State Parks Day-Use Fees Have Privatised Public Beaches By Tollbooth, And The Pattern Of Who Uses The Coast Has Changed Accordingly

What The Legislature Approved As A Temporary Fiscal Adjustment Has Hardened Into A Permanent Pricing Model That Excludes Working Californians From Their Own Coastline

For Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat. London satirical journalism has covered the incremental privatisation of public space in the UK and recognises the mechanism operating here in a different register.

CALIFORNIA – The California State Parks day-use fee structure, which has risen approximately 180 per cent in real terms since the 2008-2012 budget crisis period when it was temporarily increased for fiscal reasons, has produced a measurable change in who uses the California coast. The change is not dramatic in any single year. It is cumulative and now documented: participation in state beach recreation has declined among households in the lower two income quintiles and increased among households in the upper two income quintiles. The coast has not changed. The pricing has changed. The distribution of access has changed with the pricing.

The Tollbooth Privatisation

A genuinely public beach is one that all members of the public can access without a fee that is material relative to their income. At 15-20 dollars per visit, the current fee structure is not material to a household earning 150,000 dollars annually. It is material to a household earning 40,000 dollars annually, where a weekend beach visit for four people costs 30-40 dollars before food, transport, or equipment. The beach is nominally public. The access is de facto priced. The effective privatisation has occurred without any property transaction and without any formal policy decision to exclude lower-income households. It has occurred through fifteen years of fee increases that were each individually modest and cumulatively transformative.

The Free-Market Analysis

The free-market position on this is specific and important: what has happened to California’s state beaches is not a free-market outcome. It is a state-managed resource whose access has been restricted through state-imposed pricing, and the pricing has been set without regard for the distributional consequences. A genuine free-market approach to public resource management would include explicit accounting for distributional effects. The current pricing is not market pricing. It is administrative pricing that happens to produce the same effect as market exclusion.

What Should Happen

A income-indexed pass system, similar to the federal “America the Beautiful” pass programme but with state-specific income tiering, would restore access equity without requiring general fund subsidy at the current level. The Independent Institute‘s California policy work has modelled comparable approaches.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/ | Further: Independent Institute