Washington ? To fee or not to fee?

Free admission to the Smithsonian Institution’s museums and National Zoo stands out in a city where everything has its price.

But with deteriorating buildings, a maintenance backlog in the billions of dollars and fewer public dollars to spare, at least one member of Congress says no fee makes no sense.

“I personally cannot understand why we don’t charge a fee,” Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., said at a House committee hearing after a top official said there was not enough money for needed Smithsonian repairs.

In the Smithsonian’s 160 years, it never has cost a thing to visit its museums – stocked with displays of everything from dinosaur bones and the Hope Diamond to the original Star-Spangled Banner and thousands of famous airplanes and spaceships.

And officials aren’t wild about the idea.

“We are not going to be charging an admission fee,” spokeswoman Becky Haberacker said. “We want it so that as many people as possible can come in and see the Smithsonian collections.”

Visitors gather in the entranceway to the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Free admission to the Smithsonian's museums and National Zoo remains a unique feature in a city where everything has its price. But one congressman thinks it may be time for the Smithsonian to start charging for admission to help cover operational costs.

With 24 million visitors last year, asking $1 a head would raise $24 million. “To fork over $1 for an adult, or 50 cents for a child or senior citizen, is not asking a whole lot,” Moran said.

It would be asking a fraction of the entry fees at other popular museums.

In New York City, it costs $20 to get into the Museum of Modern Art and $15 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In Washington, the Corcoran Gallery of Art asks $8, and the International Spy Museum takes $15.

Sheila Burke, the Smithsonian’s deputy secretary and chief operating officer, said even a modest fee could disproportionately affect the people officials most want to attract: families.

“One of the things that we very frequently hear when visitors tour our museums is how extraordinarily excited they are” that it’s free, she told Moran at the House Appropriations subcommittee hearing.

For Jennifer Dimmick, of Perry, Ohio, the price of admission couldn’t be beat.

“That was a nice draw coming here,” she said outside the National Museum of American History with her 8- and 9-year-old sons. Admission fees last year in Chicago “cost a small fortune,” she said.

The Smithsonian gets about 80 percent of its money from the government, most of which goes to salaries and expenses. The institution received $615 million from Congress this year and has requested $644.4 million next year.

Last year, government auditors said the Smithsonian needs $255 million a year through 2013, about $2.3 billion, to fix what Burke said is a deteriorating infrastructure. Some of its buildings are more than 100 years old.