Editor's note: This updates to include comment from the Property and Environment Research Center.
Determined to keep national parks open regardless of the impacts, top Interior Department officials moved in a legally questionable direction to redirect fees generally dedicated for specific uses in parks for use in cleaning restrooms and removing trash and human waste at parks unable to deal with those issues during the ongoing partial government shutdown.
That move Sunday, done apparently without any consultation with National Park Service regional directors or superintendents, was quickly criticized by members of Congress as well as the National Parks Conservation Association.
“President Trump and his advisors apparently just woke up to the fact that the shutdown they created several weeks ago has done terrible damage to our country," said U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, widely expected to be named chair of the House Natural Resources Committee. "The American people already own our national parks and fund their upkeep. The president expects them to either pay more to keep the toilets clean out of their own pockets or pay millions of dollars for his ridiculous wall. Either way, this president is only happy as long as the American people pay for his every whim whenever it suits him. This is not how a rational president behaves, and the Natural Resources Committee will demand answers about whether these moves are legally justified.”
The questionable money swap, to allow park superintendents to tap fee revenues typically reserved for future projects to pay for basic maintenance and custodial needs during the ongoing partial government shutdown, showed up Sunday in the Interior Department's contingency plan for operating during a government shutdown.
Parks that collect fees under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA) will utilize available retained recreation fees balances to provide basic visitor services in a manner that maintains restrooms and sanitation, trash collection, road maintenance, campground operations, law enforcement and emergency operations, and staffing entrance gates as necessary to provide critical safety information. Parks must develop daily cost estimates for all employees and services to be supported by recreation fees for review and approval by the Director. This will include costs that parks planned to fund out of appropriations that have lapsed.
Parks that do not collect recreation fees or have insufficient balances, the Director will determine whether available national or regional recreation fees will be allocated to support activities as described above.
That language was not previously in the contingency plan the National Park Service was pointing people to. Under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, passed by Congress in 2005, those fees are to be "used to improve the quality of the visitor experiences at those sites."
The majority of the fees collected will be reinvested back into the collection site to enhance visitor services and reduce the backlog of maintenance needs for recreation facilities such as trail maintenance, toilet facilities, boat ramps, hunting blinds, and interpretive signs and programs.
As top Interior and Park Service officials moved to redirect the fee revenues, they apparently did not consider the ramification of using those revenues, or settle on a way to reimburse the use of those fees during the ongoing partial government shutdown. Parks that charge entrance fees normally can retain 80 percent of those revenues for maintenance projects, visitor services, wildlife habitat needs, law enforcement, and recreation projects, while the remaining 20 percent goes back to Washington, D.C., to be distributed to parks that don't charge entrance fees.
"We can't speculate on the effect to the maintenance backlog or whether the fees may be replenished after the parks reopen," Park Service spokesman Mike Litterest said in response to questions raised by the Traveler.
However, staff at the Property and Environment Research Center, a free market environmental think tank based in Bozeman, Montana, said tapping those fees made perfect sense.
"With the government shutdown entering its third week, the National Park Service is right to search for creative ways to get our nation's most popular parks back up and running. Tapping fee revenues to provide basic visitor services is eminently sensible," said Shawn Regan, a research fellow at PERC and a former park ranger. "The Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act requires that fee revenues must be spent on services or projects related to the enjoyment, access, health, and safety of park visitors. The act gives the Park Service broad discretion on how those funds can be used to benefit visitors.
"The Park Service has traditionally imposed internal controls on the use of FLREA funds — such as prohibiting the use of fee revenues to support permanent employees, requiring that most of the funds be spent on deferred maintenance, and policies that generally prohibit the use of fee revenue on recurring maintenance and operational needs," he added. "These limitations, however, are not described in the FLREA statute."
While parks would be allowed to use the fee money to staff entrance stations, they would not be collecting fees, said Litterest.
NPCA staff calculated that the ongoing shutdown has cost the Park Service "more than $6 million in fee revenue."
"Instead of robbing from park funds, the president needs to work with Congress to fully reopen the federal government, including our national parks," said NPCA President and CEO Theresa Pierno. "And he should propose budgets that will authentically help operate parks and address their maintenance needs in the long-term. Budget antics are not the way to fund our parks.”
Comments
1: I'm glad David Vela hasn't been confirmed yet as Director. He doesn't deserve to be stuck in the middle of this, and starting with this would almost certainly reduce his effectiveness for the NPS going forward.
2: FLREA (Rec Fee) funds have lots of rules that likely mean very little is available right now for this spending. Parks can carry over no more than 20% of their annual FLREA net from one calendar year to the next, and the parks I'm familiar with tend to slot in as many smaller projects as they can onto the last funds release of the year because it will be April or May before the next funds are released to them. For example, a park with $2M /yr gross revenue might have 25% cost of collection, leaving $1.5M net, then get 80% of that returned, so $1.2M to spend on projects. At most they could have carried over $240K January 1, but likely would have had much less unencumbered December 21.
3: The new guidance still states that all parks or parts of parks that swing gates to close at night or seasonally, will stay closed for the duration of the shutdown.
4: Staff hired on foundation (park bookstore or cooperating association) funds almost certainly won't get back pay for the furlough time, nor will those hired as contractors via nonprofits. The general HR gridlock and changes to the rules for seasonal and term positions means that substantial numbers of core park staff, who previously would have been regular federal employees, fall into this class.
5: Essential staff like LE rangers had their approved leave rescinded. The 2 LE rangers at the park I frequent have been working 7 days a week, and both were supposed to work Christmas day. Kinda hard on the one with a 9 yr old daughter!
6: Does anybody know what happens to park staff living in park housing during a shutdown? I assume those in long-term leases aren't evicted? Bonus question: How does a shutdown work at Kalaupapa, where NPS does core support for the non-NPS community?
Not sure they can really evict anyone from those just because there's a shutdown. Not sure how they would pay their utilities though. I couldn't find anything in the DOI contingency plan.
https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/2018-01-nps-contingency-plan.pdf
As for Kalapaupau - I think the services are paid for by the stakeholders, including the Hawaii Dept of Health. I couldn't find anything stating that it was otherwise closed to visitors. It does sound like the trail closed because of a slide.
Of course there's news that NPS employees are still being paid to provide services at the clock tower in the old Post Office building that now houses the Trump International Hotel DC.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/01/clock-tower-at-trump-interna...
6: Does anybody know what happens to park staff living in park housing during a shutdown? I assume those in long-term leases aren't evicted?
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Don't know about what's happening now, but back during Reagan's shutdowns, we remained in our housing, and because our housing payment was deducted from our paychecks, we really didn't have to worry about that detail.
Utilities, too, were part of our housing fees. However, at Navajo National Monument, employees pooled their dollars to pay for refilling large propane tanks that fed park housing -- and also government buildings like the visitor center and maintenance sheds. I don't know if they were ever repaid.
I don't understand why NPCA has objected to the use of FLREA reserves to keep Parks open during the shutdown. https://www.npca.org/articles/2107-testimony-agency-spending-restriction... Particularly since Congress has since reimbursed these funds in full. USFS has for many years covered the cost of fighting wildfires by borrowing unspent FLREA reserves accumulated from prior years (nominally reserved for future unspecified major capital projects to benefit visitors), and repaying the reserve account from the next year's firefighting budget.
NPCA believes FLREA funds should be used for deferred maintenance (and I agree) so should instead object to their expenditure (in largest part) for fee collection (issuing entrance and camping permits). Our Parks are too much like toll roads: spending as much to staff toll booths as to fix potholes.
Contrary to what Tomp2 suggests above, DOI retained almost $300 million in unobligated FLREA reserves at the end of FY17, an amount slightly greater than one full year of fee revenues. See Figure 3 and accompanying text in CRS "FLREA Overview" taken from DOI "Budget in Brief" https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10151.pdf
In contrast, USFS retains almost two full years' of its fee revenues in unspent FLREA reserves. While NPS policy is now to slow (but not halt) the continued growth of these unspent reserves, USFS has no such policy. (The reserves vary between Park units, and less so between Forests.) The continued growth of unspent fee reserves should be an embarrassment to all agencies. It defeats the purpose of FLREA.