A February snowstorm exposed weaknesses in staffing at Yosemite National Park/NPS
Editor’s note: The health of the National Park System and the public’s enjoyment of that system depends on a strong and vibrant National Park Service workforce. Currently, though, the strains on the system seem to be reaching a breaking point, and action needs to be taken to reverse the downward slide.
When a particularly heavy snowstorm battered Yosemite National Park back in February, toppling countless trees, destroying guest cabins, and even leading to a fire in employee housing, the park’s response was crippled by a lack of staff.
“The Pacific West Region is a team, and as such, we need to help each other whenever and wherever we are able. Let's pull together to help one of our fellow parks,” read an email plea sent from the regional office to superintendents across the region. “Due to recent weather events at Yosemite National Park and a 40 percent vacancy rate of the Facility Management Division, we are seeking help with our spring opening activities.”
The help arrived, the park’s infrastructure was cleaned up and repaired, and the Facility Management Division is reported to be back to normal staffing.
But the weakness within National Park Service staffing exposed by that snowstorm was not an isolated situation. Across the Park Service there are numerous vacancies, safety issues created by a lack of staffing when there's not enough law enforcement staff, and overworked personnel, according to park staff that discussed the issue with the Traveler.
“I’m a division chief at a large park with over 12 years with the NPS, and this is by far the worst (Human Resources) crisis in my experience,” one Park Service employee said. “Parks like mine have 40 percent of our positions vacant, and it is only getting worse as hiring delays are now taking over a year.”
Even now, with summer roughly half over, some park system units still haven’t filled all their seasonal positions for the peak vacation season, according to Phil Francis of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks. That said, the human resources problem is not new to the Park Service, he noted.
“I know on the Blue Ridge Parkway, when I left (as superintendent) in 2013, that we had a total of 80 permanent maintenance positions on our books, and only 40 were filled. Those were the positions that were in the field, not the ones at headquarters,” he said.
Could any major corporation run efficiently and successfully if it relied on hundreds of thousands of volunteers to function, if some units of its operations had 40 percent of its jobs vacant, and if it was hamstrung by insufficient funding that not only prevented hiring but also failed to keep up with inflation?
With an annual workforce of nearly 20,000 “full-time equivalents” and a physical presence that ranges from the western Pacific to the Virgin Islands, the National Park Service equates with being a major corporation. But it struggles with a concerning number of vacant positions in some parks, the absence of a full-time, Senate-confirmed director, missing permanent directors in three of its seven regions, numerous “acting” positions scattered across the system, and the reliance on more than 300,000 volunteers. Regarding vacancies of full-time appointments, here's a glance at some of them:
- Grand Canyon National Park has been a revolving door for acting superintendents since Superintendent Christine Lehnertz resigned earlier this year after a demoralizing investigation spurred by a subbordinate's fabricated allegations. An investigation exonerated Lehnertz, and top NPS officials welcomed her back, but she said she could have a greater impact on peoples’ lives elsewhere.
- Just this week the Park Service announced a yearlong acting superintendent for Women’s Rights National Historical Park in New York state.
- There’s an acting superintendent at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, acting public information staff at Park Service headquarters, an acting superintendent at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, an acting superintendent at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, an acting superintendent at Virgin Islands National Park, and the list goes on.
At the same time, while visitation and the number of units in the park system continue to grow, staff is shrinking.
“The Park Service has lost 14 percent of their staff since 2011. Meanwhile, visitation went up 14 percent," said John Garder, senior director of budget and appropriations for the National Parks Conservation Association. "The Park Service has lost a lot of staff, and it’s important for the public and Congress to know what those missing positions are.”
The great number of “acting” roles “has to do with budget, and I think it has to do with the length of time it now takes to fill vacant positions,” said Francis.
Driving the hiring problem, Park Service staff told Traveler, is an overworked and understaffed human resources contingent. But there’s also a lack of funding to hire positions, and a 2016 review of Park Service HR practices by the Office of Personal Management led to recommended changes in practices that indicated the OPM didn’t fully understand the seasonal needs and practices of the agency, those interviewed said.
"The process is inefficient and many of the things HR requires hiring officials to do add little to no value but suck huge amounts of our time," said a superintendent.
A requirement that HR review “benchmark position descriptions,” which exist for the purpose of being available for managers to use without needing to be reclassified, annually slows down the hiring process, as the review can be lengthy due to limited HR staff. The job posting process and applicant review process can drag on, too, adding to lagging vacancies.
“Think of the HR crisis in another way - the time needed to do the work vs. the capacity,” a division chief said. “My guess is that it takes an HR specialist 8-12 hours to do the work to announce a position on usajobs.gov, and another 16-24 hours to review, rank, score, and vet the list of names for the hiring official to select. Some announcements with only a half-dozen applicants would take much less time yet others with hundreds of applicants would take longer.
“So if my HR person has 300 vacancies to fill by herself times 24 hours average time per announcement, that perhaps equals 7,200 hours of work which would take her 3.4 years to accomplish working 40 hours per week without taking time off. Consider that 450 parks, regions, and program offices need to hire thousands of people each year but only perhaps 75-100 hiring specialists are available. You get one hell of a backlog.”
A park superintendent acknowledged the problems those delays can create.
“It’s fair to say, if it’s taking a year to fill a job, when that happens, things are less effective,” the superintendent said. “Programs aren’t as productive, work might be missed, and opportunities are lost.”
How widespread the hiring problems are is impossible to say without calling each and every one of the 419 units in the park system. At the Park Service’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, chief spokesperson Jeremy Barnum wouldn’t say how many vacancies exist throughout the Service.
“Simply providing the number of all vacancies does not indicate that a staffing problem exists,” Barnum said. “Vacancies take place for multiple reasons such as human need/action (employee gets a promotion to another location), location of the park unit including remote areas, cost of living, distance to nearest community, etc.
“Therefore, we are unable to provide a list of vacancies with a realistic, non-generalized characterization of why they exist as the conditions impacting each one of them may be varied and unique to each park, and not necessarily the result of a systemic challenge.”
Filling positions across the National Park System can be a challenging task for a variety of reasons. Most positions during the busy summer months (or winter months in places such as Everglades National Park, Padre Island National Seashore, Joshua Tree National Park) are seasonal, and have to be filled every year. Then, too, there can be issues related to housing and cost-of-living that make some jobs particularly hard to fill, said Barnum.
“An urban park may have difficulty attracting applicants due to a high cost of living, while others may face different challenges in recruitment due to the remoteness of their location,” he said. “The NPS works hard to attract highly qualified applicants to all parks by making employment opportunities attractive through the use of multiple hiring mechanisms and the utilization of hiring incentives. “
At Yosemite, spokesman Scott Gediman said the issue earlier this year in his park was tied to low pay.
"Finding housing for lower level employees is becoming more of a challenge. A lot of those jobs were on the entry level end of things and the salaries that go with these jobs are not conducive to the rents charged," said Gediman. "As you know, this is a nationwide problem."
The division chief who brought the HR matter to the attention of the Traveler, and who asked not to be identified for raising their concerns about it, said a key to the hiring problem is a lack of HR staff. Their park shares one HR employee with more than two dozen other parks. And that HR employee isn’t even located in the park.
Barnum disputed a shortage of HR personnel was problematic.
“The NPS has a dedicated team of HR specialists within the Classification Division of the Workforce and Inclusion Directorate and has recently successfully recruited a number of highly qualified, highly competent new classifiers who have made tremendous progress in classifying position descriptions and other key metrics that expedite the hiring process,” he said. “Turnover is almost non-existent with only one former classifier having left the division within the current fiscal year after that employee obtained a promotion at another federal bureau.”
Still, OPM's HR recommendations add layers of bureaucracy.
“There have been a whole bunch of rule changes or interpretations of rule changes, some which have been forced on us by OPM because of audits they’ve done where they’ve claimed we were misusing seasonal hires,” Big Bend National Park Superintendent Bob Krumenaker said. “An example of that is people can now no longer do two seasons in a year. The jobs are limited to six months. That’s not really that new, but it used to be different. And the latest thing is they’re saying all seasonals in a park must have the same six-month season. That simply doesn't match reality in the field.
“As this park gets popular, the shoulder seasons are growing,” Krumenaker added. “We can’t have seasonals staggered. I get it that they can only work six months, but if we had the flexibility we would have people overlap in the middle of the season and there would be fewer seasonals at the beginning and fewer seasonals at the end. But the total length of time that we have seasonals here might be eight months.”
One park where the HR system seems to be running smoothly is Yellowstone. Superintendent Cam Sholly said his department heads reported no problems filling positions this year.
“Overall, the HR team has done a terrific job supporting Yellowstone. The majority of the issues I've heard about have stemmed from delays with background investigations, something that has challenged us in the agency over past year,” Sholly. “We have more seasonals on board now than we did last year at this time. We have some gaps still that need to be filled, especially with visitor use assistants and laborers - those numbers are not substantial and we are working through them currently and have more seasonals being brought on nearly daily. “
At the same time, the Park Service realizes it has a problem with HR. A webinar for all superintendents is scheduled for August 12 to share information on actions and progress to improve and strengthen HR functions. A similar call was held in June, “and they were pretty candid with their problems, and they’re pretty candid about trying to fix it,” a superintendent told the Traveler.
The webinars are expected to be an ongoing affair.
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Comments
HR by it's very nature, is slow and sluggish at best due to the required I dotting and T crossing required by laws, statutes, political demands, seasonal work flows and so forth. Now throw in a government shutdown at the worst of times [i.e., when it is time to prepare for summer seasonal staffing] and you have a constipated mess, collapsing the most earnest of actions.
The propensity of the current chief executive to ignore making timely full time actual confirmed by the Senate appointments, but rather leaving executive posts vacant or temporarily filled, just makes the entire management structure uncertain and ineffective.
As I have said before, I worked for the "official nonprofit partner" of the NPS in a prestigious national park situated in an area rich in racial, ethnic, political, and religious diversity, including diverse histories and remnant homelands; however, under the current administration and the party that backs it, that diversity, although practically on the park's doorsteps, was almost invisible within the leadership of the nonprofit, the DOI, and the NPS. Welcoming greater diversity in both the visitors and the workforces at the national parks is a stated goal of the NPS and both the nonprofit and the agency had access to a diverse national recruitment pool, as well as a diverse pool of locally available labor at the park where I was employed. Yet, there still seemed to be relatively few minorities above the level of seasonal workers. Inadequate attention to diversity seeped down from the top and into every aspect of park operations, fostering a permissive environment, a fertile breeding ground, for a wider range of problems. As just one example, there are certainly regional tensions, often severe, in the area in which this park is located. My coworkers and I were frequently confronted with "eccentric" visitors. Setting the right "welcoming" tone for all of these visitors was critical and it was not helpful that the bookstores operated by the "official nonprofit partner" of the NPS in this park carried "official" guidebooks to the park in English, German, French, Chinese, and Japanese, but not in Spanish. It was also revealing when, more than once, I was obliquely warned against spending too much time helping "those" people and "those" people always seemed to mean minority visitors. I'm a minority with distant indigenous ancestry who accumulated over 230 semester hours of university education in both highly technical and broader strategic management fields and retired after a long career in which I earned many national commendations and rose to a very high level in America's national security apparatus. Of course, that was back in the days before getting laundered kickbacks for being an agent for a hostile foreign power was a prerequisite. In retirement, I used my skills to transform a tiny underperforming park bookstore into the highest revenue generator, revenue for the park, for its size in the park and received a series of highest performing employee awards for doing so; yet, even I was grotesquely and transparently discriminated against by the current crop of rightwing miscreants associated with the current federal administration and the party that backs it.
The point is that neither the nonprofit nor the DOI adequately acknowledged regional diversity issues or the resulting ethnic, racial, religious, or political tensions. Nor did either the nonprofit or the DOI take adequate care to ensure diversity within their own ranks. Intolerance and prejudice are the home turf of bullies, who thrive and breed in permissive environments and get worse the longer they are allowed to act out their urges unrestrained. I watched as a myopic complacency, if not a downright hostility toward diversity, within the nonprofit and the NPS, served to foster not just a hostile work environment, but a permissive environment in which all other forms of discrimination could take root and eventually be normalized. Yes, a starvation level of funding is a big part of the NPS staffing problem; however, the level of prejudice and employment discrimination that has slithered back into federal employment processes along with the current administration and the party that backs it is also a critical issue. Again, the NPS has ample access to a massive and eager national recruitment pool, including well-qualified minority and otherwise diverse candidates; they just don't want to hire them. They prefer vanilla.
Your comments have nothing to do with the backlog of hiring. The problem being addressed in the article is not diversity of new hires but being able to hire ANYONE...PERIOD! I work for another federal agency and the problem is the same. We have plenty of diversity in applicants but we can't hire! PERIOD. So, blaming the administration isn't solving any problems and is disingenuous. Please stick to the topic at hand, which is an HR issue.
One of the biggest issues with the park service system is there is no job security or stability. There are very few "full-time" year round positions, and the rules about not being able to work two seasons a year in the same park is utter stupidity. Not very many people, especially young people, who want a career are going to want to deal with that nonsense for very long. The park service says it wants to attract highly qualified individuals, but it's going to continue to be difficult if they don't change their hiring rules. If a person does a great job and loves working for the Park Service wouldn't it make more sense to offer them a full-time position or a job for the next season instead of having to hire someone new? Besides being a rational way to do business with your employees, it would also cut down on the work HR has to do.
Okay, Gm, just to make you happy, I'll amend and complete my comments. There are many factors behind the NPS employment problem. First, the overall starvation level of funding leaves no headroom in NPS staffing to deal with any hiccups in either field requirements or the seasonal hiring process and an unnecessary and downright silly government shutdown, imposed by the current administration and the party that backs it, did hit just when it was time to prepare for seasonal staffing. Second, there truly is no job security or stability for seasonal workers, even in the best of times. The seasonal work rules are draconian and clearly formulated to create a two-tier system in which a few full time employees in each park get tyrannical noncompetitve, often abusive, tenure over a larger cadre of defensive seasonals. Better qualified young professional truly don't want to deal with that kind of often discriminatory system for very long. Third, although the NPS says it wants to attract highly qualified individuals, it artificially and inappropriately filters out many qualified applicants through prejudicial and actually illegal hiring and retention practices that have, again, intensified under the current administration and the party that backs it. I'm sorry; it's true and I'm extremely well qualified, by both training and personal experience, to recognize it and attest to it. I've been there. Finally, blaming the current administration and the party that backs it may not solve any problems at the moment; but, it is certainly not disingenuous. For example, in the summer of 2018, I was working in one of the parks. No NPS custodial crew had yet been hired for our area and a crew responsible for facilities many miles away had to complete their duties there before coming over to address our area in what remained of their work schedule. The latrines were overflowing and visitors were complaining about what they correctly considered serious health concerns. One visitor complained that the federal budget agreement from the previous fall was supposed to have maintained NPS funding and I felt obligated to explain, an explanation that I now repeat for you, that federal budget agreements try to guarantee funding, at least at the department level, but sometimes fail to adequately nail down all the details below that level. It is then left to the departments to issue work authorizations needed to transfer appropriated funds down to anything as specific as hiring summer custodial staff. If administration appointees do not agree with the priorities in a budget agreement and the agreement does not dictate timely issuance of all such work authorizations, which is often the case down at the level of seasonal expenditures, then the administration can delay those work authorizations until the end of the fiscal year, at which time the funds become carryover and often more easily reprogrammed toward other priorities. All of which is what happened to derail the hiring of our custodial crew; I know; I tracked it. So, if you know how the process works at the highest level, the current administration and the party that backs it absolutely were responsible for our lack of a proper NPS custodial crew...
No personal attacks, please - Moderator
I wonder what your response is in 2023 to the crisis we now have on our hands under this administration. Having been with the Park Service almost 10 years, I have never seen such desperation and suffering among my employees as I did last year. We were only able to fill 50% of our vacancies. We then put them in untenable situations--incredibly high wage disparities, no housing or poor yet expensive housing, increased visitation, devolving working conditions...My point is, the poor wages are contributing to your concept of inequality in the NPS. The only people who can afford to live and work for the parks are often those who are retired, already wealthy with a large savings, kids still living at home, etc. If you don't have parents or money to fall back on, you simply cannot afford to live like this anymore. I don't see it as a race problem. I see it as an unfair wage problem. If you pay folks a living wage, diversity will follow from the folks who are interested. Heck, we hand positions out like candy now. If you can stand and can take the abuse from visitors, come on over.
The hiring situation at Yellowstone is horiffic, and the park deserves no credit for refusing to acknowledge the issue when asked about it. "Reported no problems hiring" just means that no one was comfortable going to management to hash out the issues.
Look into their law enforcement staffing. They have cut law enforcement patrols because they are unable to ensure officers have backup in the event of an emegency, and instructed officers to stand down from addressing issues because the next officer can be TWO HOURS AWAY at any given time.
How can a park that's bigger than the entire state of Deleware only have 3-4 officers on duty at any given time? This kind of mismanagement is going to get employees and members of the public killed sooner or later.
And when we ship someone off to help another park in need, most often we are then left short-handed.
As a Yellowstone employee, I’ve tried to stay positive about our new superintendent‘s leadership and have encouraged my staff to do the same. His statement on this matter, however, shows me that he is completely out of touch with my teams reality and not listening to his dedicated and talented staff.
Coukd this be why the NPS continues to lose talent? #clueless
I certainly feel your pain, Trying to stay positive; I have also had to deal with your new superintendent's leadership style and I'm afraid I was also not impressed. At first, I was just confused and puzzled by his approaches; but, let me relate what I was told about one episode. According to what should be reliable sources, your new superintendent attended the spring meeting of a conservation assembly that supports the park. During a discussion of overcrowding, traffic congestion, and overloaded and aging infrastructure and facilities, all of which we both know are active topics, he was reportedly asked what he might do about these concerns. He reportedly, again according to what should be reliable sources, downplayed these concerns, claiming the bulk of the complaints about these alleged problems were coming from longtime workers, older workers, who had been working in the park too long, who remembered how things used to be, who were seeing times change, and who were just not able to adjust to it all. If reports of what the new superintendent said are accurate, he should have known that his comments could foster a hostile work environment for older workers and that his example could lead to a permissive environment for other forms of discrimination, which seems to be just what has happened. Taking a broader view, his comments, if accurately reported, would not only be concerning in an equal employment opportunity context; but, the fact that he would not have known better than to make such comments could also raise questions of his overall readiness to hold the high office to which the current federal administration has appointed him. Again, I was not there; but, what should be reliable sources were and that is what they claim he said.
A general request: PLEASE, don't write comments in one big block. They are impossible to read. G-d created paragraphs for a reason!
Thanks.
Long retired now, so perhaps things have changed. But during my career HR did everything possible to make recruitment and hiring slow, inefficient and painful.
The hiring process is slow even for seasonal or term GS-5s & 7s, and especially slow for GS-12 and above that require additional levels of approval. Regions and WASO programs have resorted to paying operational funds to other DOI HR to guarantee 2 actions processed per week.
Lateral transfers to fill existing positions avoid much of the HR process. The job postings on inside.nps.gov have more and more of these from parks for generic PDs like LE and Interp rangers. View it as inverse musical chairs: fewer & fewer existing employees to fill the same number of positions. Or, view it as parks cannibalizing from other parks, with parks in less attractive locations losing the most.
The untold truth is that many supervisors are part of the problem and not just the "HR" staffs. Many of the delays are because hiring officials are sitting on their certs getting extensions etc. There is a huge backlog of background invesitations like the YELL Supt is quoted as saying. This issue has been around since the NPS went to the "ONE HR" model back in the mid 2000's under Mary Bomar. I see a glimmer of hope but only time will tell.
Was at YELL this past month. Crowding in some areas but by no means was the experience impacted at all and the visitation flow was spread out in the park. There is reality as experienced and then there is reality of what people want to say for other purposes - the narrative needs to change and I admire the new supt for saying what is real. There are crowding issues in the NPS but from what I have seen at YELL - for those that arrive for a "bucket list visit" the park is a magical place. For locals who want to use the same fishing hole they always have and they have to wait a bit longer...get over it!
Stop bashing the supt at YELL, you and your fellow apologists are missing the points, perhaps deliberately. Admittedly, there are a variety of reasons that the situation at Yellowstone is so bad, and it is bad. There are funding issues; there are HR process issues; there are work autorization issues; there are issues with internal management; but, at the highest level, all of these issues go back to the same set of sources.
The funding issues overwhelmingly go back to the party that backs the current federal administration, a party that prefers to childishly celebrate the gaudy gold plating in the lobby of a twisted chief executive's architecturally mediocre high rise NYC gang headquarters rather than pay their fair share of the taxes to properly support our national parks.
Many, not all, but many, of the HR process issues also go back to the party that backs the current federal administration. The aforementioned allegedly huge backlog of background investigations that the current federal administration's handpicked superintendent for Yellowstone now blames for some of his failings are, to a great extent, the result of actions, taken by and only supported by the party that backs the current federal administration. To a great extent, that backlog is the result of their efforts to privitize much of the federal agency that oversees those background investigations. The process has been crippled ever since. The aforementioned assertion that other HR process issues go back to the "ONE HR" model instituted back in the mid 2000's under Mary Bomar is correct. Mary Bomar, born and raised in England, rose to prominence through NPS assignments in Oklahoma and Texas and was a shortlived Director of the NPS nominated by, you guessed it, George W. Bush during one of the previous gushing infatuations that his party had with whatever came from England.
Now, in an effort to defend a superintendent who was handpicked by the current federal administration and the party that backs it, you and your fellow apologists claim that overcrowding and traffic congestion are not impacting visitor experiences at all? I can't even imagine how you can defend such a conclusion. I've been there dozens of times over decades, in every season and every part of the park, and I've watched things go from bad to worse, especially during the summer. There are now fistfights over parking spaces and traffic jams in some areas. I agree that there is reality and then there is what people want to say for other purposes; I believe that applies to you. And, I agree that the narrative needs to change ...but not in the direction you and your fellow apologists want to pull it.
As for the reported statements of the current superintendent, presuming that the reports are even remotely accurate and regardless of whether they have been based on reality in your mind, his reported statements have been inappropriate and unprofessional, crossing the line by a wide margin. I believe they could indicate that he was promoted too soon and for the wrong reasons.
And yet we just keep opening more units............
Rump - The lack of funding for the parks has been going on for decades through many administrations and Congressional make ups - it is hardly party specific. The reality is the voters and politicians on both sides don't deem the parks a priority. Instead they have their own agendas, some good some bad, some Constitutuional some not, where they would rather spend the monies.
I assure you that Parks would LOVE to hire permanent, full-time or "subject-to-furlough" positions rather than the huge amount of temporary, 6 month employees. Some positions are truly temporary, such as lifeguards at the beaches for 3-4 months. But many of positions being filled as 6 month temporary positions should be "subject-to-furlough" (new term is "seasonal" not to be confused with "temporary seasonals"). And why aren't they being filled as subject-to-furlough? $$$$$$ Plain and simple.
I'm a retired NPS ranger and have never witnessed NPS and USFS underfunded this badly. It probably won't change unless and unti the Democrats retake the Senate and White House. Meanwhile at least the resorts adjacent national parks are still viable even though seasonally challenged by underfunded parks and forests that draw visitors to their areas. Please patronize them now, to help them through this disasterous political era, even though the adjacent park may be inaccessible and/or overcrowded and dangerous.
I promise you Eric, it won't change even if the Democrats retake the Senate and White House. It was not materially different when they had control. In fact, give all else they would want to spend money on, it will likely be even worse. Tell me, when was the status of the National Parks last a question in a Presidential debate of either party. It just isn't a priority issue for most voters or politicians.
Not to mention, appropriations in both 2018 and 2019 are higher on both a nominal and inflation adjusted basis in any year since 2010. And that only reflects approriations, it does not account for the substantial increase in entrance fees that have been generated by higher visitation and increase fee rates. So while the parks may be underfunded to our liking, it isn't a factor of the current administration.
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42757.pdf pages 1 & 2. I hope I am not asking too much when I suggest you look at the actual data.
ec - while what you state about the total NPS budget increasing is correct - you seem to have missed a major point. It is the ONPS (Operation of the NPS) allocation that funds the day to day operations of the NPS - and that has fallen by 5% from the FY 2010 levels. Supplemental appropriations for hurricanes, fires, Presidential inaugarations often cook the books. The Service also often receives large construction budgets as members of Congress tend to love a ribbon-cutting to open a new facility in their district but seldom provide adequate O&M funds after the golden scissors get put away.
From the report you cited: "Appropriations for the largest NPS account, entitled Operation of the National Park System (ONPS), support the activities, programs, and services that form the day-to-day operations of the National Park System. ONPS funding was $2.262 billion in FY2010 and increased in nominal dollars to $2.503 billion in FY2019 (see Table 2 and Figure 3). When adjusted for inflation, however, this represents a decrease of 5%."
I spent nearly 40 years with the agency - I was a second-generation employee so I've had a close association with the NPS for over 60 years. In my humble opinion the NPS always fared best in budget battles when the Republicans controlled the White House and the Democrats controlled at least one chamber of Congress. Sadly many of these budget "victories" came at the expense of other land management agencies - the NPS was easy to point to as the poster child of supporting public lands while other agencies were being gutted in the apropriation process.
ONPS may be down a little less than 5% but land acquisition is up 25%, historical preservation up 61% and Construction up 112% making overall spending up 10%. I don't see why those catagories should be deemed any less important to the operation of the parks. Even ignoring those items, the primary point remains. The ONPS spending fell from 2010 levels prior to the current admin and has risen since. The funding shortfall of the parks has nothing to do with the current or even previous political make-ups.
PS - I would guess that the increase in gate fees has probably offset much if not all the ONPS decline - perhaps that is even the reason for the shift in appropriation mix.
Well I will just have to chalk this up to the fact that you don't know what you're talking about.
Funds allocated for land acqusition, historical preservation or construction have almost nothing to do with the operation of the parks. Yes they are important but not to day-to-day operations. In fact the historic preservation funds are for external programs that are administered by the NPS.
And your guess that entrance fees probably offset the difference in ONPS is absolutely wrong - until just a couple of months ago parks were strictly prohibited from using rec fees to fund normal park operations.
But I know that to imply that anything under the current administration is anything less than perfect - the bigliest and the bestest - will result in pushback from you. The fact that we still don't have a Director of the NPS gives one an idea of how important the parks are - ya can't golf in them so what good are they?
So, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is. Land acquisition, historical preservation, and construction are absolutely not any less important than the operation of the parks; however, to get a true picture, you have to look at how those different accounts end up getting spent. Let's say, for theory's sake, that you're a rightwing hater of government, but interested in getting your hands on tax monies. Most of the funds involved in land acquisition, historical preservation, and construction end up leaving the government realm through procurements in the form of purchases (land acquisition), facility maintenance/restoration contracts (historical preservation), or capital expenditures (construction). Most of those funds end up in the pockets of private businesses. Most of the funds expended on the day-to-day operations of the National Park System end up being spent on the federal workforce. Rightwing haters of government don't like that. Rightwing haters of government want to eliminate the federal workforce, not maintain or support it. Rightwing haters of government believe that the federal NPS workload needs to be farmed out to for-profit private sector businesses, like the concessionaires, which is why the concessionaires want to expand their workforce to be in position to grab opportunities to supplant the federal workers. That's what is happening at Yellowstone right now. So, the funding shortfall in the parks truly does have a lot to do with political machinations; rightwing haters of government just don't want to admit it and don't want the public to figure it out.
Rump and Glad, that was some convoluted logic and is disputed by the facts. Spending on park operations went down prior to the current administration and have gone up since. The underfunding of the parks has nothing to do with political affiliation.
Bucky, I think you're tangling the threads here, perhaps deliberately. I believe the last comments by "glad to be retired" were in response to what you posted at 12:08pm today, as indicated by his comment that "your guess that entrance fees probably offset the difference in ONPS is absolutely wrong." You, yourself, blustered, in that same posting of posting at 12:08pm today, that park ops funding was down a little less than 5% and that land acquisition, historical preservation, and construction brought overall spending up 10%. I'm trying to explain broad concepts, using your own "facts" simply because I don't want to wrestle with you over them, and here you are trying to rewrite your own emphatic assertions in real time. Yes, federal spending did waver during the years in which the country was trying to recover from the great George W. Bush economic miracle of 07-08; but, you can't actually be trying to say, at least not with a straight face, that the current administration and the party that backs it are somehow the greater champions of our national parks. We're talking about the party of Ryan Zinke, now David Bernhardt and William Perry Pendley. I must be misunderstanding you; are you serious?
“Entrance fees collected at Great Sand Dunes support infrastructure projects that enhance the visitor’s experience,” stated Acting Superintendent Tucker Blythe. “In recent years, the park has been able to use fee revenue to maintain, repair and improve our facilities, enhance essential visitor services such as events and programs, restore critical habitat for the wildlife that visitors come to see and enjoy, and to support our law enforcement rangers in their public safety duties.”
From the GSD website. Sure sounds like operations to me.
And this seems to include alot of operations as well.
https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/fee-dollars-at-work.htm
"Out of the 418 units in the National Park Service (NPS), 115 parks charge an entrance fee. The Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA) requires the NPS to collect and retain revenue and requires that fee revenue be used to enhance the visitor experience. Eighty percent of the money stays in the park where it is collected, and the other 20 percent is used to support parks that do not collect recreation fees."
FLREA - In place since 2005:
(a) Use of Fees at Specific Site or Area.--Amounts available for expenditure at a specific site or area--
(1) shall be accounted for separately from the amounts collected;
(2) may be distributed agency-wide; and
(3) shall be used only for--
(A) repair, maintenance, and facility enhancement related directly to visitor enjoyment, visitor access, and health and safety;
(B) interpretation, visitor information, visitor service, visitor needs assessments, and signs;
(C) habitat restoration directly related to wildlife-dependent recreation that is limited to hunting, fishing, wildlife observation, or photography;
(D) law enforcement related to public use and recreation;
(E) direct operating or capital costs associated with the recreation fee program; and
(F) a fee management agreement established under section 6(a) or a visitor reservation service.
I can's say that and I haven't said that. What I have said from the early entrys of this thread is that the parks have been "under funded" under many administrations and that scenerio is not likely to change with the next change in administrations. Our parks are under funded not for proactive political reasons. They are underfunded because they are not a priority for the vast majority of voters or politicians. Pointing out the fact that funding has risen recently isn't to tout any NP accomplishments by Trump but rather to show that, as is typically the case, the negative accusations are just baseless. Unfortunately, in your hate, you are willing to overlook the facts.
BTW - I suggest you do some research into the CRA and Janet Reno. In that case political aspertions are more than appropriate. Also, federal spending did not waiver. Since 2010 it has never fallen below the 2010 level.
No, Bucky, I admit you seem to be trying; but, you're still not getting it. I've been involved in the management of a major dederal site and I sense that "glad to be retired" has as well. It's about the way in which what are called different "colors of money" have to be managed. Yes, a fraction of the money collected through the recreation fee program does end up covering some operating expenses; however, that fraction is restricted to include very, very, little of the core staffing costs involved in running a park. It is nothing compared to the loss of what you call the "little less than 5%" decrement in the ONPS accounts, especially when you consider that visitor numbers and interaction costs have been steadily increasing while that "little less than 5%" decrement in the ONPS accounts has been taking place. And, the corrupt diddling with the work authorization process that this administration has engaged in is a whole other issue. Yes, it's easy to find quotes where park superintendents gushed about the value of entrance fees. Those superintendents need every penny they can find and they know the public wants to get in for free. So, of course, they are going to sing the praises of the recreation fee program; however, that doesn't mean that "glad to be retired" was wrong when he pointed out that "your guess that entrance fees probably offset the difference in ONPS is absolutely wrong" or when he laments that those of us who have been there "will just have to chalk this up to the fact that you don't know what you're talking about." But, dig yourself deeper if you must.
Rump - dig myself deeper? Even ignoring entrance fees the ONPS is UP since the Trump administration. And Glad did not prove me "wrong" re fees - infact he made a statement that I demonstrated was absolutely wrong and included the language of FLREA to show his statement was wrong. I have tried to keep this non-political because it is non-politcal. The parks are under funded. Agreed. The parks have been under funded. The parks will continue to be under funded in your and my view. They will continue to be under funded because they are not a priority of the voters or politicians. It has nothing to do with Trump, Obama, Bush or any other President unless perhaps you go back 100+ years.
The comments posted form a most enlightening complement to the information in the article. I'm grateful to those, especially the NPS retirees, who took their time to share them. Thank you!
My recent experience with an HR issue isn't about hiring but an accidential termination. I'm an active employee, however, my employment was terminated when HR mistakenly accessed my file for a termination. Only the middle initial separated the other employee (to be terminated) and my name. The amount project time I lost to obtain a new federal access card was be reinstated was damaging to multiple projects.