Cash ny state unclaimed

NY Scouts may lose as state looks to can refunds - New York

NEW YORK -- Scouting groups, which have become players in community recycling efforts, say they are being thwarted in New York State.

However, Gov. Mario Cuomo this week stood behind a new policy of pocketing deposits from bottles and cans discarded at some campgrounds. Scouts heretofore scurried for the aluminum used beverage cans (UBCs) and plastic containers, redeemable for 5 cents each in this deposit-law state.

The state hopes to add $50,000 to $100,000 a year to its coffers by excluding Scouts from UBC cleanups at 50 parks and campgrounds. Scout leaders are none too pleased.

Robert Baker, a Scout executive for the Adirondack Boy Scout Council in Plattsburg, predicted that the state will someday have to do an about-face. the state's Department of Environmental Conservation will have to put on additional personnel in order to do the UBC pickups that Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts have done up until now, Baker said.

"When they look at the expenses, wear and tear on vehicles, that kind of thing, they'll realize having the Scouts do it wasn't such a bad idea," Baker said.

According to Baker, the state's new policy also means that some Scouts will no longer be able to attend summer camp. Tuition is $135 a week, and without the UBC revenue camp will be beyond the financial reach of many families.

"We teach Scouts to try and pay their own way, but now they won't be able to," Baker said.

Cuomo's office said the DEC should be lauded for the new policy, and that "instead of raising taxes or imposing a fee they're trying to get money from the deposits and spending it on the parks for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts...it's a good thing that they (the DEC) are doing."

Cuomo added that he does not want to hurt fund-raising efforts by the Scouts. He was quoted in a wire service report as saying that "there must be some way to deal with that and I'll take a look at it and see if our staff has any ideas."

The new policy was invoked as a cost-saving measure by the cash-strapped DEC, according to department spokesman R.W. Groneman. It applies this year for the first time to the 50 campgrounds and recreation centers operated by the DEC in the Catskills and in the Adirondack Park.

"Increasingly, the DEC parks have followed the trend of many other government agencies of becoming more self-supporting," Groneman said. "We try to live within our fees so the general tax contribution to this activity is increasingly less."

William Licata, a Cub Scout master in Paul Smiths, N.Y., said in a wire service report that his troop and another in Lake Clear have made about $6,000 a year by collecting empties at the Fish Creek and Rollins Pond campsites in the Adirondack Mountains. The money has been used to send Scouts to summer camp, on trips to West Point and Boston and for other educational purposes.

"This is going to be very detrimental to our program," he said. "The boys will suffer."

The Franklin County legislature voted to condemn the new DEC policy and Licata and other Scout leaders are mounting a letter-writing campaign to get the state to change its policy. Some local government officials, including Supervisor Alfred Graf in the Franklin County town of Brighton, also have publicly criticized the policy change.

Scouts and other groups will still be allowed to collect cans and bottles at any of the 150 park sites operated by the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, according to spokesman Steven Osborne. Local officials of that department decide on a park-by-park basis what groups can collect the containers and no permit is required.

Groneman said the Scout troops and other charitable groups have received their permits on a year-by-year basis since the state reinstituted deposits on beverage containers a decade ago.

"The Boy Scouts were advised that this was a temporary situation that could be withdrawn at any time," Groneman said.

The Cuomo administration has been unsuccessful in previous years when it tried to take control of unclaimed deposits on cans and bottles.