Crank up the Ventures, catch a gnarly wave and hang 10: A federal magistrate in Eugene dismissed criminal charges Friday against two surfers who refused to pay a $3 recreational access fee at the entrance to the Oregon Dunes last summer.
Magistrate Thomas Coffin said the U.S. Forest Service has no legal right to collect a fee from people who are merely traveling through the Siuslaw National Forest to get somewhere else. He said such a charge amounts to a toll on a public road rather than a fee to recreate in a national forest.
"As the defendents in this case did not engage in a recreational use of any Forest Service facilities or property, they were not subject to the fee in question," Coffin said in his six-page ruling.
"We're stoked beyond belief. We're simply amped," one of the surfers, Robert Maris, said after Friday's ruling. "In my heart, all along, I believed we would be vindicated."
"Now I can hold my head up high," said the other surfer, Alan Smith. "I never set out to break the law. This issue was always about public access to public beaches.
But while he dismissed charges against the Eugene surfers, Coffin also said the Forest Service has the right to collect fees from people who use national forest recreational facilities, such as hiking trails and the dunes.
Nevertheless, the surfers' attorney said Coffin's ruling will force the Forest Service to take a hard look at its three-year pilot "fee demonstration" program, which was launched last summer.
"This will set a tremendous precedent nationwide," Eugene laywer Dan Stotter said. "This is the first case in which recreation fees have faced a court challenge."
The Nov. 6 trial of Maris, 21, and Smith, 36, drew national attention because of a growing wave of opposition to the new Forest Service fees, which are intended to raise money to pay for recreational programs that have been hit hard by federal budget cuts.
Many opponents of the fees said the government shouldn't charge people simply to hike on trails or walk on beaches. Access fees, some critics said, essentially bar some citizens from public lands.
The Forest Service said it was reviewing the ruling but would stop charging an access fee at the South Jetty Road entrance to the Oregon Dunes, where Maris and Smith were ticketed on more than one occasion last summer after refusing to pay the $3 daily fee.
However, Forest Service spokeswoman Sandy Berger said the agency would continue to charge access fees at trailheads, parking lots, overlooks, boat ramps, and other sites. The Forest Service launched 47 recreation "fee demo" projects last summer and plans to add another 32 next year.
Maris, a University of Oregon student and crew team member, and Smith, who works for the Oregon Lottery Commission, argued that the Forest Service overstepped its authority by making people pay to use the South Jetty Road near Florence, which goes through the Siuslaw National Forest but provides vehicle access to a popular surfing area that's not managed by the Forest Service.
The Forest Service had fined the two after they failed to pay the $3 fee at the entrance to the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. The government then filed criminal charges against them when they refused to pay the fines.
Smith said he "got steamed" one day in May as he approached the toll booth at the dunes' South Jetty entrance. He said he told the Forest Service person on duty he wasn't going to pay, then drove to the South Jetty, which is managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
He said he even took the license plates off and covered his vehicle identification number on the dashboard. But the Forest Service called Oregon State Police troopers, who tracked him down and yelled to him that his car would be impounded if he didn't come out of the water to accept the citation.