It’s a little hard to follow the logic of those who support adding a $4 annual fee to Kansas driver’s licenses to help raise money for state parks.

Kansas Secretary of Wildlife and Parks Mike Hayden was in Lawrence last week to tout the plan that would add the fee to driver’s licenses but then make state park admission free. The rationale is that free admission would attract more people to state parks as well as providing more funds for upkeep and improvements.

Here’s the logic. Visitation at state parks has been declining, but if admission were free, officials reason, visitation numbers might rise. So the state is going to charge everyone in advance for park usage by tacking a $4 fee onto their driver’s license renewal. They will pay the fee whether or not they ever visit a state park. Will that make them more likely to visit a park or is it just burdening many people with paying for a service they will never use?

If people don’t like to go to movies, they aren’t going to go whether they are free or not, so charging them admission, even a low admission, in advance still makes them pay for a service from which they will get no benefit.

Encouraging more usage of Kansas state parks is a good goal and we hope the “free” entry policy would result in thousands more Kansans visiting interesting and attractive state parks. However, it’s a little too easy to just tack a fee that has nothing to do with driving, roads or traffic enforcement onto a state driver’s license. Avoiding tax increases by randomly creating new fees is a questionable tactic for raising revenue to fund state services.