No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park

Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by shp0ngle on Thursday May 04, 2023 @04:26AM (#35812676)

...that is exactly what the actual article is talking about.

The lottery makes most money go to Booz Allen Hamilton.

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by refurb on Thursday May 04, 2023 @05:15AM (#35812960)

How do we know the money goes to Booz Allen? Presumably there is some sort of contract between BAH the government to run Recreation.gov?

Does BAH keep the whole fee? Do they keep some of it? Did they get paid $0 and only get the fee?

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by giantg2 on Thursday May 04, 2023 @06:38AM (#35813430)

A lot of that is in the article. Nice little graphs of it too.

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by refurb on Thursday May 04, 2023 @07:15AM (#35813718)

Please point it out? All I see is how much goes to the park, with the assumption the rest goes to recreation.gov, but just because the recreation.gov gets it doesn't mean Booz Allen keeps it all.

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by jfengel on Thursday May 04, 2023 @07:46AM (#35813914)

Booz is recreation.gov.

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by refurb on Thursday May 04, 2023 @08:46AM (#35814407)

I get that, but Booz is a government contractor providing this service. Presumably there is some details in the contract that lay out where money collected goes.

Some fees collected go to the Park Service, and some don't. Does Booz keep everything else? What are the contract details with the government?

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by kevviiinn on Thursday May 04, 2023 @07:47AM (#35813915)

Recreation.gov is Booz Allen

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by systems_glitch on Thursday May 04, 2023 @07:47AM (#35813916)

Article sez the gov't gets to collect $9 on a $10 entry for tickets that are awarded. Booz Allen keeps $10 entry on all tickets that aren't awarded. Apparently the award rate is around 3%.

Booz Allen wouldn't have offered to design and run the whole thing "for free" if it wasn't immensely popular! They and others like them are not called "beltway bandits" for nothing.

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by refurb on Thursday May 04, 2023 @08:47AM (#35814420)

Booz Allen keeps $10 entry on all tickets that aren't awarded.

But how do we know that's true. Has the author seen the contract between the government and Booz Allen?

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by 93po on Thursday May 04, 2023 @09:19AM (#35814826)

From their own website:

https://www.boozallen.com/s/insight/thought-leadership/reinv...

> Recreation.gov was an investment for Booz Allen, designed collaboratively with participating agencies, but at no cost to the federal government. Instead of a traditional cost structure, the unique contractual agreement is a transaction-based fee model that lets the government and Booz Allen share in risk, reward, results, and impact. This is a true public-private partnership—it uses no government money.

Of course they word this in a slimy, dishonest way. Boggles my mind that immediately after saying "no cost" they describe an "alternative cost structure", completely contradicting itself.

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by refurb on Thursday May 04, 2023 @09:46AM (#35815238)

Ok, but the question still stands. The government doesn't pay anything, but it does it get a cut? Usually contracts are written in some way like "vendor will keep first $10M of fees, thereafter sharing 50% of fees"

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by 0xffff2 on Thursday May 04, 2023 @12:23PM (#35817944)

Oh come on. I don't know enough to have a real opinion on the overall situation, but surely you can see the difference between "no cost" and "no cost to the federal government".

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by MereInterest on Thursday May 04, 2023 @02:03PM (#35819622)

Oh come on. I don't know enough to have a real opinion on the overall situation, but surely you can see the difference between "no cost to the federal government" and "no up-front monetary cost to the federal government".

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by 0xffff2 on Thursday May 04, 2023 @02:37PM (#35820119)

Do you have some evidence there is an actual cost to the Federal government? It seems to me the cost is entirely born by the users of the system.

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by 93po on Friday May 05, 2023 @06:42PM (#35835987)

Yes, instead of revenue going to the government, it's going to Booz. Just because it doesn't go through the government first doesn't mean it's not a cost. This is proven because Booz wouldn't make and run this site if not for this aspect of the relationship.

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by jcrawfordor on Thursday May 04, 2023 @09:56AM (#35815395)

BAH keeps all fees not imposed by NPS - that means the actual reservation fee goes to NPS, but all other fees go to BAH. All fees besides the actual reservation fee are not government fees at all, they are imposed only by BAH based on their own policy and analysis, which the contract gives them the right to do with no obligation to share with anyone. The NPS fee is set through an administrative process and does not change very frequently. Everything else is BAH revenue... booking fees, lottery fees, and some upcharges related to popular sites... and it's not at all unusual for those to be more than the actual reservation fee.

On top of that, NPS seems to have been evasive about the situation and has been resistant to releasing supervision data on how much money is actually involved.

This situation has been widely reported on, not only in this article but by Matt Stoler (https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-is-booz-allen-renting...) and in the NYT (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/29/travel/nps-recreation-gov...). There has been a class-action lawsuit over it but I don't think it got anywhere, it's not at all clear that there's any legal problem with this situation despite appearing to be a massive grift on the public. Originally, the structure of the contract (where BAH funds the project by imposing their own fees) was hailed as innovative since it meant there was "no taxpayer money" committed.

BAH recreation.gov contract: https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2023-03/AG-3187-...

NPS fee order: https://www.nps.gov/policy/DOrders/DO_22.pdf

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by lifeonlars on Thursday May 04, 2023 @07:48AM (#35813923)

They keep the whole fee.

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by nofunsir on Thursday May 04, 2023 @11:32AM (#35817011)

YES they keep the whole lottery fee.

WORSE YET, they get to set the fee themselves! The park system just goes along with what they pick.

They got in trouble for this because by law there was supposed to be a public comment period regarding fee changes.

They got some judge or official to sign off something saying effectively: "x = whatever BAH decides; Fee = x;"

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Re:No, the money you spend on lotteries doesn’t go to the park by ghaff on Thursday May 04, 2023 @10:12AM (#35815633)

The issue is that the losers still apparently pay. Take that away and I agree that some variant of this is probably the optimal system given too many people and not enough slots.

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