user charges and reduce these corporate subsidies. Remember that, too, when you vote next year.

DAVID E. ROSS

Oak Park

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The Sept. 5 letter “Federal Tax Relief” by Paul Leavens, chairman of the Ventura County Republican Party, congratulating Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) for his diligence in working on the tax reduction plan that would reduce taxes for the wealthy is typical of the narrow range of vision Republicans offer the citizens of our county.

Mr. Leavens cites three aspects of the Republican give-back-to-the-wealthy tax plan: capital gains, the inheritance tax and the marriage penalty tax. All of these tax forgiveness proposals would further increase the division between the rich and poor that has made a middle-class lifestyle in America dependent on two incomes.

We were interested to learn that Rep. Gallegly is working on something. His 16 years in Congress have produced little more than his self-congratulatory newsletters, mailed at our expense. His availability to his constituents is diverted to his office staff, his own persona rarely seen in the county. Town hall meetings? Card table on street corners? Face-to-face debates with challengers? Voice-to-voice telephone call? Mr. Gallegly has been otherwise engaged.

BRAD SMITH

President, Greater Oxnard

Organization of Democrats

Oxnard