Arizona’s 31 state parks face closure without a new stream of revenue, according to a report by ASU’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy

released Thursday.

In its report, the nonpartisan public policy research group suggested charging a parks fee on state license plate purchases or taxing companies for using Arizona’s natural resources.

State trust land reform, population growth and budget cuts have closed or limited hours at a majority of state parks, the report said, and the revenue produced by these new measures would ensure the parks’ future.

Grady Gammage Jr., a senior fellow at the Morrison Institute, said his team has been working on the report since early this year in conjunction with the Governor’s Sustainable State Parks Task Force, which was appointed by former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and reappointed by Gov. Jan Brewer.

In July 2008, the state parks department was operating on a more than $26 million yearly budget, but reports estimate that state park entrance and usage fees will only net $8 million this year, said Renee Bahl, executive director for Arizona State Parks.

Bahl said the department’s operating budget, or the amount of incoming revenue from charges and state funding, is 25 percent lower than it was last year.

As a result, parks like Jerome State Historic Park have closed down, and 17 locations now have reduced hours, she said.

“We are closing campgrounds and offering less services to the public,” Bahl said. “We have to cut back in order to meet a lower budget.”

Bill Meek, a member of the governor’s task force, said the state parks system will collapse if nothing is done.

“To allow [the state park system] to collapse is insane,” he said.

Meek said the task force is going to meet Friday to discuss new orders and policies to implement. These policies have to be reported to the Arizona Legislature by the end of October.

“I hope that we can convince the governor and the legislature that something different has to be done for the state parks system,” Meek said.

Bill Scalzo, an Arizona State Parks board and task force member, said a probable solution is to institute a driver’s license surcharge of $10 to $15.

Montana’s state parks have benefited from this policy for a while, Scalzo said, and the states of Washington and Michigan have also implemented similar policies.

“It is not just a fee, it is your admission to state parks,” he said. “Instead of paying the entry fee of $6 to $8 to $10 or buying an annual pass that can cost up to $200, every citizen of Arizona with an Arizona license plate on a non-commercial vehicle could enter a state park for maybe $10, $15 a year and that is [the] greatest deal I have ever seen for public parks.”

Scalzo said another solution would be to implement a small tax or surcharge on companies that utilize Arizona’s natural resources.

“It makes sense that some small portion of that be coming back to state parks,” Scalzo said.

Bahl said she hopes these funds could be voter-protected or “embraced” by the public, so the Legislature wouldn’t have jurisdiction to make them void, as they have done with similar surcharges in the past.

At the same time, Meek said the task force would prefer not to resort to a 2012 ballot initiative to prove public support, because of the time involved in that process.

“We have an eminent crisis here,” Meek said. “It’s not something that’s going to get resolved in the next couple years, and if we can get something in place now the better.”

Bahl said the state parks serve many purposes and are important to local economies.

“We are important to the physical and mental well-beings of Arizonans now more than ever,” she said. “With the great recession, people need a social safety valve, and Arizona state parks can offer that.”