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. Many of my friends, neighbors, coworkers, teachers, etc. have been Japanese-American. It would have never occurred to me to greet them as if they weren't anything but native English speakers. Granted I've actually used non-English greetings out of habit with several friends/coworkers who are not native English speakers, but it was really something said out of familiarity and not an assumption like Zinke made.
Of course it was juvenile. Probably as juveline as faking a southern/English/Australian accent. It was totally fake on his part.
Thank you tomp2.
It was a disrespectful and childish attempt at humor. Her response was indicative of the justifiably low regard many of our lawmakers have for this administration.
WP--
Perhaps I can explain this one. The issue is that Colleen Hanabusa is a native US citizen who speaks English: her _grandfather_ was a US citizen. Zinke has not greeted Representatives in the German, Italian, Spanish, or any other "ancestral" language of _their_ grand-parents. [Plus, he got it wrong. There is that.] The reflexive idea that Americans of Japanese ancestry are something "different" (and Japanese) even after several generations in the US is what led to natural born US Citizens being dispossessed and shipped off to internment camps.
I'm an old white male natural resources guy, but the National Monuments for the Internment camps are a bit personal to me. I grew up in San Diego, and only slowly started recognizing the ghosts and shadows of the pre-war Japanese-American community in a building here, a former truck farm there, and a handful of old nurserymen, yet somehow no visible current Japanese-American community or cultural activities. In grad school in Salt Lake City I spent an afternoon listening to a groceryman who was sent to Topaz with his family as a child, and they never moved back to California after the war, recount some of his story.
There's more than just Manzanar, and more than just what terrible things our government did in the name of some of our ancestors during the war. Manzanar emphasizes the oral histories of life in the camps; the experiences and lives of those Americans is every bit as much part of the American Experience as pioneers in Scott's Bluff or any western fort. Minidoka NHS is both the site of the internment camp in Idaho with a few remaining buildings, but also a garden on Bainbridge Island (Seattle), memorializing the lives and the community the internees had in that area before they were dispossessed and sent away. Tule Lake Segregation Center, the largest of the camps, is a unit of Valor in the Pacific NM (the USS Arizona Memorial) but managed as part of Lava Beds NM. Honouliuli NM in Hawai'i is still figuring out what their interpretive themes will be when they open to the public. The budget cut that Zinke was being questioned about would zero out funding for archeological and historical studies at these monuments and at other sites that will never become National Monuments or National Historical Places, that won't be funded for preservation or stabilization but will be allowed to decay, but nonetheless have history we can learn from.
In particular, Zinke with his record of ethical lapses as a public servant. His claims that he didn't take a "private jet" because it had propellers. And his exagerrations that he had combat awards. Yet somehow he's elected to Congress and confirmed as Secretary of the Interior.
tomp2 --- I have to sympathize with what you wrote. My wife, as an NPS curator, has had the opportunity and responsibility on occasion to work with archival objects from these camps. She came home at night and described to me in detail how moving these items and experiences were. It sensitized me to the camps, their occupants, and their experiences in a way that all too many other white Americans have not. Responses to Zinke's faux pas pretty well break down on one side of that or the other.
I am always amazed how people can get their panties in such a wad over the most meaningless things.
Public Service ethics, in my own view, is extremely important. Every department has approved ethical standards that an employee agrees to. This includes the Secretary. All public service is paid for by taxpayers, government agencies are not privately owned. When a public service employee at any level up to and including the President, breaks ethical standards, or worse, the law, it is a very big deal in my own opinion. It is bad enough when the private sector does it, and unfortunately it is happening to frequently.