In their latest effort to boost camp oversight in the wake of the deadly July 4 floods, Texas officials have proposed hiking annual licensing fees for operators by thousands of dollars and slashing the number of camp representatives on a statewide committee that advises on industry regulations.
On Tuesday, the Texas Department of State Health Services, which regulates camps, posted a slate of new rules to the Texas Register that would go into effect next year, and among them are proposals that would increase camp licensing fees based on size and type of camps.
Currently, the start-up licensing fee is $250 for any day camp and $750 for any residential camp, such as an overnight summer camp. The yearly renewal fee currently ranges from $52 to $155 for day camps and $103 to $464 for residential camps.
The initial licensing fee for a day youth camp with 99 or fewer campers per year is expected to climb to $950 and can reach $3,500 for those with 5,000 or more. The initial licensing fee is even steeper for residential youth camps, increasing to $2,150 for camps with 99 or fewer campers and to $21,000 for those with 10,000 or more campers.
Annual renewal fees would range from $750 to $19,500, depending on the size and type of camp.
Dan Neal, a representative of Camping Association of Mutual Progress, a camp lobbying firm, and owner of Georgetown-based Camp Doublecreek told The Texas Tribune on Wednesday that the increase in fees will be a shock to the system. However, most camp owners recognize that the increase is necessary to allow DSHS to hire additional inspectors and rebuild the youth camp program, he said.
“We are hopeful that once the program is fully reestablished and operating smoothly for several years, the fee levels can be reassessed and appropriately reduced,” he said.
Last month, the Department of State Health Services teased the dramatic change during a meeting to discuss the rollout of a pair of camp safety bills that the Legislature passed in response to the July 4 Hill Country floods that killed at least 137 people, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic.
At that meeting and in a survey the state conducted in the fall, several camp operators said such licensing fees and other new requirements could put many in the industry out of business because most camps are small nonprofits.
“This causes an undue burden for smaller or more remote camps,” according to a survey response from Livingston-based Boxwoods camp obtained by The Texas Tribune. “All the costs that are a result of this legislation should not be passed on to camps.”
Also proposed Tuesday is an overhaul of the little-known Youth Camp Advisory Committee, which meets semiannually to request rule changes to the state health agency and to lawmakers when they are in session. The Texas Tribune found that the makeup of this committee for many years has been mostly camp leadership and that while members can’t make rules, they can influence how much rules impact the industry. Camp Mystic’s Britt Eastland is a current member.
All of this sounds reasonable to me. Given that these are administrative changes and not legislative ones, one may reasonably ask why they hadn’t been suggested before now. To be fair, in the absence of the summer tragedy, it’s hard to imagine a camp lobbying group accepting those license fee hikes as easily otherwise. Be that as it may, these changes should improve oversight, and in turn that should improve safety for campers. That much, at least, is good.