Did you feel the wind in the sails go slack?
Barely three months beyond the euphoria raised by Ken Burns’ documentary on the national parks, and just four weeks after 2009 delivered the strongest visitation to parks in a decade, President Obama wants to freeze funding levels of the National Park Service and those of just about every other domestic program. In a move triggered by the continued malaise that has settled over the nation’s economy, one brought on by over-exuberance in the housing sector and fueled by Wall Street’s self-exuberance, the president’s FY2011 budget proposes to freeze just about all domestic spending for the rest of his term.
Even before the budget was officially delivered some were ridiculing its position on the national parks.
Could the timing have been any worse?
With the centennial of the National Park Service just six years off, the rekindled love affair with national parks that was sparked by The National Parks: America’s Best Idea and the efforts by the administration to dust the rust off the system by first proposing a $100 million boost in the Park Service’s operations budget, adding another $100 million to attack the system's woeful backlog, and then through the infusion of $750 million through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the oft-neglected park system in 2009 received some much-needed love.
But if Congress accepts the president’s proposal, something that's never a sure bet, the Park Service could actually move backwards, not even hold steady, as inflation will continue to eat away at its budgets.
“The Park Service has done a good job, as has this administration, (in) reversing the course of the starvation diet that the parks have been on for some while,” says Phil Voorhees, who crunches the agency’s budget numbers for the National Parks Conservation Association. “It doesn’t seem to do a lot of good to anybody to return to digging the hole a little bit deeper in park operations.”
The National Park System, arguably the most-beloved of all federal government holdings, long has struggled financially. Largely that’s because Congress more often focuses on creating new units of the system than figuring out how to fund the needs that come with those units, let alone the existing needs. Just this past week alone we saw two proposals (this one and this one) introduced into Congress that would require more than $105 million to execute, and no language identifying how to pay those bills.
The Park Service’s needs long have been lamented. The maintenance backlog across the 392-unit system is estimated at $8 billion-9 billion, and the NPCA says the agency’s budget each year runs roughly $600 million shy of needs, thus increasing the backlog.
“The reason why the backlog exists is in large measure because (the) operations (budget) was falling short for years and years,” explained Mr. Voorhees. “That’s the legacy of shortfalls in park operations. We would absolutely hate to see that we’re going back to the old days.”
Make no mistake, the current administration has been a friend of the parks. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into needy projects across the park system, projects such as a new visitor center at Dinosaur National Monument to replace one that literally was cracking apart, such as mitigation projects to clear the way for removal of the Elwah Dam and restoration of the Elwha River basin at Olympic National Park in Washington, and such as rehabilitation of Independence Hall Tower at Independence National Historical Park.
What is being questioned now, in response to the president’s budgeting, is why retreat on the parks, whose budget is a minute percentage of the entire federal budget? And why in its story about the budget did the New York Times specifically reference the national parks among those agencies that would have their budgets frozen? Was it an intentional reference to see if the public would stand up, take notice, and object, or simply a passing mention of some of the programs that would be affected?
Do parks have a vocal base of supporters, or is it a silent majority? Already we’ve seen California and Arizona move to cut their state parks operations due to economic woes, and New York officials and those in some other states are debating the same.
Why are parks so vulnerable to budget cuts? Not only do they seem to have wide support, as evidenced by the 285.4 million who visited the National Park System last year along with the continuing efforts in Congress to add new units, but they offer so much in terms of education, physical and mental well-being, appreciation of nature, and, yes, even a grounding in nature. Beyond that, these public landscapes, along with those managed by the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management, play crucial roles in wildlife management, watershed health, and air filtration. Is it wise not to invest in their upkeep as best we can?
There is no question the federal deficit must be controlled, and that requires across-the-board participation. We also need to keep in mind that while the president proposes a budget, it is Congress that passes one. As such, park advocates need to increase the pressure on their elected representatives to truly be stewards of the park system, not to use the parks as political pawns. And it wouldn't hurt, either, if the president were given the line-item veto so he could cull some of the millions of dollars in questionable, if not downright ridiculous, earmarks Congress piles onto the budgets.
In these dire times, do we need to spend $750,000 for the Consortium for Plant Biotechnology; $150,000 for the privately owned St. Augustine Church in Austin, Nev.; $1,189,375 for the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation’s Alternative Energy School of the Future in Clark County; $24,500,000 for the National Drug Intelligence Center, even though the Justice Department reportedly has called for its demise; or $206,000 for wool research in Montana, Texas, and Wyoming, three states that since 1995 have received $3,417,453 for ... wool research, according to Citizens Against Government Waste. You can find myriad other examples of questionable appropriations at CAGW’s website.
Beyond questionable earmarks, there remain plenty of loopholes that Congress could, if it truly wanted to, close and, along with trimming wasteful spending, reap the federal coffers billions of dollars.
If there is to be a funding freeze, and it seems inevitable, let those who best know the Park Service tighten the purse strings. Jon Jarvis is still getting comfortable in the director's office, and having come from the field, he more than likely knows what is a productive use of funds, and what is not. If there's a silver lining to a budget freeze, perhaps it lies in uncovering better, and more efficient, approaches to doing business in the parks.
“A three-year freeze, plus increases restricted to the rate of inflation thereafter, would certainly reduce the (Park Service) director's ability to grow the National Park System and to enable the service to fully accomplish the responsibilities assigned to it by the Congress,” said Rick Smith, a member of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees. “On the other hand, it will give the NPS the time to take a close look at what it is doing and devise ways to be more effective in carrying out its program responsibilities.
“If the NPS is not in an expansion mode, the director might have time to dedicate to rebuilding employee morale and improving the training and education of the service's workforce. That would be a big plus,” he added. “None of this works, of course, if the administration decides how the freeze should be implemented. That must be decided by the secretaries and their bureau chiefs, with emphasis on the bureau chiefs.
“Let the people who know how their agencies work make the decisions. Otherwise, the decisions will be political, not programmatic, in nature, almost always a fatal flaw.”
Comments
Look, folks, I disagree with almost everything Beamis says, but he has a right to express his opinions on NPT as long as he plays by the rules--no personal attacks, no profanity, etc. We are all accorded the same privilege. I appreciate it.
Rick Smith
Kurt,
If you look at NPS press releases over the last decade, they reflect considerable attention to the backlog. For example: "The President committed to spend $4.9 billion over 5 years to address known problems while NPS conducted inventory and condition assessments to determine the magnitude of deferred maintenance of NPS assets and the preventive requirements to protect the investments being made. Between FY 2002 and FY 2004, a total of $2.8 billion has been appropriated to specifically address the deferred maintenance issue. The FY 2005 budget proposes $1.1 billion, including $310 million as part of the President’s Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century reauthorization proposal. This request reflects an increase of $77 million over the FY 2004 level for reducing the maintenance backlog."
On top of that, the park service now apparently keeps all the gate fees instead of placing them in the Treasury. They're supposed to spend this money on the backlog too. At 20 dollars a pop to get in Grand Canyon that has to add up.
And, it turns out, park roads are maintained by the highway admin not park money!
Now, maybe George Bush took the money from one park pocket and required it be spent on backlog. I don't know. But I do know that the Park Service is always whining about funding but never, ever, seems to fix anything.
As to the annual $600 Million 'underfunding' adding to the backlog, I doubt that's all maintenance. I expect the Park service wants more park police, rangers and scientists too.
Again, I'm all for well maintained and funded parks. But if I've grown suspicious of some of these problems that never seem to get solved.
Returning to the theme of this post, hard times are coming in federal budgets. Every function will have to make hard choices. It just seems to me the backlog saga means the parks are ill prepared to manage well.
Anon, I do recall President Bush saying he was going to wipe out the backlog, then estimated at about $4.9 billion, during his first term, but I never saw the appropriations you mention. I'll make some inquiries. Don't forget, though, that what presidents propose Congress needs to endorse, and that doesn't always happen. As to the gate fees, that's another story we're looking at. Thanks for keeping the issue alive.
There was a lot of budget trickery going on here (as there always is). Much of what the Bush Administration touted as "reducing the backlog" was money that had been previously distributed to parks as repair and rehab or cyclic maintenance. So it was not "new money", but "old money" repackaged. It did little to reduce the burden of deferred maintenance but merely continued existing programs with a new name.
Parks that collect fees when I worked did not retain all the money collected but 80% of it. The remaining 20% was distributed for projects in parks that did not collect fees. The funds from fee collection were subject to many limitations as to the purposes for which the money could be used.
Rick Smith
If the NPS gets a funding freeze, does the big government workers get a pay freeze as well
I think the Maintenance funds were doubled under Bush the Second, but that was in the millions, not the billions he promised to address. Rick Smith is right about the trickery. I do not believe Bush the Second was the only culprit, but the House subcommittee on appropriations had a major role in redirecting funding from non-appropriated sources to fund the committee's facility priorities.
In other words, away from preservation and visitor services, and toward maintenance.
To this extent, the whole "Backlog" thing has always been a con game, since it was invented by Secretary of the Interior James Watt in the early 1980's. That's when Cheney picked up the tactic. It is an effort to focus all the attention on facilities, and away from preservation, land conservation, or new parks.
It was a deliberate effort to find a way to divide the field rangers from the environmentalists and resource managers in the Service. Part of the way the game was played was always to underfund the Blacklog after having made a big deal of it. Somewhat clueless liberals like the New York Times would then constantly focus on how the President did not keep his Backlog commitment; that blotted out the sun when it came to the other issues. What a perfect scam: get all the environmentalists to argue over inadequate facilities !
So keep in mind: what are the most important things to you about parks? Preserving open space? Top quality science and natural resource studies to identify and deal with threats to parks? Fixing roads, visitor centers and trails? Ranger services, like great Interpretive programs, recreation programs and Education outreach to schools? Installing and maintaining sewer systems in support of park concessions? Top quality administrative skills and training, so park staff are professional and effective? Law enforcement facilities, equipment, staff? Preservation of Historic Structures?
Of course to some extent, all of these are important, including maintenance of facilities and sewers, etc.
But there is no doubt that while we all were diverted toward Backlog, away from buying and protecting land or new parks, and the loss of great visitor services and seasoned employees. The game is to pretend there is an essential choice between money spent on one thing, that then needs to be taken away from the other. It was designed to split the service and foment constant bickering, to cause highly-motivated people to leave in frustration, and eventually lead to a loss in support by the American people, because of deterioration of the parks and the quality of the park people.
This sounds weird, I know, but I actually heard people planning for this in the early 1980's, people who were allies of the inholders associations, gun associations and elected officials burned by the creation of new parks in Alaska against the wishes of that congressional delegation.
Plenty of right-wing zealots have for years spoken of "starving the beast" (undermining government) through just these tactics.
It did not do to have a motivated group of federal employees, in the NPS, who were not working for the money, doing an outstanding job of providing services to the public, who were trusted and believed when they spoke in favor of preservation, in favor of unhunted wildlife, in favor of restricted motorized access, in favor of Public Service. The two top service agencies (after the US Post Office was destroyed): the US Coast Guard and the US National Park Service have thus been subsumed; the poor coast guard now just a cog in the Homeland Security monster.
Fortunately, the excesses of the Bush administration, in trying to rewrite the NPS management polices, in trying to permit massive use of snowmachines in de facto NPS wilderness, in failing to oppose high-profile developments in national parks (such as the plans for Valley Forge) caused some people and Media to wake up and realize they had taken their eye off the Main Event. The smarter right-wingers, starting with Sen. Stevens and Ronald Reagan, have always known you NEVER attack environmental policies head on, you just cut the budget, and say we really just cannot afford it. And watch people fight each other like dogs over the scraps.
Rick Smith is right - lots of budget trickery during the Bush administration. In his first campaign Bush promised to eliminate the then $4.9 billion maintenance backlog. While budgets under his watch did increase some of the project funds for maintenance (repair/rehab, cyclic maintenance, etc.) they were increases in the low millions - very hard to get to $4.9 billion that way. It was internal policy that direceted much of the entrance fee dollars to addressing the backlog but still that wasn't going to be enough to make good on Bush's pledge. So what did we do? We expanded the definition of what backlog maintencne was so that activities that were not once counted as addressing the backlog now counted. Park operational budgets in maintenance were split into different accounts - half counting as routine maintenance and half counting as backlog maintenance - lots of smoke and mirrors. Operational maintence funds seldom address backlog issues - it's project funding for the most part that allows a park to deal with the backlog. The intent was clear enough; the new money was never really going to come in adequate amounts to eliminate the original backlog so we needed to cook the books a bit to make it loook like Bush had followed through on his campaign pledge. It appeared that a lot of money was being spent on the backlog but many of those dollars were being spent on routine operations - doing the things you need to do to prevent an asset from becoming part of the backlog - and not dealing with a majority of the projects that made up the original backlog of $4.9 billion.
At the same time the NPS was fully implementing FMSS - the Facility Management Software System - which required complete inventories of all constructed assets from trails to roads to buildings to housing to storage sheds, etc. After the inventory and prioritization of the assets came comprehensive condition assessments of each and documentation of all known deficiencies - this process caused the estimated backlog to grow exponentially. The $4.9 billion backlog was always a squishy number at best - based on quick calculations, e.g., we knew the roads at Yellowstone were fallling apart and we could estimate the costs in dollars per mile of road, but we really didn't have good hard supporting documentation. FMSS has provided that - it's not a homegrown program, it's based on industry standards for asset management and uses the RS Means cost estimating guides which is likely the most accepted cost estimating tool used in private industry. FMSS has been a huge burden on park staffs - at times it can feel like you're just feeding the beast instead of out doing "real" work - but the benefit is that now the NPS can sustantiate just what makes up the backlog and provide costed-out work orders to prove it.
Dear Budget Guy:
1. Why is it 'smoke and mirrors' for the NPS to direct some of the money toward routine maintenance? I thought, when the essential fraud of doing all large and pending Backlog projects through CONSTRUCTION dollars - while continuing to cut back on the day-to-day maintenance staff was becoming obvious to all, the politicos realized they were about to be really embarrassed, suddenly support of on-going maintenance was permitted. The real smoke and mirrors would be to keep expanding a deteriorated facilities list with one hand, while pretending to address problems by huge contracts. That is like deciding to put no anti-freeze or oil in a car, run it into the ground, and then: call it maintenance when you have to buy a whole new engine.
2. What exactly do you MEAN when you say "IT WAS AN INTERNAL POLICY THAT DIRECTED" much of the entrance fee dollars to address the Backlog? Are you actually trying to maintain this policy was not in any way directed by the House subcommittee on appropriations majority staffer, or by the Asst. Secretary for Policy and Budget (people absolutely shillers for the White House and OMB)? I remember one senior Republican appropriations staffer told me that of course the Committee should have control over priority uses for funds raised by the NPS through entrance fees or even independent fundraising, because the Congress permitted the NPS to raise funds from those sources in the first place.
Either the Asst. Secretary or the house committee staffer could instead have permitted or encouraged the NPS to seek a straight-up maintenance appropriation increase, and of course the staffer could have organized a maintenance funding increase through the Congress. If the OMB examiner objected -- as he always did because rather than being concerned that funds were being well-spent, he was preoccupied with cutting back on all expenditures regardless of merit -- OMB could have been rolled by the Secretary and/or the Director by appealing the case to the President. President Bush had a history of supporting new initiatives: he for example vetoed no bills on national parks even if they violated the "policy" developed by his subordinates, if the bills actually got to him. But there was no appeal over OMB. As a matter of fact, (in an inconsistent OMB moment from my statement above) one time even the OMB examiner told me he had allowed increased funding in the Passback in a category important to the professional NPS people, but the political leadership of the NPS and the Department of the Interior then took those new dollars out in their response.
So, I am eager to learn this new definition of the word 'internal!'
Finally, doesn't your benighted FMSS now permit detailed intervention by these same politicos in the Department, OMB, and unelected congressional staff to now change the maintenance priorities by the NPS professionals? Are you unaware that since the "Backlog" scam was being pushed by the house committee staff and their stooges in the Department -- even in the Clinton Administration -- for the first time EVER we have seen changes in the priorities for individual maintenace projects? So, do you think that is just a coincidence?
I suppose you think it is purely an accident that now we have all the NPS staff chasing their tails in frustration just to get data to the Politicos, so the politicos then can undermine the professional park priority list without the NPS, and at the same time prevent the career employees from attending to the real work, while everything gets done by the private sector on contract?
So, you think all this was an 'internal' decision? So, do you have a new definition of the word 'internal?'
So, where can I get some of this cool aid?
Here, I had thought that the reason the Congress passed the Act of 1916 creating the National Park Service, was because it wanted a professional service -- not the politicos -- to run, operate and maintain the parks. And now these same Politicos are using the clause in the Act of 1916, intended only to permit park concessions for commercial services for visitors, to be used as a justification for the wholesale running of the parks by the private sector on contract, and turning 'park professionals' into contract officers. Silly me.