§101917 Franchise Fees

Summary

Concession contracts must require the company to pay a franchise fee or other money set by the Secretary. The fee is based on what the contract’s privileges are worth to the company, looking at the company’s chance to earn net profit compared to the money it invests and its contract duties. Earning money for the United States comes after the goals of protecting park units and giving visitors needed services at fair prices. The contract must say how much will be paid for its whole term and can only be changed for extraordinary, unplanned events. Contracts longer than 5 years must allow the Secretary or the company to ask to reopen the fee in those cases, and they must use binding arbitration if they can’t agree. All fees go into a special Treasury account. Twenty percent of the account can be spent across the whole System by the Secretary without more approval. Each System unit gets a subaccount credited with 80 percent of the fees collected there. Those subaccount funds can be used at that unit for visitor services and urgent resource work and stay available until spent. The Secretary can lower a unit’s share for a fiscal year if revenues exceed reasonable needs, but not below 60 percent.