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Updated: NPS Director Jarvis Ends "Core Ops" Budgeting Across The National Park System

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In a brief, four-paragraph memorandum, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis has brought to an end a budgeting process that stripped arguably key positions from parks. Dubbed "core ops" for its approach to analyzing a park's core operations, the process failed to produce wise budgeting decisions, the director said in a letter to his regional directors.

"Core ops" was instituted during the Bush administration by Intermountain Regional Director Mike Snyder. Intended to save precious dollars by eliminating operations that were not central to a park's core operation, the process forced superintendents to make tough, and at times questionable, decisions.

For instance, at Dinosaur National Monument the superintendent decided to cut two of the three positions in her paleontological department, at an annual savings of roughly $200,000 in salaries and benefits, so she could, in part, afford more law enforcement staff. Elsewhere in the Intermountain Region, officials at Canyonlands National Park did away with a deputy superintendent's position when the incumbent retired to save $122,000, and Rocky Mountain National Park officials filled a deputy superintendent's job with a division chief, and then left that position vacant to make ends meet.

In a letter (attached below) sent to his regional directors November 20, NPS Director Jarvis said the agency has better tools -- such as its Budget Cost Projection model and the NPS Scorecard -- for seeing that budgets are prudently crafted.

"As director I want to emphasize use of management tools that empower managers with unbiased data and analysis to make informed decisions, improve the justification and presentation of our budgets, and improvement the management of our financial resources. Based on extensive feedback I have received from field managers I believe that the Core Operations process fails to meet these requirements," he wrote.

At the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, Bill Wade praised Director Jarvis's action.

"I am very pleased to see that Director Jarvis has ended this debacle. It was an absolutely stupid process - born out of the minds of those who placed a higher value on efficiency (saving money) than on effectiveness," said Mr. Wade, who chairs the council's executive committee. "We never heard of a single case where the process ended up with a result that improved the capability of meeting the mission of the park involved, much less being worth the time and money invested in carrying out the process."

The Traveler has asked the Intermountain Regional office for reports assessing the impact of the core ops process, and for Regional Director Snyder's reaction to the directive.

Comments

Thank you Jon Jarvis for your wisdom and compassion in ending Core Ops. We agree with you that there are other ways to be accountable and fiscally responsible. Please help us restore the esprit de corps once legend in the National Park Service. Please appoint new senior executives who care about their employees, understand the agency's mission and operate with integrity. Start with the Intermountain Region.


Programs like Core Ops are conceived by people and have real effects on other people. As for taking it personally, yes those who get hurt have every right to be outraged, and those who are responsible for such programs should expect (and deserve) the wrath of those who suffer. Personally, I've had my say and only wish I felt better for it, but it needed saying. Hatchet men need to be reminded now and then of the human consequences of their actions. If someone behaves ruthlessly, why would they expect anything different? If on top of that, the program is viewed as a failure there should be consequences.

Coming at the tail end of the Bush administration, I had hoped to see the actual laying off of people delayed until the next administration took office given the possibility of seeing some budget increases. The NPS is an aging workforce, a couple more years would have seen a lot of attrition anyway. Of course, a lot of those jobs are also critical to real Core Missions, but the reality is that most will be re-described just enough to be filled at a lower pay grade next time around.

Core Ops might have accomplished the goal of reducing staff at certain bloated parks, but if that was the goal why did they not just go after those parks? And where are those “inexperienced superintendents” today who overextended their budgets, and where are those people higher up the command chain who approved those same budgets? My guess is that they are still working in the system.

As for the future, the Budget Cost Projection, NPS scorecards and Business Planning Initiatives sound like similar models that have been around for years, and I can remember going through those kinds of projections years ago. It’s not like inflation, grade increases and the like are a new phenomena! Again, who is responsible for implementing and approving those budgets? Now it’s Jarvis turn to try and good luck to him! I think Leland22 got it right at the start of this discussion. Next time, when these models are applied to the parks, don’t forget what we’re here for and who really does the work, and hold those administrators who fail accountable for their actions.


Dear Anonymous:

As Director Jarvis noted in his memorandum, the step increases, locality pay and pay raise problems ALL were dealt with by ANOTHER program -- the BCP (budget cost projection program). As a park superintendent, I can tell you we were required, through that BCP program, to come to identify all long term costs in manageing our budget. NOT Core Ops.

The cynical thing about the Core Ops program is that it lied that it would be a device to obtain needed funding. It lied that it would be used to tell Congress and the Adminstration where NPS funding shortfalls existed so funds can be restored. And, it was a device to shift the failure of the Bush Administration and the Congress to fund the parks, TO the parks.

In effect, the Bush Administration, the OMB and the House Subcommittee of Appropriations staff were hiding behind the parks to take the hit, and to justify funding levels that made it impossible for parks to do what the laws directed the parks to do.

Internally, it was a cynical program, because it pandered to the complaints -- the taunts actually -- of the whiners: "If you are not going to give me the money, then tell me what to cut! Tell me what NOT to do! EVERYTHING can't be a priority" they would whine. So, rather than emphasizing the creative park leaders who tried to get the money, make the partnerships, or build the creative strategies to do more with less, it pandered to the mediocre to build a constituency against the imaginative and daring.

But the most cynical thing was there was no aggressive effort by the leaders, who foisted off this political fig leaf, to go after the money, or use the result of the Core Ops experience to demand money for the shortfall.

Many parks through Core Ops were cutting key staff essential to the special purpose of that park. For example, eliminating patrols around the boundary at a park vulnerable to poaching. For example, cutting staff archeologists or paleontologist or cultural resource specialist at a park with high value archeological or paleontological or cultural resources. The committee process of the extermination process was like some TV reality show, where a 'majority' could eliminate a key, but outvoted, minority. It tends to take the Regional Director or Director off the hook when key professional services are slashed; instead, finding the funds to keep parks professional should be a responsibility of leadership.

When a park then came up with the slimmer budget, the Washington Office and the Congress had a ready-made excuse for NOT addressing the shortfall: "after all, the PARK said it could do without this money!" This fact, the fact that no aggressive effort was made to get the money, is the demonstration that at heart this program had no interest in helping parks, but slashing park budgets without political consequence.

Instead, park superintendents need to learn to effectively articulate for the real needs and get the funding, while at the same time increasing efficiencies each year and eliminating things that do not work or or not part of the Mission. But Core Ops? It was cutting the Mission.

-- I agree with Anonymous that it would be a good idea not to gratuitously attack Regional Director Mike Snyder, in the way some of these posts have.

Snyder was being fully pushed from Washington by the Director, the Associate Director for Development, by the Department of the Interior and -- ESPECIALLY -- by highly questionable behaviour by the OMB Examiner.

-- Also, I would mention that, perhaps insensitively but without full malice, the use by the Anonymous of Dec 6th of the term: "some gal with the job of softening the terrain" -- is just wrong.

Not only is it sexist, but -- if the woman he cites is the one I think she is, this woman is an experienced park ranger, deputy superintendent and superintendent. She is not "some gal."

I believe she, like many including perhaps even Hal Grovert, above, tried to do her conscientious best as directed in helping parks cuts when she had no responsibility for the shortfalls, through a program she was not responsible for creating. I believe most park rangers, incorrectly, think it is not their job to help find the money, but to carry out their orders with the belief their superiors are in Good Faith.

Well, the horrid little secret is that OMB, the Department, the Director and the House appropriations subcommittee were NOT of good faith.

This is a big break with tradition, because Rangers feel there is a compact with Washington: I do my job, you do yours. It is a break with tradition because historically, both Republicans and Democrats supported the parks. All that started to change under the Reagan Administration by James Watt as Secretary of the Interior and the belief that "government is the problem." Instead of the good will to solve the problems of ineffective or inefficient programs, suddenly the "leaders" were trying to undermine the love Americans had for the National Parks and the park rangers.

Most people in the field do not know how to deal with this.

Director Jarvis seems to know how to deal with this. In his first message he pledged to get rid of "accountability" programs that undermined park operations rather than improved the quality of services. Now, in this memorandum, Director Jarvis eliminated ONE of the most egregious of these "accountability" programs WITHOUT the indignity of blaming this person or that for a nationwide problem of governance under the Bush Administration.


I really questioned the relationship between the intent of CORE OPS and how it was implemented. Case in point, how in the world would anyone believe that you could justify removing 2 of the 3 paleontologists from Dinosaur National Monument? It would seem that paleontology is one of the Core Missions of the park and likely one of the primary reason the public drives to this remote national treasure.

What happened to the concept of "Science Based Decision Making"? Some managers are threatened by science and scientists.

Hopefully the money saved by the extinction of Core Ops - will pave the way to restore otherwise essential postiions at Dinosaur National Monument. Unfortunately, the National Park Service will need to spend significant dollars to clean up the Core Ops fiasco.

Someone should ask Mike Snyder to resign he has IMPAIRED the agency.


Being new to the NPS (and proud to be so) and not working in a park, my comments are very qualified. However, I don't know whether Core Operations Analysis, the NPS Scorecard or magic pixie dust will do the trick, but parks and regions need to do more to plan for operations during economic times like those our nation finds itself currently mired in. ARRA money notwithstanding (and the clock is ticking on that $) we all need to work to make park funding as important to those who hold our purse strings as it is to all of us. Coming to the Service from a Congressional office I can tell you we and our allies have successfully beat our maintenence backlog forcefully enough into the consciousness of members of Congress that that message is all most of them remember about our needs when budgets are developed. While those needs are also very important to the long-term well being of parks, it seems to me service-wide need tools to strategically plan all operations beyond the pending fiscal year are lacking. The key to future sustainable NPS operations seems to me to be planning for long-term fiscal sustainability (and the asscoiated projections) as opposed to relying on Congress to reward us with below needed levels of one year funding. But, greater minds than mine will need to decide if those tools are needed and what form they might take.


One of the greatest beauties of America is we can speak our minds freely. I am grateful to Kurt and the Traveler for providing a forum for us to do so no matter what we may think about the topic of Core Operations. With that in mind, I want to say as a long time NPS employee who has worked in different regions and parks, no other central office initiative will go down as big of a disaster, as much of a waste of taxpayer money and as specifically and brutally cruel to NPS employees as Mike Snyder's Core Operations. The current IMR regional office employees who are choosing to comment on this blog by name, for the most part have never worked in a national park, never been responsible for a park budget and were not targeted by the region for job abolishment under Core Ops. In fact, they make up some of the inner circle of the regional director - so their perspective is very different than that of a field employee. I also would like to emphasize that we in the field well understand fiscal responsibility, budget cost projections and the current imperative of tight fiscal constraints for the welfare of our entire country. We certainly understand the scrutiny under which national parks operate from Congress, the Department, partners, interest groups, media and most importantly the American Public. The regional folks who are suggesting by their comments that field employees don’t seem to understand the important elements of budgeting should spend a year working in a park and carrying out Core Op job abolishments of long time NPS employees, regionally directed VSIP & VERA personnel actions, among all the other 24/7 responsibilities we carry every day in running America’s 392 Best Ideas. Perhaps the necessary budget trimming and tighter fiscal responsibility should be exercised in the regional office before cutting mission critical posts in the parks.


I apologize to anyone who may have taken offense by my use of the term, "some gal". It was insensitive. She is probably a nice person just placed in a bad position.


To Rick Smith.

FYI according to information that is publicaly available here (http://php.app.com/fed_employees/search.php) Mr. Snyder did NOT receive any award monies in 2008.

Name Agency State/Country County Station Title Plan/
Grade Adj. Base
Salary FY 08
Award
SNYDER, MICHAEL D. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Colorado Jefferson County LAKEWOOD PARK RANGER ES 00 $166,293 $0


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