Interior Secretary Zinke told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that too many free and discounted passes into the National Park System are part of the Park Service's funding problems.
Editor's note: This corrects that fourth-graders, not 4-year-olds, can get a free parks pass, and adds reaction to Secretary Zinke's comments from a military veteran.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says free or discounted passes given to senior citizens, active military, disabled, and even fourth-graders and their families are part of the reason for the National Park Service's funding problems.
During an at times contentious appearance before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the secretary, explaining why he's considering a surge pricing system for 17 national parks, said parks are losing too much money to those pass programs.
"I've spent a lot of time in a (park) kiosk, and it's amazing, in our parks, which the maintenance (backlog) as you know, we're far behind," the secretary told the committee Tuesday while explaining the Trump administration's FY2019 budget proposal for the Interior Department. "But when you give discounted or free passes to elderly, fourth-graders, veterans, disabled, and you do it by the carload, there's not a whole lot of people that actually pay at our front door.
"As well as you have a lot of foreign guests," he added. "We're looking at ways to make sure we have more revenue in the front door of our parks themselves. Because when you have a park like (Mount) Rainier, the money they receive coming in the front gate, I want to make sure more of it goes to that park superintendent so he has flexibility in how he spends it."
Under current pass programs, senior citizens 62 and older can purchase a lifetime pass to the parks for $80 (the fee had been $10 until it increased last year), fourth-grade students can receive a free pass through the Every Kid in a Park program started by the Obama administration, active military and their dependents gain free passes, and U.S. citizens who are permanently disabled receive free passes.
While Secretary Zinke said too much of entrance fee revenues go back to Washington, D.C., under current regulations 80 percent of the fees collected in a park stay there, while the other 20 percent is sent to Washington to be redistributed to other areas, including to parks that do not collect entrance fees.
He did acknowledge that park fees alone won't significantly address the park system's $11.7 billion maintenance backlog.
"But a lot of our parks have record visitation," he said. "We expect them to have record visitation again."
Under questioning from Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, Secretary Zinke said he wasn't suggesting that the free entry given to military, seniors, and fourth-graders should be done away with.
"No, what I'm saying is this: We subsidize and we allow, by design, a lot of people to go through. If you're in a car and you have a veteran in the car, everyone, whether they're a veteran or not, is free in that car," said Secretary Zinke. "Same thing with disabled, same thing with elderly, on passes. Basically, one person with a pass, everyone in that car comes in for free. Whether or not that's correct, we're looking at it."
The secretary's comments drew criticism from an Army veteran who is a senior campaign representative for the Sierra Club's Military Outdoors program.
“I’m a veteran who helps other veterans and their families get outdoors because our public lands can ease the transition from active duty to active citizenship, and are spaces to heal emotionally and physically," said Rob Vessels. "It’s insulting to have the Secretary of the Interior blame me and other veterans for the fact that he won’t fund our national parks properly. I served my country to help protect institutions like our national parks, and have dedicated my life to expanding access to the outdoors for all people. Secretary Zinke should learn to speak more respectfully about veterans before he uses us as a tool for his political agenda to shut working families out of our national parks.”
Secretary Zinke also told the committee that the $80 America the Beautiful parks pass, which allows holders to enter parks as many times as they want for a one-year period, is an incredible bargain, saying he took his family to a movie the other night and that the bill, which included popcorn, came to more than $80.
He said that his staff's review of park fee structures is designed to "make sure that revenue coming into the door of our principal parks is appropriate, making sure that we still have value. Because American parks belong to the public, they belong to all Americans, and everyone should have access."
"We definitely believe we should be increasing access, not disincentivizing it," responded Sen. Cantwell.
Comments
Sure, Secretary Zinke. The NPS budget problems are greatly aggravated because there are too many discounts for entrance fees, and too much of the collected fees (actually 20%) goes back to Washington D.C. He needs to take responsibility for his budget proposals which drastically impact the NPS, much more than the relatively small amounts of money involved in fee collection. It is the responsibility of the Administration to adequately fund the NPS and other Interior agencies, and the Interior Secretary should be its strongest advocate.
Parents of a fourth grader simply state that their kid is in 4th grade and that is the standard. Unless the parent is a member of the current administration, their word is probably trustworthy.
Eric - knock off the nonsense. As far as I know, even real estate brokers are generally aware of renovation plans for their own office, especially after being in thaat office for over a year.
Ah, so much horespucky.
Rick, I know if renovations are going on in my office. I have no clue what they are costing because there are people whose responsiblity it is to monitor/manage that. Its not my job. It's not Zinke job to micro manage repairs set in motion a decade ahead of when he assumed his office.
A couple of clarifications, plus my opinions.
1) The concept that all the free & discounted pass programs (including those enacted into law by Congress) represent foregone revenue predates Zinke. It was in a 2015 DOI IG report: https://www.doioig.gov/sites/doioig.gov/files/CINNPS00122013Public.pdf I assert that substantial fractions of those visitors would not visit parks without the special programs, so the actual foregone revenue is some fraction of the IG numbers. The full IG report has some caveats; Zinke just latched on to the executive summary language from that report.
2) The original "Every Kid in a Park" 4th graders program was meant to have worksheets for passes distributed by schools, youth programs like Scouting and YMCA and church youth groups, and by requests from parents to cover home schooled. NPS publicized it to school districts, (naively) thinking that someone in the district offices would want to claim credit for something cool and no cost to the district, so would spread the word to all 4th grade teachers and elementary school principals. That did not happen; word got to teachers more via guerilla marketing word of mouth from rangers to teachers or rangers to parents to teachers. I don't have the data and it might not exist, but I think that despite the lack of communication by school districts, overall more of the forms & worksheets get to kids via teachers than by visits to park VCs or the internet: most families with 4th graders visiting parks don't even know the program exists. VC rangers I talk with haven't seen _any_ families asking for the 4th grade pass that appeared to be gaming the system with kids of other ages (and they do lots of 3rd, 4th, & 5th grade class programs, so they're pretty good at guessing kid's grades).
{Opinions}:
I am in favor of the 4th grade free family annual pass program in terms of giving free samples to families who did not grow up camping and going to National Parks. If they go to a couple of historical National Monuments (many with programs tied in to the local 4th grade curriculum), and maybe visit a natural resource park or monument or National Forest or FWS Wildlife Refuge, some fraction will discover that they enjoy it, and will be paying customers at least occasionally over the rest of their lives. I consider that lost revenue to be good marketing for the future.
I'm not appalled by the cost of the door replacement for the Secretary of the Interior's Office in Main Interior. It is a very old building, and even interior work needs to meet with both ABA and historical preservation rules. Yes, when parks find the cost to remodel 50-yr-old staff restrooms to ABA standards seems high, they simply postpone or cancel the project, but if those doors in Main Interior last for the next 50 years, a bit more cost for architectural integrity seems pretty reasonable. They aren't furniture just for Zinke, the initial project was likely started under Sally Jewell for the benefit of her succesors, and will benefit the next 10 or more Secretaries, staff, and prevent water damage to the building.
I _am_ appalled by Zinke's travel spending, more by the absolute tone-deafness of it than by the tiny dent it puts in the DOI budget. Because Fran Mainella & her entourage spent so much on travel 15 years ago, NPS has been under separate onerous travel restrictions for 15 years. Those hard ceilings are not just on travel to meetings and training. Backcountry time for park staff (including, for example, all time on the islands for Channel Islands staff), and operational travel to parks by scientists, historians, and other positions in WASO or regional offices and shared among parks, all count against the travel ceilings. I can't get $250 against the travel ceiling approved for 3-4 days in Death Valley helping my program staff figure out how to monitor the condition of vegetation in springs & wetlands. Zinke's $3000 extra here to give a speach to a political donor's ice hockey team, $5000 extra there, $8-10K in the Virgin Islands, to say nothing of sightseeing in fire aircraft, etc., is beyond insulting in that context. I mentally convert the dollars into how many operational trips to the field the cost of that chartered flight could have covered. Despite his claims about pushing personnel & funding out to the field and being all about supporting "front line staff" in the field, he won't lift the travel ceilings, even for operational travel, and make parks & programs simply keep overall spending below the funding levels, justify everything, and get our jobs done.
FYI-the 20% of fees which quote "go back to Washington" above, are redistributed to parks which have little or no fee revenue. This revenue stream is very important to the many small parks, monuments, historic sites, etc and in no way is funding "Washington" programs.
DC is one of the most expensive places to live and work. and according to City Lab, if you have $100.00 you will only get $85.00 worth of stuff. Then federal contracts are aways going to be more expensive, as the workers have to have appropriate background clearances (and perhaps a minder or two - given the people would be in Main Interior around all those important people.)
And for those of us who have ever tried to fix/line up/or otherwise change a door out in a historic building where walls/doors/frames change a LOT over the seasons (temp/rainfall)
https://www.citylab.com/life/2015/07/what-100-is-worth-in-cities-across-...