The following is a speech given at the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame (Reno, Nevada) induction ceremony by Robert E. Ham - a founder of CORVA - for a great friend of motorized recreation.
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Eugene (Geno) Chappie
It was 1969 or so when a bunch of off road vehicle clubs got together to form CORVA, the California Off Road Vehicle Association. We knew we had to get organized because we could see that things were changing, and we knew that ORV people were going to have to organize and stand together to protect our right to participate in our favorite activity.
The BLM was being phased out because their old mission as the “Land Office” was winding down. Those desperate bureaucrats recognized that the emerging ecology movement would provide them with a critically needed relevancy, and they immediately began proposing new rules, regulations and fees on us, where none had previously existed.
At the same time the State Park System had already closed several popular recreation areas to off road use and was setting their sights on closing the very popular Pismo Dunes.
Concurrently, housing developers began expanding urban limits by converting what had previously been popular riding areas into new suburban subdivisions.
With all this going on, we also heard about legislation that was already most of the way through the legislature that would require all non-street legal vehicles to register with the DMV just so the state could raise money, and people could have a way of reporting vandals who were supposedly riding dirt bikes all over the new neighborhoods that were being carved out of former riding areas throughout the state.
That particular bill failed passage only because the legislator who carried it had a heart attack and the bill died when he passed away.
The next year, I was summoned along with several other Off Road organization leaders to meet with Assemblyman Gene Chappie. I was told that Chappie is jeeper and snowmobiler and wants to help us. We all sat down in a small office on the second floor of the state capitol building in Sacramento and he began speaking to us. He was quite blunt, over the years I would come to find that was but one of his admirable traits. You always knew where you stood with Geno, because he didn’t pull punches.
He knew he was talking to a bunch of people who had been enjoying the outdoors on dirtbikes, jeeps and buggies with relatively few rules and restrictions for years, and that was part of what drew us to this activity. He didn’t pull any punches when his first words to use were: “ITS ALL OVER NOW, things will never be the same”.
He went on to explain that “There are people out there who want to shut us down altogether and it is coming from both parties. People in this capitol don’t understand us, and they are ready to drop the hammer”. He assured us that the votes were there the previous year to pass the bill that died with the author. He told us he had a plan, and he had already started discussions that could divert this effort to regulate us, into a program that would ensure that we would always have places where we could enjoy our sport.
What he presented to us was his idea to go along with the idea to make us register our vehicles. We were going to lose that battle anyway, so we need to get something in return. And that is where Chappie began to lay out his game-plan to use this opportunity to put the State of California in the role of promoting off road use, rather than trying to shut us down.
His idea was to create a new registration program with a fee that would go to the Department of Parks and Recreation to acquire land where we could legally operate our off road vehicles. We were pretty skeptical. But Geno was pretty persuasive.
He kept bringing us back to the reality that just not wanting bad things to happen to us, were not going to prevent bad things from happening to us. He insisted we had to be proactive. And boy was he right.
He had already convinced a fairly environmental-leaning legislator to become a co-author of this milestone legislation. Before we left his office, most of us agreed to help him and the crusade began. Later that year, the Chappie-Z’berg Off Highway Vehicle Act of 1971 was approved by both houses of the legislature. Governor Reagan signed it into law in December of 1971 in a ceremony on the North steps of the State Capitol that was attended by bikers, 4 wheelers, and buggy owners, along with a display of our jeeps, buggies and dirtbikes.
Chappie’s willingness to bluntly tell us we had to get proactive and to have a plan or we would be sunk in less than a decade was the spark that created the nation’s first off road vehicle program. His legacy is a program that now collects and spends just south of $100 million per year, in support of 8 ORV Recreation Areas from the Feather River in Northern California to Imperial County in the Southeast corner of the state.
Since 1972 the program has collected and spent an astounding one billion dollars from registrations; fuel taxes; and park admission fees. They manage 125,000 acres in 8 ORV areas and were host to 4.5 million visitors in 2008. A staff of 250 state employees operates these facilities, and administers a grant program that provides assistance to the Forest Service and BLM; cities and counties that provide ORV opportunities; and to special districts and non-profits to deliver services that promote the use of off road recreation.
Without the availability of this money flowing to help manage federal ORV areas, the feds would have closed millions more acres, and permits for races and large events would have ceased to exist years ago.
But Geno didn’t do one bill for us and then pronounce the problem solved and go on to deal with other issues. He was an off roader at heart, and this first bill was just the start of his long range vision.
A year after he got the landmark legislation that got the state into the business of promoting, rather than fighting, off road, he went after another source of money to make the program go. Again he teamed up with an environmentalist legislator and went after the portion of gasoline taxes that were paid into the highway fund by these newly registered off road vehicles. Since these vehicles were not allowed on highways with just their green sticker registration, Chappie argued that their portion of fuel taxes should go to the OFF HIGHWAY and not the HIGHWAY fund. Chappie approached Senator Arlen Gregorio to co-author bill, and by 1973 all of the fuel taxes that were estimated to be used by these green stickered vehicles went into the off highway vehicle fund that was created by his first bill.
That bill passed relatively easily, since we could argue that with the new registration program we now knew how many of these vehicles were out there. It was a “no-brainer” argument that our taxes should not go to highways that we are not allowed to use with our green sticker registrations. He used the boating program, and the aeronautics fund as examples of the precedent that had already been set. He got the bill and the money from this source immediately increased the size of the program to a level where the Department of Parks could actually start acquiring land.
The next year, Chappie set out to bring us our biggest prize. After having carefully laid out his arguments in previous years that it was just not right to put the fuel taxes from off road vehicles into the highway fund when the fuel was not used on a highway, he carried this logic forward in his next bill that would declare all fuel taxes that street-legal off road vehicles used when they were travelling off of the highways should also go to the off-road fund. His bill required the Department of Motor Vehicles along with the Department of Transportation and the Department of Parks and Recreation to do a study that would determine how much fuel was used by jeeps, dual sport bikes, and other street legal vehicles in recreational off road travel.
By the time this bill was enacted in 1974, the small fee to register ORVs from his original bill, which amounted to $15 every two years, or $7.50 per year, was a miniscule part of the total revenue that was now supporting the program. By now, most of the ORV groups that did not originally go along with Geno’s idea of how to make ORV a relevant player in state politics were fully supportive and became true believers. (I won’t embarrass those groups here by mentioning them by name as they have long since acknowledged that their initial opposition to the original bill was very short-sighted).
Over the next 5 or 6 years, Chappie continued to put pressure on the Department of Parks and Recreation to move forward with the program, and even though a very supportive Governor Reagan had now turned over the reins of power to a far less supportive Jerry Brown, California went on to create a State Vehicular Recreation Area at the former Pismo State Beach; at Clay Pit near Lake Oroville.
They were acquiring a brand new ORV area at Gorman on the top of the grapevine; at Carnegie Park in the East Bay are; and they took over the management of the privately-owned Hollister Hills Motorcycle Park that was in danger of being sold to developers.
Next they would begin acquiring BLM and private lands in near Ocotillo Wells to carve out yet another State Vehicular Recreation Area. All of these were dedicated to ORV recreation some of which are among the largest units of the entire State Park System.
When Geno wasn’t busy helping us in Off Roading, he was working hard on water and agricultural issues on behalf of his district which included the foothill and mountain communities east of Sacramento. In 1980 his local supporters convinced him to run for Congress so he could be there to help his old friend Ronald Reagan, who was making his run for the presidency that year. In 1980 both Chappie and Reagan won their elections. Chappie’s well known sense of humor and his ability to bring sides together served him well in Washington and he quickly became a popular member of the House of Representatives.
While he was in the Congress, Geno started promoting the same kind of idea for the nation that had worked so well in California. He was talking up the idea of taking the federal fuel taxes that were used off-road and create a federal trails program. The idea caught on with the AMA and the American Recreation Coalition. Years later they would enlist the support of New York Senator Moynihan, and then finally the good people at the Blue Ribbon Coalition announced that their friend Senator Steve Symms of Idaho would introduce the bill. It was passed as part of the federal transportation authorization, and in every re-authorization since, the Federal Trails Program has been kept.
By the time he was finishing his 3rd term of in the Congress, the grind of cross country commuting began wearing on his then 67 year old body. Chappie announced that he did not plan to seek re-election to a 4th term.
Almost as soon as he returned to California with the intent of retiring from public life, he received a call from Governor Deukmejian. A vacancy had occurred on the Off Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Commission that was created to oversee the Department of Parks and Recreation on the administration of the off-road program that still bears his name. Chappie accepted the appointment and served alongside another Hall of Famer, Ed Waldheim of CORVA.
Very quickly his colleagues on the Commission elevated him to the Chairmanship of the Commission and he continued to provide extraordinary service to the community of off roaders, most of whom were not even involved in the sport 17 years earlier when he laid out his vision to provide us the resources to make sure that there will always be a place to ride and race in California.
Sadly, Geno passed away 5 years after returning to California in 1992 at age 72.
While Chappie is remembered for many of his legislative accomplishments over the years, when old-timers around the capitol gather to talk about the old days, the conversation always turns towards his sense of humor. “Geno stories” are some of the most frequently repeated instances of how that place worked when things actually got done. It was people like Geno, who counted among his close friends both Republicans and Democrats. He was as likely to be seen joking with Governor Reagan as he was with Willie Brown, both of them counted him as friends and both would ask him for help when important legislation needed to be hammered out.
He was one of the legislature’s true optimists, who always could find a way to put a positive spin on any situation. To sum that up, I could relay a story that was recently told to me by another of his legislative colleagues from those days. When he and Chappie were walking precincts to help a friend get elected to the State Senate in a Central Valley district that notoriously favored the other party, Chappie remarked about how well he thought they were being received by saying that wherever they went people were encouraging them on by giving them half of a V for victory.
And that my friends is classic Gene Chappie, it gives me great pleasure and goose-bumps to see his picture go up on that wall as our newest member of the Off Road Motorsports Hall of Fame.
GAO Report on OHV Recreation
At the end of July, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on OHV recreation, prepared at the request of the House Natural Resources Committee, was released to the general public. GAO investigators interviewed agency personnel, OHV rider and industry representatives and environmental group representatives. GAO issued a number of findings in terms of OHV recreation on public lands, but frankly, none of the findings were a surprise to us.
GAO found that OHV recreation is growing in popularity and that more Americans are seeking access to federal public lands via their OHVs. Second, the report found that the federal land agencies could do a better job of providing signage and general outreach to the recreating public so that visitors to public lands have a better understanding of where they can and cannot ride their OHVs. The report also focused attention on the inadequacies of law enforcement and the inconsistent scale of fines and penalties for inappropriate behavior on public lands. GAO found that the land agencies were stretched, both in terms of financial resources and personnel, and that other pressing concerns, such as fighting wildfires, apprehending drug criminals and border control issues kept agency personnel from devoting the necessary time to make public lands more accessible to recreation visitors.
GAO looked into the issue of environmental damage caused by OHVs and found such damage is far less than some observers believed to be the case. Another finding was that agency personnel work well with OHV user groups on trail maintenance projects.
The report's conclusions confirm what we have known for a long time about OHV recreation on public lands and provide further reason to continue working on our priority issues. ARRA intends to carry on our efforts to support law enforcement reform legislation as well as seek additional funding for better signage, maps and trail maintenance. Working with the Congress and our land agencies, we can create an environment where OHV recreation can continue to grow in popularity as more American families look to explore and enjoy the great outdoors.
Forest Service and BLM Outreach
Federal land agencies seem to be taking to heart the recommendations of the GAO Report we just discussed. The Forest Service and BLM in Nevada have jointly launched a new advertising campaign. Utilizing highway billboards along with radio spots to be aired in September to coincide with the fall hunting season, the theme emphasizes appropriate behavior with the overall message, "Use your Power Responsibly - Stay on Trails."
Subject: AMA Expresses Concerns Over Health Care Debate
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| The AMA Expresses Concern with Health Care Debate |
Take Action! |
| Contact your Senators and Representative today! |
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Millions of on-highway and off-highway motorcyclists -- as well as all-terrain vehicle (ATV) riders -- may be adversely impacted by the various heath care bills currently under consideration in Congress. The AMA opposes any legislation that may restrict the freedoms of millions of riders enjoying an active lifestyle.
Motorcyclists and ATV riders cherish personal freedom and responsibility when it comes to enjoying their passion for riding. As Congress continues to deliberate on health care reform, the AMA needs your help in urging your elected officials not to abdicate the rights of the insured to an unelected commission or board, which will render final decisions regarding appropriate medical coverage for individuals who ride as a mode of transportation or for recreation (e.g., denial of a procedure). We must remain vigilant, thereby helping to ensure that motorcyclists and ATV riders will continue to be able to pursue their chosen recreational pursuit without the addition of unneeded prohibitions, limitations or mandates stemming from the health care legislation under consideration.
There is precedent for us to be concerned with regarding any health care legislation coming from Washington. For example in 1996, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that was intended to ensure non-discrimination in health coverage in the group market. However, when it came to implementing the law, the Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service and the Health Care Financing Administration - now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services - issued a rule allowing insurers to deny health benefits for an otherwise covered injury that results from certain types of recreational activities, such as skiing, horseback riding, snowmobiling or motorcycling. Even though the AMA has fought this discriminatory rule with legislation, this indicates what could happen if a new health care bill is implemented by bureaucrats in Washington using biased data.
To voice your concern regarding the various health care bills, it is imperative that you contact your elected officials. The fastest way to reach your members of Congress is to call them. You can find contact information for your elected officials on AmericanMotorcyclist.com, click on "Rights," then "Issues & Legislation," and enter your zip code in the "Find your Officials" box. Additionally, a prewritten e-mail is available for you to send to your officials by following the "Take Action" option and entering your information.
All AMA members and anyone else who enjoys an active lifestyle is urged to contact their elected officials and to tell them to protect the freedoms that riders cherish from being dictated by Washington bureaucrats.
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The Obama administration today appealed a Wyoming federal judge's ruling that threw out the controversial 2001 roadless rule and its protections for the vast majority of the country's undeveloped forest areas. The administration is challenging a decision last August by U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer tossing the roadless rule. Environmental groups had already appealed Brimmer's ruling, but they pressured the Obama administration to join their efforts. During the presidential campaign last fall, then-Sen. Barack Obama expressed his support for the 2001 roadless rule.
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The state legislature and the Governor have "borrowed" ANOTHER $ 22.0 million ($ 90 million was "borrowed" earlier this year) to help balance the state's budget this week.
See related post on July 1, 2009 on this site.
Below is from Don Amador - Blue Ribbon Coalition:
Based on feedback from a number of riders wanting to know the bottom line on the OHV Program and the State Park System, below is a “quick and dirty” overview of the status as it stands today.
OHMVR – The Good – The core OHV program (SVRAs and grants – approx. 60 million dollars) stays intact.
OHMVR - The Bad - $112 million dollars “borrowed” from several special accounts. Who knows when it will be repaid? The prospect of purchasing new lands for OHV at anytime in the near future looks grim.
STATE PARKS - More Bad - They take a $52 million dollar hit (or 21% reduction) for this year and next. Park administration will wait until after Labor Day to close up to 100 or more non-SVRA units.
5 MONTH BUDGET CYCLE – Even Worse - Sacramento will have to do this all over again (another round of budget cuts at best guess) in a few months.
Urge Your Representative to Support the RTP
“Dear Colleague” Letter is an Opportunity for Your Member to Support the Recreational Trails Program
The Recreational Trails Program (RTP), which funds the development and maintenance of thousands of miles of motorized trails, needs to be reauthorized. The RTP exists and is funded as part of legislation that authorizes Federal surface transportation programs for highways, highway safety, and transit. The most recent reauthorization, enacted in 2005, will expire this year, meaning that a new authorization bill must be approved.
Representatives Mike Michaud (D-ME) and Tom Petri (R-WI) are circulating a letter in support of continued and increased funding for the RTP in transportation reauthorization legislation and are asking other members of Congress to sign on to show their support as well. Please click the Take Action button below to send an email to your Representative encouraging him or her to sign the letter in support of the RTP.
Click here to view the letter.
Send a letter to the following decision maker(s):
U. S. House of Representatives
Below is the sample letter:
Subject: Please Sign Dear Colleague in Support the Recreational Trails Program
Dear [decision maker name automatically inserted here],
As a constituent and a member of Americans for Responsible Recreational Access I write to urge you to sign on to the dear colleague letter being circulated by Representatives Michaud and Petri in support of the Recreational Trails Program (RTP). To get a copy of the letter or to sign on please contact Shawn Legendre (Michaud) at shawn.legendre@mail.house.gov or (202) 225-6306. Sign on deadline is Friday, July 17th.
The RTP was established as a provision of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 and was subsequently reauthorized in 1998 and in 2005. The program uses a portion of funds generated by motorized off-highway trail users who pay the gas tax on any fuel they purchase for use in their off-highway vehicles to fund trail building, maintenance and other trail-related expenses. It should also be noted that the RTP requires that 30% of program funds must be dedicated to non-motorized uses with an additional 40% for mixed-use trails that may or may not include motorized uses.
Many various and diverse recreation interests strongly support the RTP as evidenced by a recent CRT letter to Congressional Leadership which included signatures from nearly 300 international, national, state and local recreation organizations. Motorized, hiking, horseback riding, bicycling and an array of other recreation interests were represented on the letter. The broad su pport for the program is a testament to its success.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
LAS VEGAS, Nevada – Under initiatives announced today by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), federal agencies will work with western leaders to designate tracts of U.S. public lands in the West as prime zones for utility-scale solar energy development, fund environmental studies, open new solar energy permitting offices and speed reviews of industry proposals. Link to maps of Solar Energy Study Areas.
“President Obama’s comprehensive energy strategy calls for rapid development of renewable energy, especially on America’s public lands,” said Secretary Salazar. “This environmentally-sensitive plan will identify appropriate Interior-managed lands that have excellent solar energy potential and limited conflicts with wildlife, other natural resources or land users. The two dozen areas we are evaluating could generate nearly 100,000 megawatts of solar electricity. With coordinated environmental studies, good land-use planning and zoning and priority processing, we can accelerate responsible solar energy production that will help build a clean-energy economy for the 21st century.”
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