Today?s blog is a roundup of short items that have been on my list to tell you about.
They are:
- An article from a national website that a news colleague has nominated for stupidest story of the year. It names Dare County as one of the Top 10 American Ghost Towns of the 21st century. The writer uses census figures in a totally erroneous manner and won?t say he?s wrong.
- A new off-road vehicle brochure produced by the Park Service that has some access advocates unhappy because it uses a controversial photo. And it just so happens that NPS published the brochure as part of a settlement of a lawsuit ? by environmental groups. Sound familiar?
- And the loser legislation on a gamefish bill in the North Carolina General Assembly. The bill would declare striped bass, red drum, and speckled trout as gamefish, which reserves them for recreational fishermen and makes them off limits for commercial fishermen and perhaps charter boats.
STUPIDEST STORY OF THE YEAR
On Monday, a news colleague of mine sent me a link to a story that she said should get the award for ?the stupidest story of the year.?
It was published by a national website, 24/7 Wall St., and picked up by Yahoo! and other national news websites. It was written by the website editor, Douglas A. McIntyre, and the headline read ?American Ghost Towns of the 21st Century.?
Here is an excerpt:
?Data from states and large metropolitan areas do not tell the story of how much the real estate disaster has turned certain areas in the country into ghost towns. Some of the affected regions are tourist destinations, but much of that traffic has disappeared as the recession has caused people to sell or desert vacation homes and delay trips for leisure. This makes these areas particularly desolate when tourists are not around.
?The future of these areas is grim. Our research showed that many have sharply declining tax bases which have caused budget cuts. Forecasts are calling for the fiscal noose to tighten on them even tighter.
These are the American Ghost Towns of the 21st century. Each has a population of more than 10,000 along with vacancy rates of more than 55%, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.?
Dare County was No. 6 on the list of 10.
The county he said had 33,492 vacant houses for a vacancy rate of 57 percent. It also claimed that Dare had a population of 95,828.
Here is what the writer said about Dare:
?Dare County includes the northern-most parts of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The situation in the vacation area is so severe that the ?Outer Banks Voice? recently wrote, “If Dare County Manager Bobby Outten was intending to sound an alarm by suggesting that the EMS helicopter and school nurses were expendable in the next budget, he probably succeeded.” His comments are unlikely to be terribly different from those of other executives of counties on the list. Vacant homes and homes which lose double-digit amounts of their value each year irreparably undermine the tax base. And, as services fall, fewer potential homeowners will consider investing in the area.?
Now, the problem is that the writer was totally off base in his interpretation of the Census Bureau data and completely incorrect in his report on Dare?s population.
According to the 2010 Census, Dare County had a population of 33,920 in 2010.
More importantly, the Census Bureau counts vacation rental homes as vacant. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that many of our county houses are empty part of the year. That is so several hundred thousand folks can come here in the tourist season and rent them.
We?re hardly a ?ghost town.? Those vacant houses are part of the engine that drives our tourism economy.
In addition, others that McIntyre listed in his Top 10 are also areas that rely on tourism, such as Summit County, Colorado, home to ski resorts.
Several newspapers published stories pointing out this problem to 24/7 Wall St. editor McIntyre. Several have posted on his site, noting the sloppy and perhaps stupid reporting.
And my colleague at The Outer Banks Voice, Russ Lay, wrote about his e-mail exchanges with McIntyre. Lay said:
?You have three newspapers down here pointing out your error and several in Virginia, and asking for a retraction. McIntyre responded: ?That is an issue for the Census. All of the data came straight from the US government.??
Russ Lay followed up with a second e-mail, noting that the article was potentially economically damaging to resort areas and asking for a correction. Again, McIntyre washed his hands of the matter and noted that the definition of vacancies is up to the Census Bureau.
This is an example of journalism at its very worst and an ethically challenged editor who refuses to back down, even when the error of his thought process has been duly noted.
This sloppy ? and, yes, stupid ? story will hang around on the Internet for who knows how long.
It?s not fair.
USELESS NPS BROCHURE
The National Park Service has recently published a new brochure, entitled ?Off-Road Driving.?
The four-color brochure, printed on both sides of 8-by-15 paper and folded, is generic for all national parks.
It includes answers to such questions as ?What is an off-road vehicle?? and ?Where can I drive an ORV??
It is so generic there is little or no practical application for any specific park, such as Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
Though it is short on useful information, it includes eight color photos of off-road vehicles, including park rangers performing safety checks and vehicles stuck in sand and ditches.
However, what irks advocates for more reasonable access at this seashore is the color photo of a loggerhead turtle that was run over by an ORV operating illegally at night last June on Ocracoke.
It was a totally horrible incident and the photos were disturbing. But it was also totally an anomaly, even here at the seashore where ORV drivers do break the rules, though probably not in numbers that drivers of cars on the highways do.
As far as anyone can tell, it was the first incident of a loggerhead being killed ? or even injured ? by an ORV at Cape Hatteras.
Access advocates think the use of that particular photo in the brochure is inflammatory.
Cyndy Holda, public information specialist for the seashore, said she had gotten phone calls about the brochures, which are being distributed at park visitor centers. So she made some inquiries.
The brochure was produced by NPS staff in Washington, D.C., Holda said. The seashore got a call last summer requesting the photo, which was used in many news media, and sent it on.
Here is what she said she was told about the background of the brochure:
?In 2005, Friends of the Earth with the National Parks Conservation Association and Wildlands CPR brought a lawsuit against the National Park Service because of the group?s concern about resource damage caused by ORVs. In May 2008, the National Park Service agreed to legal settlement, which included:
?The NPS shall: Develop and distribute appropriately a system-wide information brochure explaining that off-road driving is prohibited in the National Park System except where legally authorized by the NPS; explaining the content, purpose and intent of the NPS?s off-road vehicle regulations, including restrictions of off-road vehicles and the penalties and remedies available for violations thereof, and of Executive Order 11644, as amended; and addressing the impacts caused or which could be caused by off-road vehicle use where not authorized.?
Does it surprise you that this uninformative brochure is the result of the settlement of yet another lawsuit against the Park Service by environmental groups?
It should not.
Does it make you feel like environmental advocacy groups are running the NPS?
It should.
As for the use of the photo, Holda said the park was asked to send it and complied.
?It is what it is,? she said.
LOSING LEGISLATION
In March, four legislators in the North Carolina House of Representatives introduced a bill that would designate striped bass, red drum, and speckled trout as gamefish.
That would reserve them for recreational anglers and make them off limits to commercial watermen. And that means that wild-caught fish of these three species could no longer be sold in seafood stores or served in local restaurants.
House Bill 353 is opposed by just about all of the coastal counties, which have passed resolutions urging its demise.
Detractors say that the bill is elitist and unfair and would put some watermen out of business. Supporters say that the recreational anglers bring more money into the state than commercial fishermen.
HB 353 was read and assigned to the Subcommittee on Business and Labor of the House Committee on Commerce and Job Development. (The job development is ironic if you think about it.)
On March 22, it was pulled from the subcommittee and, on the same day, reassigned to the Committee on Commerce and Job Development.
On March 29, the Fiscal Research Division of the General Assembly issued a ?legislative fiscal note? on the bill.
As it turns out, the fiscal folks said, the state stands to lose $15 to $20 million a year in federal funds for the next four years.
The problem for the bill, as it is written, is that it provides for mitigation to commercial fishermen for lost income and gear ? up to $1 million ? from fiscal years 2012 until 2015.
The money is to come from the North Carolina Marine Resources Fund, which is primarily funded by the sale of recreational fishing licenses.
The federal government might consider this a ?diversion? of funds that are intended for the state Division of Marine Fisheries, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and the Wildlife Resources Commission.
Therefore, the state might be ineligible for the $15 to $20 million each year that is refunded to those to agencies through several federal programs.
The other alternative is to pay the $1 million in mitigation from the state?s General Fund, which is already taking a hit from lawmakers.
Or the General Assembly could take the just, fair, and prudent approach and let the bill die in committee, as a similar bill did two years ago.
