[MCARC] FW: Your Message In case you care to look at what I sent.

[Nate Bargmann]

I respect your passion for all of amateur radio, Dennis.

I will note that the ball was dropped when the ARRL *paid* lobbyist did
not see this and act on it in committee, etc.  Now the law has been
passed and signed for three plus years and it's really too late unless
another law can be passed amending the one responsible for the fees.
Until that happens the fees will be assessed.

On the other hand, these bills are now such a pile of omnibus law making
that only an *army* of lobbyists could have discovered this AND
understood the long range ramifications.  For the short term the only
recourse is to argue the amount of the fees, not the assessment of the
fee as the agency apparently has no legal recourse to exempt certain
entities (the FCC has not exempted amateur radio from its application
fee schedule, the fees just haven't been enacted yet).  The difficulty
in doing that is that the agency likely has figures that are not
available outside the agency and this is how the fee determination was
made and it will be extremely difficult for the public to argue against
the figures that have been made public as part of this USFS action.

As I understand it, the fee applies on a site by site basis.  A site
leased (remember these sites are leased from the USFS and a rental fee
is already paid which is a sliding scale based on use) by one entity
will be assessed the same amount as one with a number of tenants.  For
amateurs that have equipment at a site with several tenants the
situation is less onerous as the fee will likely be divided between all
tenants.  At least that is the way some of the commentary I have read
explains it.

An even more onerous aspect about the fees as that the $1400/site is
only the base fee and will be increased annually based on an
inflationary index (that could be incorrect, however).  Nice, huh?

Fortunately, we are unaffected here but the mountain west will likely
lose a number of wide coverage repeaters and other amateur radio related
infrastructure.

73, Nate

-- 
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."
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