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Reducing The Federal Deficit Is Essential, But Are the National Parks A Logical Place to Cut Spending?

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Logan Pass, Glacier National Park. Kurt Repanshek photo

What price do you place on this setting? NPT file photo of Logan Pass, Glacier National Park, by Kurt Repanshek.

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.”

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Comments

d-2,

1. Perhaps my statement was not clear - the "smoke and mirrors" had to do with re-labeling existing money as something it was not - it was not new money - it had not been redirected from anywhere - we just split out existing accounts and the existing amounts and attributed parts of them to backlog maintenance by name. If that's not smoke and mirrors I don't know what is. I'm not sure you have a very sound knowledge or understanding of the NPS appropriations process - construction dollars come in a completely seperate allocation from operational dollars.

2. Read the Public Law that established the original Fee Demonstration Program - laws are just that - law. Policies and regulations are how agencies implement the laws passed by Congress. Neither the law, nor the implementing regulations for Fee Demo mandated any certain percentage of those dollars to the backlog. It was indeed POLICY that did so - policy must be consistent with the regulations and the law but it is done at agency discretion. And I would never suppose for even one minute that politics are not involved every step of the way - not did I imply that they weren't - that's the society that we live in. Yes, both the House and Senate committees include reports attavched to appropriations bills and to many ofther public laws and agencies certainly pay attention to those reports as they express the concerns and the thinking of those who hold the purse strings but the simple fact is that the reports are NOT public law.


My goodness, budget guy! The Fee Demonstration Program was written in the House Subcommittee of Interior Appropriations: not the authorized National Parks Subcommittee. The Appropriations subcommittee staffer not only wrote the bill, but micro-managed its implementation. Yes, it is the law, but it was high-handed and violated previous agreements by the appropriators with the authorizing committee not to legislate through the appropriations bill. [Yes, the authorizing committees were tardy in acting on NPS retaining revenue, and a special group of superintendent pals of the committee staffer's had advised her that most parks would never focus on collecting fees in the circumstances that at that time were the existing law.]

By "directed" I did not mean the funds were reallocated by the commttee. I meant that the committee staffers were involved in the decision to redescribe those existing funds as backlog, to serve the political objective of the committee, and the White House. Again, this was not "an internal decision" no matter how evasively you redescribe it. I think everybody, even the rest of us who know so much less than you, understood those were not new appropriations. The point is, this action together with the entire program, was micromanaged.

I'm pretty familiar with the text of the fee demo law, and know there is a large gap between the text of the law itself, and toward what purposes parks were told the 80% money would go. You may not know this, but at every stage of consideration, the WASO directorate would clear their plan with the unelected house subcommittee staffer. All the normal Executive Branch flexibility in interpreting the law, and developing agency policy, was preempted. Of course it was 'consistent' but many other alternative ways, or policies, on how to spend the money would also have been consistent.

Regarding committee reports, are you familiar with committee reports for other federal agencies? For example, take a look at GSA. Check it out. Compare words of committee intervention to dollars appropriated on an agency-by-agency basis.

GSA as an example is an agency that spends many orders of magnitude more than the NPS, but usually gets no more than a 10 page committee report. The house subcommittee, when it was under Republican control, typically ran well over 100 pages.

You think this is typical politics in 'the society that we live in'? This is NOT typical of other federal agencies, and historically it is NOT typical of the NPS experience either. NO ONE changed NPS maintenance project priorities prior to the time that John Berry and later Lynn Scarlett were Assistant Secretary's working with that house subcommittee staff.

Of course committee reports are not law, de jure. President Obama recently fulminated against how outrageously the appropriations committee oversteps. He did not do this because there was no problem, Budget Guy. Because de facto, the NPS comptroller's office was extremely thorough in enforcing these reports, to the point that they seemed to be arms of the committee.

As all this was going on, the NPS never once took their case to the entire congress. While this was going on, the NPS only spoke to about a half-dozen committee staffers, and pretty well denied access to the Divison Chiefs to any one in Congress. This is not typical of the NPS history: traditionally the NPS senior staff had ongoing subject matter discussions with hundreds of congressional offices. During this time, the appropriations subcommittee aggregated both authorizing and appropriations legislation to itself, micro managed even NPS fundraising that should have NOTHING to do with its jurisdiction, thus allowing a few NPS budget officers to aggregate all communication on all those matters -- well beyond its professional competence -- with Congress. Perhaps as a Budget Guy this troubles you not at all, but believe me from extensive personal experience, this is NOT just a function of our 'society' as you so easily put it.


d-2,

I'm likely beating a dead horse here - and it's not that I disagree with you on many points - but perhaps we each see the realities just a bit different.

That the original fee demo law came from a different committee makes little difference in the big picture - other than perhaps having a desire to have some kind of "pure" legislative process - and we don't, we haven't for decades and we likely never will again. Do I like that? No - but that's how it works. The NPS receives huge dollars from committess that do not have anything to do with parks, e.g., the transportation bills that fund federal highways. We get mandates (via public law) that have little or nothing to do with the NPS - case in point in two weeks we will welcome firearms into parks via a bill to control the credit card industry. As an agency we do not have the lattitude to pick and choose between laws we like or those that we don't - we must swallow it all and implement those laws - regardless of how they came into being or via what committee or what staffer had what influence. And just to clarify - our annual appropriations come via the Appropriations Committee and more specifically the subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies - that's where all NPS appropriations originate. The House Committee on Natural Resources with it's associated subcommittee on National Parks, National Forests and Public Lands does not deal with the appropriations process.

I don't argue for a second that congressional staffers have to much say in the process - but for some reason as a nation we keep electing both Representatives and Senators that not only have little to do in the actual crafting of legislation but likewise have seldom read the full bills that they are voting on.

That as an agency the NPS can be very ineffective with Congress is a given - we've not had a Director since George Hartzog that truly devoted the time to develop a good working relationship with Congress - and yes, I've been around that long.

How would you as the NPS Director done things differently during the Lynn Scarlett years?


Fired by a fax? And I had been thinking things couldn't possibly get any weirder or any sadder.


Re: Rick B
Sorry, but this really creeps me out...

"I want the parks in the hands of the people who bleed brown and green, the people who have truly drunk the kool-aid of the Organic Act,"

Do you know what they did to the people who didn't drink the Kool-Aid?

Also, I have met many concession employees who loved and appreciated the parks more than some NPS employees.


Bemis--

I've worked in the private sector; I've worked in academia; I now work for NPS. Moving to NPS was a huge improvement in management from my previous university, worth taking a substantial pay cut for. The part of NPS I am in runs better than any corporation I've worked for. Pretty much everyone works way more than their 40 hours because they believe in the job. Most of the professionals could earn much more money working in the private sector or even at other agencies (there's a 1 - 2 GS level penalty for NPS scientists versus USGS or NOAA fisheries). The folks in the parks that I deal with are as motivated and hard working, if not always as well trained: they care about their parks and know the issues, if not always the possible solutions.

I say let's fix the political and administrative problems at the top, but let's not privatize or outsource and lose the dedicated folks in the ranks.

ps: From what I see, private companies and even non-profits have major issues at the top, too.


The original question of the thread was not "just how sucky can we picture the NPS management", but rather "if we have to cut federal budget, is the NPS the right place to start".

I defy anyone here to pick out an organization that one couldn't throw stones at. Don't bother, because as soon as you put your own idealized organization up on that pedestal, someone else will come along and prove you wrong. It's easy to pick apart a group by individual examples.

My opinion is that the money you realize by pruning the NPS budget is miniscule compared to other larger boondoggles in the federal budget, AND pulling small amounts from the NPS budget can do large amounts of harm to our preservation of the national resources entrusted to NPS.


Hehehehe. Such adulation!

"Rick B. readily admits that the NPS is just another cog in a boondoggle filled process. Doesn't this speak volumes about where the parks stand in the hierarchy of importance to its Washington masters?"

Son, I speak no volumes. I'm just like you, a guy with a keyboard and an opinion. I have never spoken for the NPS. I am not in any hierarchy.

Aren't there any other forums out there on other topics that could use a persistent gadfly?

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