On the recordSeptember 15, 1998
Mr. Speaker, I would suspect that most Americans got their first taste of the West through the classic westerns of John Ford, and most of those films were made on public land. Mr. Ford paid a standard fee for the use of those lands, but for the past 50 years, for reasons that no one can really explain, the Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service have been forbidden from collecting fees for commercial filming. The bill before us attempts to correct this inequity. H.R. 2993 directs the Secretary of the Interior to develop a uniform policy to collect fees for most commercial filming on lands administered by the Interior Department agencies. The bill directs that the Secretary require that these fees provide a fair return to the government, and that said fees shall not be less than the direct and indirect costs to the government for processing fee applications and for the use of the land and facilities.
Source
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