The time has come for Congress to address the pressing issues facing America’s living treasures, our national parks. If they are unable to muster the interest, then lawmakers need to establish a national commission to study, analyze and recommend long-term solutions for the national treasures, their funding and non-political management. Their interest over the past few decades has been to add more parks, reduce the budget, ignore a $12 billion-dollar deficit to repair and replace documented infrastructure needs required by parks, all while reducing full-time employment by thousands. What is needed is a review of the national parks, which can only be done through the work of a national commission. While this idea has been suggested and often resisted, there are tangible steps Congress can take right now to begin assisting the national parks, which badly need help. This is what Congress should do next:
1. Reallocate funds and certain personnel from existing parks, that are at minimal risk and would suffer the least from being closed or put into a reduced operation for a period of five years. This would help the prime, most at risk national parks, to begin addressing critical, resource damaging problems, while other issues are addressed.
2. Allow entrance fees and other fees collected by parks to be maintained at the point of collection and allow for meaningful fees to be established for parks. Given the circumstances, fees need to be looked at closely and new fees considered for implementation. Existing Golden Age Passport, issued to seniors for entrance to parks, would continue to be honored. This would be an on-going process.
3. Severely limit the creation of new national park areas for 10 years and establish new requirements and criteria to assure that the resource being considered is of national significance — not just regional or local importance.
4. Establish and fund a new Mission 66 program — a 10-year overhaul that would bring national parks back to health — as was done in 1956. This would require, with the current $12 billion deficit, a targeted amount of some $2 billion dollars a year for 10 years.
Architectural, engineering and construction services, would be acquired from the park’s local region or area. Parks and regional offices would still assist with planning, design, placement and environmental issues.
Except for Alaska, almost all parks have local companies available for design, construction and similar services. They have the added advantage of knowing the local building codes, weather patterns, environmental factors and best local building materials.
5. Remove the authority to control, fire and/or reassign major park superintendents in the senior executive service from the secretary of Interior — a political appointee — and return it to the director of the National Park Service. The director of the National Park Service should never be a political appointee and should always have the authority to protect and manage parks without political interference and mandate.
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Gil Lusk is a retired National Park Service
employee with 35 years of experience and served as superintendent of
several national parks. He was awarded the two highest performance
awards from the Department of Interior, the Meritorious Service Award
and Distinguished Service Award.
Further, we know there are many Parks that aren't really deserving of that designation. They are only there because a particular Rep. or Senator was in a powerful enough position to have them so designated. We have a BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure Commission) to address this issue for military bases. Isn't it time we have a PRAC to review our national parks and monuments?#5 seems to be a nirvana desired by haughty, career civil servants who think they should remain above the fray. That is, however, both laughable and dangerous. Federal agencies, by their very nature, are political. They are created by politicians, administer laws passed by politicians using funds appropriated by politicians. How could they not be political? And people elect politicians who then use their "political influence" to oversee, guide and affect agency policy. Remove the "political influence" and you have removed the people from the equation.
The truth is these federal agencies welcome "political influence" when it increases their budget, authority, or jurisdiction, and decries "political influence" when it lessens those items.
1 comment:
This will never happen. For many members of Congress getting a national park in their district is a legislative accomplishment with few downsides. It returns so many favors, something that providing for operating and maintenance of existing parks don't provide. Would you rather be known as the person who created a park or someone who voted for increased janitorial services for someone else's park? NPS knows this proclivity. The have studies that show how having a national park is a mark of success, much more so than a national monument, that will bring in tourist and the dollars that accompany them. NOAA does the same thing with National Marine Sanctuaries. The latter have no property, just a huge administrative/regulatory apparatus.
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