Use of FLREA revenues should enable national park crews to begin clearing roads of snow, campgrounds of garbage, and restrooms of wastes, but the long-term impact could be sizable/Rebecca Latson

As national park superintendents across the nation review their immediate needs during the ongoing partial government shutdown and check their planned expenditures from a pot of money generated through visitor fees, concerns are growing about both the possible near-term and long-term setbacks the parks will incur.

On Sunday, acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt directed the National Park Service to tap Federal Land Recreation Enhancement Act funds to pay for daily maintenance and custodial work. Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives plan to hold hearings into the legality of the move, while park superintendents and friends groups are concerned because those funds are counted on to enhance the visitor experience, not meet the daily needs of operating a park. 

Using FLREA revenues in this fashion also undermines the intent of the program, and sets a precedent for how those dollars are spent. As FLREA was envisioned and set up, the revenues from entrance fees and other approved programs were to go to enhance the visitor experience. That could be through better facilities, more interpretive programs, or restored habitat.

Another potential, and huge, problem with diverting the FLREA dollars away from their intended uses is that some of those funds are spent on seasonal positions, such as staffing campgrounds. With that money in question, it could throw a wrench into summer hiring plans, as the National Park Service's human resources offices at this point would normally be moving into the introductory steps of organizing this summer's hiring. 

How much FLREA money could be in play? Projections had the Park Service taking in about $310 million last year in fees, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. Since more than 55 percent of the fees collected typically go towards deferred maintenance projects, using some, or draining all, of that money could have significant impacts on the Park Service's ability to make inroads into the nearly $12 billion in backlogged maintenance across the National Park System.

"The administration’s approach to the shutdown is only making the deferred maintenance challenge worse," John Garder, NPCA's senior director of budget and appropriations, said Wednesday. "A lack of daily maintenance during the shutdown can cause further deterioration of facilities, while longer term projects are being undermined by a lack of staff to work with contractors and otherwise process these larger projects.

"Adding insult to injury," he continued, "is the use of badly needed fee dollars, most of which are intended to address deferred maintenance. Some of these projects have involved years of organization and planning, so the administration’s political pressure for superintendents to use those funds is throwing all of that work in the trash."

Projects planned using fee revenue sometimes are mapped out up to five years in advance, so the extent of the impact of using the budgeted revenues now on daily operations would be dependent on how long the impasse lasts. While some of the larger parks, such as Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, currently might have millions of dollars in fees in the bank, other parks might be holding onto just thousands of dollars. At Great Smoky Mountains National Park, there is no entrance fee charged at all, so that greatly limits its revenue stream.

Under Bernhardt's directive, park superintendents have been given a spreadsheet to fill out. Dollar numbers to be inserted are focused on basic visitor services (e.g., staffing needs, number of hours to be worked, toilet paper costs, gasoline for NPS vehicles), indirect costs (such as administrative staff), and the cost to pay salaries of personnel who have remained on the job, without pay, since the partial shutdown began.

There is no space for narrative and no stated criteria for how the spreadsheets will be analyzed and ranked. There also was no indication whether money might be stripped from projects that have been committed to, but not begun, and no indication whether money might be shifted between parks.

Perhaps an indication of how quickly this information will be reviewed and decisions made came Wednesday evening when officials at Joshua Tree National Park in California announced that they would not be closing the park entirely on Thursday as previously announced so crews could clean up garbage and human waste and address backcountry incursions and repair government property that had been vandalized.

"National Park Service officials have determined that by using Federal Land and Recreation Enhancement funds to immediately bring back park maintenance crews to address sanitation issues, the park will be able to maintain some visitor services, including reopening the campgrounds," a park release said. "The park will also bring on additional staff to ensure the protection of park resources and mitigate some of the damage that has occurred during the lapse of appropriations.

"Outdoor areas of the park will remain accessible. Most facilities will remain closed with the exception of the Joshua Tree Visitor Center at 6554 Park Boulevard, owned and operated by the Joshua Tree National Park Association," the release continued. "The four National Park Service visitor centers will remain closed for the duration of the lapse in appropriations. Entrance stations will be open to provide safety and resource protection messages to arriving visitors, but entrance fees and camping fees will not be collected."

At the Great Smoky Mountains Association, CEO Laurel Rematore said Wednesday that it was her understanding that whatever FLREA funds are available at Great Smoky Mountains National Park "falls short of what is needed to staff this park’s major visitor centers at this time."

"Keeping the in-park visitor centers closed reduces GSMA’s ability to generate operating funds, so the longer the VCs stay closed, the greater the financial impact of the shutdown will be on GSMA, which threatens our ability to fulfill our mission," she added. "Nonetheless, GSMA and park management agree that the facilities we jointly operate need to be staffed fully—by both the NPS and GSMA—in order to provide appropriate visitor services. Immediate sanitation issues vs. deferred maintenance—let’s not kid ourselves; it’s all important. The sooner this shutdown ends, the better."

At the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, CEO Carolyn Ward had been unable to reach personnel at the Blue Ridge Parkway and so couldn't speculate on what, if any, impacts might arise. "Many of the projects we have in the pipeline with the park are dependent on a variety of fund sources," she said.

In Montana at the Property and Environment Research Center, Shawn Regan, a former park ranger, applauded the diversion of FLREA dollars, but added that individual parks in general should be given more discretion in how they spend their revenues.

"There are certainly tradeoffs with using fee revenues for operations instead of for maintenance and other one-off projects, which is how the funds have typically been used. Using these funds for operations could certainly impact future projects and hamper the agency's progress at tackling its deferred maintenance problems," said Regan. "But I think that's a decision that local managers should be able to make on their own, not Washington, D.C. I fear the implementation of the current policy might be too heavy-handed if it doesn't allow park managers to make decisions that are best for each individual park. It's still a bit unclear what's going on. I also hope Congress will consider reimbursing the agency for any fee revenues used to operate the parks during the shutdown."