The following are four articles, including California’s veto of their Office and a signed accord related to the growing Outdoor Recreation Offices in the states.

The OREC movement gains momentum (July)

‘Confluence’ gathering works toward debut of national platform to strengthen and align state-level efforts.

From left to right: Luis Benitez, director of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office; Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper; Tom Dempsey, president of Sylvan Sport; North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper; and David Knight, director of North Carolina Office of Outdoor Recreation Industry. — From left to right: Luis Benitez, director of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office; Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper; Tom Dempsey, president of SylvanSport; North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper; and David Knight, director of North Carolina Office of Outdoor Recreation Industry.

Seyl Park/SylvanSport

Last week in Asheville, North Carolina, a roomful of delegates from around the country (and a few call-in attendees) took the next step in the Confluence process—a multi-state initiative to develop a national platform for the outdoor recreation industry.

It was a ceremonial gathering, with high goals and equally lofty language. It was also, at times, a ground-level tactical conversation, naturally a bit noisy and crowded. And, of course, it was also an outdoor industry event, treating attendees to local North Carolina specialties including music, beer, hiking, and river rafting.

But most of all, the event was a dedicated working meeting, after which attendees expressed appreciation for the process, thankfulness for the group’s commitment, and their own high goals for the outcome—the Confluence Accords, which are anticipated to be unveiled during the upcoming Outdoor Retailer Summer Market show.

“It’s hard not to recognize and appreciate all the dedicated individuals from around the country who have donated personal and work hours to the cause,” said Tom Adams, Director of the Utah Office of Outdoor Recreation. “Everyone in the room recognizes we are making history. This enormous group stayed laser focused for over six months in order to get this right.”

While last week’s event was hosted by North Carolina, the formal Confluence working process dates back to the fall of 2017 when states with “up and running” outdoor recreation programs began discussing the idea of finding and refining their common ground.

The conversation grew into reality after Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office Director Luis Benitez conceptualized and launched the first in-person gathering of state offices of Outdoor Recreation ahead of last January’s Outdoor Retailer show. Known as the Americas Outdoor Recreation Industry Confluence, the first-of-its-kind gathering drew delegations from Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming to a meeting in Denver. Each participating delegation was headed by a state director of outdoor recreation, and each was required to have the support and endorsement of their respective Governor. In addition to government representatives, each delegation was also requested to also include representatives from their business, non-profit and cultural/tribal communities.

The eight states at the original Confluence centered their efforts on the development of an outdoor recreation industry platform—an expression of top line goals and strategies in four main sectors including economic development, conservation and stewardship, education and workforce training, and public health and wellness.

The politics of playing outside: Why we need more outdoor recreation offices

After the January event, the Confluence process continued throughout the spring as working groups formed to finalize those strategic statements. Through multiple rounds of discussion, crafting and re-crafting, working groups strived to hone in on elements of a final platform that could be as relevant to populations in Washington and Utah as they would be in North Carolina and Vermont.

“The Confluence Accords are further evidence of the Outdoor Industry maturing on a national scale,” said Hal Ellms, president of Pinnacle Outdoor Group, and member of the Vermont Confluence Delegation. “They’re going to provide another tool that we can use to advocate, individually, for the things we believe in such as the importance of public lands, pristine waters within those lands, and clean air above.”

Map of states with outdoor rec offices — As of Jul 2018, seven states have government offices and four other states have task forces or advisory councils.

Infographic by Kristin Hostetter and Jackie McCaffrey

Progress in Asheville

At the Asheville Confluence gathering last week, each of the working groups presented their completed statements, discussed their thought process, and incorporated final suggestions from the group on hand—which had expanded from the original eight delegations to include additional observers from Kansas, Maryland, California, and Michigan.

“Back in 2016, Jon Snyder from Washington, Luis Benitez from Colorado, and I met every trade show,” Adams said. “For two years we watched the sparks igniting around the country and we knew it wouldn’t be long before our trio grew. Since then, we have seen more than 15 states either create an office or a task force, the majority of whom have been part of the Confluence.”

Adams continued, “The rapid expansion of these offices alone gives reason for the industry to take note. Each of these offices are designed to support, collaborate, and drive the outdoor economy in their respective states. It simply won’t be successful in states that don’t have support from their outdoor industry members. It truly does take a village.”

For states already moving ahead on state-level outdoor recreation policy work, the Confluence Accords are anticipated to be a healthy and welcome justification for their efforts, giving them a new source of energy and reinforcement for their ongoing efforts.

For new and curious states considering the creation of an outdoor recreation initiative, the Confluence Accords are expected to provide a robust head start by delivering a set of strategic anchors that can inform, accelerate, and strengthen their work.

“By discussing an important framework with my colleagues and delegate representatives from other states, I gleaned an extensive amount of information about the current state of the outdoor recreation industry and where we will take it into the future,” said Domenic Bravo, Wyoming State Parks and Outdoor Recreation Office administrator. “This is valuable as it provides a ‘core’ set of principles we can all work from. It also provides a great guide to what Offices of Outdoor Recreation can accomplish in their respective states. These accords are flexible enough for states to adapt and tier their own strategic and implementation plans from.”

Looking ahead

While the official goal of the Confluence is to develop a national outdoor recreation industry platform, one unofficial side benefit of the process has been the creation of new working relationships between the various state delegations. Individuals who used to be separated by thousands of miles—despite working in essentially the same field and facing many of the same challenges—are now in regular and open communication.

“These things we’ve agreed to tackle together are difficult,” said Noah Wilson, Program Director, Outdoor Gear Builders of WNC, and member of the North Carolina Confluence Delegation. “No one office, no one state, and in many cases, not even one industry can tackle them alone. If we want to scale the difficult summits ahead, we will need to be more than a bunch of disparate offices; we’ll need to be a team, looking out for one another and working together. We’ll need to bring in more states, more partners, more sister industries, because tough things are the ones worth doing.”

SNEWSNETJuly2018

#############################

From Outside Magazine on these Outdoor Recreation Offices

Aug 9, 2018

Since Utah established the country’s first state office of outdoor recreation five years ago, the idea has spread rapidly. Colorado and Washington opened offices in 2015; in 2016, three more states started offices or initiatives dedicated to promoting outdoor recreation. Last year, the number nearly doubled, bringing the total to 11.

This rush of activity indicates that state governments have come around to the idea that outdoor recreation is a significant driver of economic activity that also offers other important environmental and social benefits. Until relatively recently, most states gauged the value of federal public lands within their borders purely in terms of their viability for extractive industries like mining, logging, and oil drilling. But in recent years, thanks to a growing awareness of the consumer spending and state tax revenue associated with outdoor recreation, that attitude has begun to evolve. Now these new offices are looking to advance changes in policies to further support the sector.

While this is good news for the recreation industry, a report released last month by Utah State University’s Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism suggests these offices are in dire need of more support from outside the outdoor industry if they’re going to have an enduring impact.

“The offices of outdoor recreation represent a watershed moment in the recognition of outdoor recreation being a critical component of any state’s economy, livability, and public policy,” says Bob Ratcliffe, chief of conservation and outdoor recreation programs at the National Park Service (NPS), which commissioned the report. “My interest was to have a better understanding on what ingredients are emerging from these offices, identify their areas of focus, then determine how federal agencies can better align, collaborate, and support public land policy that helps achieve those goals.”

One standout finding in the report was that conversations about the outdoor recreation economy are increasingly commonplace among local, state, and federal politicians. Historically, government agencies haven’t factored in the revenue generated by activities like hiking and biking when assessing public lands. But recent efforts by the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) and the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to estimate the size of the recreation economy have spurred a shift. The OIA put consumer recreation spending at $887 billion, while the BEA, which didn’t count apparel and equipment manufactured overseas, put it at $373 billion.

The increased dialogue and financial analyses have created momentum for the new state offices, but the report alludes that many of them are still too small or poorly funded to be as effective as they need to be. Some have just a single staff member, in some cases assisted by college interns. Small budgets limit the work of most of the offices, though funding in Maryland, Rhode Island, and Vermont is especially anemic.

Some state legislators have been hesitant to invest much in the offices because they view them as experiments. Another challenge is the fact that compared to top-of-mind voter concerns like jobs, health care, and infrastructure, supporting recreation can seem like a very low priority to policymakers. “Outdoor recreation doesn’t generally have a lot of crises on its own,” said one unnamed government employee quoted in the report. “Crises are what sometimes get money and attention.”

Another political challenge to the offices comes from the fact that they can be created by governors. According to the report, this can lead to an office being seen as an extension of a political agenda, and thus a target for elimination by the next administration. The report suggests that offices will benefit by remaining independent from political parties or executives.

The good news is that outdoor recreation is something both liberals and conservatives support, though often for different reasons. The offices in more progressive states like Oregon, Vermont, and Washington focus on conservation as an end goal to increased use of public lands. Other states, like Maryland, North Carolina, and Wyoming, tend to view recreation as revenue source first, with conservation as a potential side benefit.

Despite their current limitations, some offices have already won big victories. The Utah office successfully lobbied to secure a portion of revenue from hotel and motel taxes for projects like like boat ramps and trail construction in counties and cities.

In determining the offices’ impact, the report stresses that states shouldn’t limit their assessments to economics and the environment. In Rhode Island, for example, the recreation council’s primary goal was improving public health. (Rhode Island’s office was a temporary test to study the feasibility and effectiveness of an recreation office, and the results are still being examined.) Recreation doesn’t “exist in a vacuum,” as one government employee was quoted saying in the report, so their impact shouldn’t be measured in one either.

“States that have already set up offices of outdoor recreation haven’t only seen economic benefits,” says Jordan W. Smith, one of the report’s authors and an assistant professor of environment and society at Utah State University. “They’ve also seen benefits to state transportation systems, health care, and people’s general quality of life.”

While it’s clear that all the states’ offices need a lot more resources if they’re going to be effective, the simple fact of their creation is a testament to a new attitude about outdoor recreation and the value of public lands. “For many years, outdoor recreation was really thought of as a byproduct of public lands,” Ratcliffe says, “not as a resource in its own right.”

##################################

Previos Article below. ( February )

The Dream Team

State outdoor recreation czars join forces to chart a course for the future.

Playing outside is serious business. More and more state governments are getting organized to maximize their outdoor economies by establishing offices devoted to the business of recreation. As of this week, there are eight state offices and task forces: Utah, Colorado, Washington, Vermont, Wyoming, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon. And for the first time, these individual leaders are all gathering together in the hopes of amplifying their impact.

It’s a new kind of cooperation. Even though some of those states might seem to be competing for the same visitors and money—like Oregon and Washington or Colorado and Utah—the leaders of these offices met yesterday with delegations of industry leaders from their states for the first-ever Outdoor Recreation Industry Confluence. They swapped best practices and identified common goals, hoping to benefit from an across-the-board interest in all things outdoors. The delegation heads to Washington, D.C. later this week to meet with their federal counterparts.

“This is a moment of gravity,” says Luis Benitez, director of Colorado’s office of outdoor recreation, whose office organized this first summit. “It’s truly one of those historical things.”

Directors of these offices have worked to establish new education tracks at their state colleges and universities, align business and nonprofit leaders from different sectors of the industry, lobby and secure funding for maintenance of recreation assets, and recruit businesses to their states with outdoor recreation as the main draw. We asked them about their priorities, the significance of the Confluence, and where these offices fit in with the national conversation about the business of recreation.

Setting the Agenda

Jon Snyder, outdoor recreation and economic development policy advisor to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee: It’s possible for people to really care deeply about some natural wild piece of land they’ve never been to, but it’s so much easier if someone has actually set foot on that land and recreated there. And that’s where recreation done right can have this great cycle where people do it, experience the benefits of being outdoors, and then they’re more interested in supporting it politically and financially. That creates opportunities for more jobs. It’s a nice, virtuous cycle if you get it right.”

Chris Havel, associate director of the Office of Outdoor Recreation within the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department: We want to establish the broadest possible purpose for convening an office of this sort, one that transcends economics and includes policy goals for access, public participation, resource stewardship, and long-range planning. We want it to lead to increasing the benefits of outdoor rec for individuals and communities—health and well-being, sense of family cohesion, improved economics, and quality of life for communities.

Jon Snyder: Public land is a big one. There are a lot of small policies and bills that have the potential for big impact, but public land, in general, is a big priority for us. In Washington State, we have not passed our capital budget from last year, which means about $150 million of outdoor recreation projects are hanging in the balance. Support for public land and national parks and monuments is really strong here, but how much money are we putting into that?

David Knight, director of North Carolina’s Outdoor Recreation Industry Office:

It’s a little premature to figure out our goals [this is Knight’s first week on the job], but one of the first things I’d like to do is set up an advisory council. I want to figure out goals and metrics. We can certainly learn from what other states have done so far with their offices, and hear from experts and economic developers in the field, and get to know the folks working in this realm nationwide. Establishing this office shows a strong commitment by the state to really focus on supporting and expanding the current industry in North Carolina, as well as expanding with other businesses inside and out of the outdoor industry.

Identifying Challenges

Jon Snyder: Outdoor businesses have an eye to the future. Who’s going to be owning boats 20 years from now? Who’s going to be fly-fishing? Who’s going to be climbing and biking? They have concerns about that.

Michael Snyder, Commission of Vermont Forests, Parks, and Recreation: What no one’s arguing anymore is the need for us to take care of these places. We have an impact on them when we use them, and that conversation is huge. But we’ve got to build a structure that has a long-term funding mechanism for the environment. [Hunters and anglers pay excise taxes on gear to support fish and wildlife agencies, and hikers and campers don’t.] We have to talk about the elephants in the room, and this is one of them. Ten or 15 years ago, I don’t think “pay to play” would have worked. No way. But the conversation is being had now. I don’t think we’re ready to do it. It’s certainly part of the dialogue this fall.

Domenic Bravo, administrator of Wyoming’s Outdoor Recreation Office and State Parks: I think it’s going to be very critical that these offices figure out how to be multidisciplinary [and connect all the aspects of the industry, including hunting and shooting sports]. Perception is everything. I’m trying to make sure my office is attending various trade shows across the spectrum, including this show and SHOT Show.

Coming Together

Rachel VandeVoort, director of Montana’s Office of Outdoor Recreation: All of us meeting together really signifies a time when we’re standing up and verbalizing the needs of this economy. The creation of our state offices is just one more indicator that this economy is taking a step forward to be more nationally heard. For years, I don’t think our industry did a very good job of talking economically. Now, we’re all speaking in the same language of dollars and cents.

Jon Snyder: It’s sometimes easy to get in a bubble of your own city or your own state, and not have outside perspective. There are lots of smart people working on these issues, and [the Confluence] is a good opportunity to talk to them and bounce ideas back and forth. Sometimes, I feel like I have a part-time job consulting other states looking to start their own outdoor recreation offices.

Tom Adams, director of Utah’s Office of Outdoor
Recreation: We have a super-strong industry. Look at OIA’s numbers—$887 billion each year. But this industry operates on a pretty slim margin compared to oil, gas, and pharmaceuticals. We need to show that we’re our own industry, that we definitely impact and influence pretty much every other business. [This industry] is where we live. Although Utah and Colorado in a lot of ways are competitive, Utah started the first outdoor recreation office and then the former director basically gave his playbook
to Luis [Benitez]. I’m glad we’re taking this first step toward becoming truly organized as group of
outdoor industry professionals and offices of outdoor recreation.

Benitez: Our hope is to create an overall platform for the industry, specific things we can agree upon. When we go forward at other future summits, and other states get added to the Confluence, this document will be ratified every single time. We won’t go back to the drawing board, but we’ll revise and ask what states see missing.

Michael Snyder: I think we could learn a lot from states who have more urban centers about how to make access to the outdoors more diverse. Equity is a raw issue here. Gear is expensive, travel is expensive. We’re serious about making this accessible to all kinds of folks.

Here is the recently signed Accord, outlining their purpose and objectives.. The key element in the Accord for LWCF is.. ” Collaborate with all stakeholders to establish and improve sustainable outdoor recreation infrastructure and funding. “ This provision should allow them to be advocates for ORLP, LWCF and GOMESA, since 75-80% of current and future LWCF projects are for outdoor recreation infrastructure.

Here is a PDF of the signed Accord..Outdoor-Recreation-Industry-Confluence-Accords (2)

However, this issue is not as straightforward as it seems.. Governor Brown, CA vetoed their Outdoor Recreation office legislation last week. See the following.. Governor Brown Vetoes Key Outdoor Recreation Legislation

Hello,

Today, Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill to create the Office of Sustainable Outdoor Recreation in California, a bill which passed through the California legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support. The signing of AB 1918 would have made California the twelfth state with an official office or task force to support outdoor recreation, which accounts for $92 billion in consumer spending and 691,000 jobs throughout the state. In a statement to members of the California State Assembly, Gov. Brown cited his belief, although inaccurate, that the functions and goals of the proposed office are being met currently within the Department of Parks and Recreation and that a new office housed in the Natural Resources Agency is unnecessary.

“We are disappointed by Governor Brown’s decision to veto this widely supported bill,” said Amy Roberts, executive director of Outdoor Industry Association. ” OIA will continue to work with California outdoor businesses and communities who understand the value of these offices around the country. We thank our members who worked so successfully to encourage the California legislature to pass AB 1918 last month.” Governor Brown’s term is up at the end of 2018, and OIA will seek opportunities to work with his successor to create an Office of Sustainable Outdoor Recreation in California, the state with the country’s largest recreation economy.

Best, David Weinstein | State and Local Policy Director
OUTDOOR INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION (OIA)
2580 55th Street, Suite 101
Boulder, CO 80301

Outdoor Recreation Offices Overview and Update 9-19-18