Congress surrenders control of ski area fees to Forest Service
H.R. 1084 — Ski Hill Resources for Economic Development Act · Filed by Joe Neguse (D-CO) · 9 cosponsors · Introduced Feb 6, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill creates a special federal account to retain ski area permit fees collected by the U.S. Forest Service. Instead of sending those fees to the general Treasury, ski resorts' rental payments stay in a dedicated account and are automatically available to the Forest Service for spending on ski area administration, facility maintenance, wildfire prevention, and visitor services—without requiring Congress to appropriate the money each year. The ski area operator's home forest gets 80% of its own fees; 20% goes to other national forests.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core mechanism is to redirect ski area permit fees away from general Treasury appropriations into a dedicated account controlled by the Forest Service, giving ski areas and their host forests direct access to revenue without annual congressional approval. This is a form of revenue autonomy for a specific industry sector.
What the text implies
- By allowing ski area fees to be retained and spent without annual congressional appropriation, the bill reduces legislative oversight of how public land revenue is deployed and may entrench ski area operations as a priority over competing uses of national forest resources.
- The 4-year availability window for retained fees may incentivize the Forest Service to spend money quickly to avoid losing it, rather than strategically allocating it across long-term forest management priorities.
- The bill permits the Forest Service to reduce the local ski area's share from 80% to 60% if funds exceed 'reasonable needs,' but does not define 'reasonable needs,' creating discretionary authority that could shift revenue away from ski areas if priorities change.
- Wildfire prevention and hazardous fuels reduction are explicitly excluded from permitted uses of ski area fees, potentially leaving ski areas vulnerable to wildfire risk while other recreation sites benefit from fee-funded prevention.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Ordinary citizens may benefit from better-maintained ski areas and trails funded by retained fees, and wildfire prevention near recreation sites serves public safety. However, the bill shifts control of public revenue from Congress (accountable to voters) to the Forest Service (executive agency), reducing legislative oversight of how ski-area fees are spent and potentially favoring ski industry interests over broader public land management priorities.
Who stands to gain
- ski area operators (faster access to maintenance and improvement funding)
- Forest Service (discretionary spending authority without annual appropriations)
- national forests hosting ski areas (80% of their own permit revenue retained locally)
Named in the bill
U.S. Forest Service, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of the Treasury, National Forest System, Omnibus Parks and Public Lands Management Act of 1996, Granger-Thye Act, Forest Service Facility Realignment and Enhancement Act of 2005, Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018
Where it stands
9 cosponsors: 5 Democrats, 3 Republicans, 1 Independents.
- Feb 6, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Feb 6, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Natural Resources and House Committee on Agriculture · Congress.gov: “Referred to the Committee on Agriculture, and in addition to the Committee on Natural Resources, for a period…”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 lobbying clients named this bill on 3 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $80,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 4 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 41% of bills with at least one filing.
Joe Neguse, the sponsor, reported $1,076,229 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- University of New Hampshire — $40,000 on 1 filing
- Western States Tourism Policy Council — $40,000 on 2 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 16, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (6,061 characters) on Sep 18, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 16, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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