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MANAGEMENT OF THE NATIONAL PARKS AND

THE PARKS OF THE SOUTHWEST

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 13, 2005

Serial No. 109–138

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian/Senior Counsel

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

DIANE E. WATSON, California

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

MARC WHEAT, Staff Director

NICK COLEMAN, Counsel

JIM KAISER, Counsel

MALIA HOLST, Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on October 13, 2005 .......................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Frost, Richard M., associate regional director, communications and external relations, Intermountain Region of the National Park Service .......... 8

Haughey, Joe, a city of Flagstaff council member ......................................... 1

Keiter, Bob, board member, National Parks Conservation Association,

NPCA; Deborah Tuck, president, Grand Canyon National Park Foundation; Kimberly Spurr, board member, Arizona Archaeological Council;

and Rick Smith, former associate regional director, Natural and Cultural Resources ............................................................................................. 33

Keiter, Bob ................................................................................................. 33

Smith, Rick ................................................................................................ 82

Spurr, Kimberly ......................................................................................... 72

Tuck, Deborah ........................................................................................... 61

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Frost, Richard M., associate regional director, communications and external relations, Intermountain Region of the National Park Service, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 11

Keiter, Bob, board member, National Parks Conservation Association,

NPCA, prepared statement of ...................................................................... 36

Smith, Rick, former associate regional director, Natural and Cultural

Resources, prepared statement of ................................................................ 84

Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Indiana, prepared statement of ............................................................... 4

Spurr, Kimberly, board member, Arizona Archaeological Council, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 74

Tuck, Deborah, president, Grand Canyon National Park Foundation, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 65

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MANAGEMENT OF THE NATIONAL PARKS AND

THE PARKS OF THE SOUTHWEST

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY,

AND HUMAN RESOURCES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Flagstaff, AZ.

This subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., at Flagstaff City Hall, 211 West Aspen Avenue, Flagstaff, AZ, Hon. Mark

E. Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Souder, and Turner.

Also present: Representative Renzi.

Staff present: Nick Coleman and Jim Kaiser, counsels; and Malia

Holst, clerk.

STATEMENT OF JOE HAUGHEY, A CITY OF FLAGSTAFF

COUNCIL MEMBER

Mr. HAUGHEY. Thank you, Chairman Souder and members of the

committee. I’m Joe Haughey, a city of Flagstaff council member.

On behalf of the City Council and the community, I welcome you

to Flagstaff and thank you for your attention to the needs of the

National Park Service in the Northern Arizona Region. Mayor Donaldson asks that you accept his regrets in not being able to attend

this important hearing.

The local National Parks and Monuments, Walnut Canyon,

Wupatki, Sunset Crater and the Grand Canyon, are vital to Flagstaff’s quality of life, our economy, and the forest health and sustainability. These parks offer cultural and natural resource attractions integral to the quality experiences of our residents and guests

alike.

Lack of adequate funding for capital improvements in routine operations may limit these experiences. The Park Service also has a

significant role in the health and sustainability of our forests. In

this region, local, State and Federal agencies collaborate on forest

health issues and respond to wild fires together. Wildland fire protection is fundamental to the vitality of the sustainability of Flagstaff and northern Arizona.

The participation of National Park Service is integral to the fire

protection program in the Flagstaff area, as wild fire knows no

boundaries. I urge your attention to maintaining adequate staffing

and capital investment to both mitigate catastrophic wild fire and

to respond when it occurs.

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I recognize these are difficult times and the funding needs are

great. As you consider these many needs, I urge you to consider the

importance of continued maintenance of investment in the Park

Service and the long-term benefits of this investment.

Thank you for your consideration, and welcome to Flagstaff.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. Thank you for letting us use

the city building today. I appreciate it very much. The subcommittee will now come to order.

Good morning and thank you for joining us today. This is the

fifth in a series of hearings focused on critical issues facing the National Park Service. We have had hearings in Gettysburg, Washington, DC, Boston, Seattle, Washington, and this is our fifth one.

I would like to welcome all of the Members of Congress who have

joined us in this hearing and who care deeply about our National

Parks.

Given the great diversity of national parks in the United States,

managing these sites is a daunting task, indeed. Each park unit

has unique demands that require a close examination of each unit’s

mission, strengths, and weaknesses. It is imperative that the National Park Service carefully examine each park to determine the

best possible way to manage any given unit.

Over the past few years, the National Park Service has worked

on a comprehensive catalog of park units, backlogged projects, and

asset inventory. These analyses are important if the parks are to

be managed appropriately and efficiently. Any examination of a

park’s mission, management, and functions cannot be without controversy. As we have seen, recent proposals have met with vigorous

opposition, and have sparked equally vigorous debate, and rightly

so.

My hearings and their resulting report aim to examine the National Park Service and ultimately make proposals and recommendations. I am sure that it too will not be without controversy, but if the national parks are to survive and be a source

of recreation and inspiration to future generations of Americans,

then we must do all that we can to maintain them and make them

better.

In addition to management of the national parks, this hearing

will examine the parks of the Southwest. Most notable among the

parks of this region is Grand Canyon National Park. Among the

most popular and recognizable of all the national parks, it is natural that we should hold one of our hearings here.

As fitting as it is for us to have a hearing here, it is just as fitting that we are joined by one of the Grand Canyon’s Congressmen,

Rick Renzi. Also, I would like to welcome Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio, who is a member of the committee. Both of these gentlemen appreciate the parks and are working to ensure they survive

and thrive for many, many years to come.

I would like to also welcome our witnesses. Our first panel consists of Richard Ms. Frost, the Associate Regional Director of Communications and External Relations for the Intermountain Region

of the National Park Service. Mr. Frost will be testifying on behalf

of the Park Service. He will be joined during the question period

by Joe Alston, the superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park;

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and Palma Wilson, the superintendent of the Flagstaff Area Monuments.

On the second panel, we have Deborah Tuck from the Grand

Canyon National Park Foundation; Bob Keiter, representing the

National Parks Conservation Association; Kimberly Spurr of the

Arizona Archaeological Council; and Rick Smith, formerly with the

National Park Service. Welcome to you all.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. I would now like to recognize Congressman Turner

for an opening statement.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your leadership and your interest in preserving our national parks, Mr.

Renzi, my fellow classmate, for hosting us today, and also to thank

you for your commitment to our national parks. As you and I discussed, it is a great treasure for our country and it is important

to our families, and your efforts to preserve and enhance this experience and preservation for our country serves everyone, and I appreciate that.

Like the others, my appreciation and fondness of our national

parks began when I was young as part of the great American vacation. My parents took my sister and me on a long adventure out

west to see many of the breath-taking national parks and monuments. It instilled in us pride in our country and awe in God’s creation.

As recent as this August, my wife and I had the great pleasure

of recreating that vacation as an adventure for our very young children, traveling 5,890 miles in a great circle beginning from Ohio.

In our journey through these national parks such as Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Mesa Verde, Canyon de Chelly, Bryce, Zion, and

others, we had the opportunity to meet outstanding park staff,

some of which I see here today in this important hearing.

This tour, combined with the existence of the Dayton Aviation

Heritage National Park in my district in Ohio, has added to my understanding of the National Park Service. The purpose of the National Park Service is to educate the public about the history, environment, and culture of our great country, and to preserve this heritage for future generations.

For an example of why the National Park Service is necessary

for heritage preservation, one only needs to look toward the sky.

Many people think mistakenly that Kitty Hawk was the birthplace

of aviation, as demonstrated by North Carolina’s license plate,

‘‘First in Flight.’’ The Dayton Aviation Heritage National Park

works to build a proper understanding of aviation history, and encompasses several sites in Dayton, OH, to include the home of the

Wright brothers, the Wright brothers cycle shop, the Huffman Prairie, the field where the Wright brothers perfected flight, which is

now the home of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The Carillon Historical Park claimed the right to Flyer III, which

was the world’s first practical airplane that was able to sustain

flight. Together these sites tell the story of Orville and Wilbur

Wright, their work in Dayton, OH, in researching, engineering and

building the world’s first airplanes.

I look forward to hearing the testimony today from our panelists

and learning their ideas to provide solutions to the operation and

management needs of the national parks, especially with regard to

the parks of the Southwest.

I want to thank you again everyone from the National Park Service and what you do to make our families from really throughout

the world welcome in our national treasures, and what is a national treasure as a Park System.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you, and thank you also for your leadership

in the National Audubon Historic Preservation Caucus.

I would now like to yield to Congressman Renzi, an active member of the Resources Committee, and a leader on these issues, and

thank you for hosting us.

Mr. RENZI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate being here,

too, and Congressman Turner, it is great to see you. I do thank you

for your friendship and your advocacy. We are classmates. Thank

you for coming all the way out this summer, and coming back out

to be a part of this today.

Both of you all have taken a critical issue at a very timely moment and pushed it to the forefront, and you’ve done so even at

times without the consensus of the whole party, and I want to, first

of all, recognize your leadership and your courage in doing that,

and it’s critical with all of the different expenses that we’re seeing

around the country, that we lift and bring to the forefront the

treasure of the national parks.

So this hearing today in Flagstaff is timely, it’s important, and

it’s also courageous with the leadership. I love northern Arizona,

and a lot of us live here because of the breathtaking landscapes.

We’ve got national monuments, designated areas, Sunset Crater,

Wupatki Pueblo, and we have the jewel of all of the parks, in my

opinion, the Grand Canyon, as well as the Petrified Forest which

we’re working hard to try and protect.

The Nation and our children learn about our history. They learn

about our past, and they learn about our Nation and our country

at these different sites and these different locations, much like the

educational tour you took with your family, and so I’m very fortunate this morning to be with you to help drill into these issues, and

to find out where it is that we’re vulnerable, to understand the

Achilles’s heel in the funding mechanism and why it is that we’re

not seeing the emphasis in some areas pushed, and in particular

to preservation and to operation and maintenance costs, and to expansion of some of the infrastructure needs, the capital improvements that is so critically and so far behind.

Again, thank you for your courage in taking the time to come all

the way out here and taking you away from your families.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much, and before we do proceed,

two procedural matters. I ask for unanimous consent that all Members have 5 days to submit statements and questions for submission in the record, and any answers to those questions provided by

the panelists, also be included in the record. Without objection, soordered.

I ask for unanimous consent that all Members present be permitted to participate in the hearing. Without objection, so-ordered.

Let me explain a little bit what our committee is and what we’re

doing here today. As you can tell, that the last thing I just read,

without objection it is so-ordered that Members are permitted be

able to participate in the hearing, and some of these ground rules,

one thing that has been unusual about this subcommittee is that

we’ve been working on a bipartisan basis, because I’ve been working very closely with the ranking member, Elijah Cummings. Because we’re working on a bipartisan basis, we’re able to hold hearings regardless of who is able to come at a particular point, and

7

have been able to do these things pretty much on a bipartisan

basis, which is relatively unusual right now in Congress, and that’s

been a very important part of our work here.

We’re an oversight committee. We’re not a legislative committee.

Any bills that come and relate to this, will have to roll to the Natural Resources Committee, where I’m currently on leave and Mr.

Renzi is on it. What we do is as Government Reform, since I’ve

been in Congress since 1994, I’ve done everything from Waco to investigations and administration to doing oversight and going down

into New Orleans and Mississippi. And probably most people recently know we are the committee where Mark McGuire said that

he didn’t want to talk about the past, and ultimately you will see

why we swear in our witnesses, and we’re going through to find out

whether in fact he did commit perjury, and he will be prosecuted

for perjury on steroids.

Our job, if you look at Congress, is that a committee like Resources passes legislation related to parks and other matters. The

Appropriations Committee then has to appropriate inside those

guidelines. The Government Reform Committee then is responsible

for seeing whether or not the money and policies are accomplishing

the goals that Congress intended, to overlook the White House and

different executive branch agencies, and then to make recommendations back to the authorizing committees, and, of course,

we all sit on authorizing committees, and some sit on appropriating

committees, as well, and that’s the theory of how this works.

It doesn’t work exactly that way in practice. People all try to

make sure that other people aren’t looking over their shoulder, but,

in fact, what we have done in this subcommittee, which is predominantly narcotics policy, is pick an issue every 2 years where we

focus. A number of years ago it was on border. Two years ago it

was on faith-based, and this 2-year term we’re doing a series of

hearings that will be somewhere between 8 and 10 on national

parks. We will report likely to on the border and there is a

foundational thing in the works in the subcommittee over at Homeland Security.

That said, it is policy of the Government Reform Committee to

swear in all our witnesses, so our first panel of Richard Frost, associate regional director of communications and external relations of

the Intermountain Region of the National Park Service, and he will

be joined by Joe Alston, superintendent of the Grand Canyon National Park, and Palma Wilson, superintendent of the Flagstaff

Area Monuments, who are not official witnesses, but will be available to answer questions, and I’m going to make a side point here.

I very much appreciate the evolution of this process with the National Park Service. I want to say on the record that the National

Park Service feels this pressure a lot, but so does every other agency we do, and that is ordinarily we would like to check every single

statement and every comma and every semi-colon you use. That is

standard when we do oversight. Official testimony has to be

scrubbed from so many different places and worked through, and

initially there was a lot of consternation about this series of hearings from the administration. As we’ve worked together, we now

have superintendents that can come but not give an official

scrubbed statement and field questions. We will try not to get your

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careers ended with questions. We encourage you to be open and

honest, but if it’s too uncomfortable, just be somewhat political in

your statements, and I understand that.

The goal here is not to finger-point. As you know, I’m a Republican and the Members here are Republicans, and we’re not trying

to—we’re all trying to figure out how to pay for Katrina, we’re all

trying to figure out how to do these things, but we’re passionately

committed to know the truth, because Congress can’t make decisions on how best to fund our parks, if we don’t know, in fact,

what’s happening in this process, and that’s why we need the openness. We need to know where we have disagreements on how we’re

going to fund it, and so on, but I very much appreciate the National Park Service now clearing and allowing more and more open

testimony to be moved through this series of hearings.

And, Tom, you directly know, and Steve Martin, and others, I

think we’ve made progress at the Department of the Interior. Owen

Vee is still not our biggest cheerleader, but we’re working with

them more, as well, and they understand what our goals are.

With that said, will you each rise and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative. Now, Mr. Frost, if you will give your

opening statement.

STATEMENT OF RICHARD M. FROST, ASSOCIATE REGIONAL

DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS AND EXTERNAL RELATIONS,

INTERMOUNTAIN REGION OF THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Mr. FROST. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I would like to summarize my testimony and request that my full testimony be entered into the record. Mr. Chairman, thank you so much for the opportunity to appear today to discuss management and operational

issues affecting parks in the Intermountain Region. First, on behalf

of the National Park Service, I would like to thank you and your

colleagues in Congress for your continuing support of our parks

and programs. Park-based funding has risen more than $150 million or 16 percent since fiscal year 2001. The increase for fiscal

year 2004 to 2005, represented the largest park-based funding increase in NPS history. At a time when the Nation is faced with

many challenges and demands for its financial resources, the NPS

has been very fortunate.

The Intermountain Region is an integral part of the NPS System,

and in many ways the birthplace. It is the home of the first national monument and first national park, as well home of icons

such as Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde. The Region

encompasses eight States and 82 park units. In 2004, we welcomed

close to 39 million visitors and generated an estimated $850 million

in economic benefits.

To secure the legacy of our national parks, Director Fran

Mainella has implemented the National Park Service Legacy Initiative, encompassing five themes; management excellence, sustainability, outdoor recreation, conservation, and 21st century relevancy.

To address management excellence and ensure our credibility,

both on the Hill and with American taxpayers, the Intermountain

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Region has developed a process to help parks determine if their

core needs are being addressed in the most effective way, given

each park’s budget resources. This process has been adopted by the

NPS as a whole.

The core operations process is park-based and park-driven. In it,

a park looks at a projection of its base budget over the next 5

years. It determines what its core needs are based on its enabling

legislation and other relevant documents, and then develops a list

of priorities. Once its priorities are set, a park looks at all the activities it performs with its current budget and personnel, and asks

do these activities match our priorities, which activities are essential, if some activities are not essential, could those resources be redirected, or if the park has a projected budget deficit, could nonessential activities be eliminated to help the park operate within

its means.

This kind of information and analysis is essential for the credibility of park budgets. It helps park managers plan strategically for

the future. This is not a one-time exercise, but a fundamental

change in the way we do business.

To date, 26 parks in the Intermountain Region have undergone

this process, representing half the Region’s employees. The National Park Service nationwide is committed to completing core operation reviews at 50 parks, and we anticipate all 82 Intermountain Region parks will have completed the process by 2009.

The Legacy Initiative also emphasizes conservation of park resources. The Intermountain Region has established a record of providing superior stewardship of resources by applying innovative

management. For example, we have made extensive use of the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units, which are composed of universities, governmental and non-profit partners that provide the NPS

with research, technical assistance, and educational opportunities. Using CESUs, for each $1 in Intermountain Region funds, we are able to attract more than $40 from other fund sources. To enhance

CESU capacity to provide support for cultural resource projects,

the Intermountain Region has moved three cultural resource experts to the three CESUs that serve the Intermountain Region.

Ensuring the long-term relevancy of the National Park System to

America’s diverse population is another important objective. To expand the relevance of our parks, the Intermountain Region has pioneered the teacher-ranger-teacher program. This program brings

public school teachers from schools that serve under-privileged students into our parks to work as rangers. The teachers undergo

training comparable to that of other seasonal park rangers, and

then return to their classrooms with lesson plans developed from

their park work experiences.

The benefits of this program are significant. As teachers return

to the classroom following their park experiences, they bring to students first-hand knowledge of parks these children might otherwise

never have.

In conclusion, we are deeply committed to protecting the places

in our care and ensuring quality visitor experiences for present and

future generations. We appreciate the support parks have received

from Congress and from the American people. Thank you for the

opportunity to be here today. I would be happy to respond to any

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questions you or any other members of the subcommittee might

have. That completes my testimony.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Frost follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. First, I ask for unanimous consent that all full

statements and materials referred to by the witnesses be included

in the record. Without objection, so-ordered.

In the interest in full disclosure, I want to say that my son works

for the National Park Service in the Denver office under Mr. Frost,

and, in fact, I just learned yesterday that he’s been active in some

of the core ops issues we’re going to be working with in this question of core ops, that as a business undergrad and MBA and a person that owns a private business, some of the questions are why

didn’t we do some of this a long time ago, but that’s true generally

across the Government, and I know there’s been variations of this

done for years.

How would you first describe what you’re doing in core operations and doing a budget analysis, how would you say this differs

most from the way that you were doing it in parks?

Mr. FROST. I don’t think previously parks generally speaking had

a way to look at the resources they were getting and determine

whether or not they were going to the essential needs of the parks.

They—until our budget request, I think park to park, weren’t

based on a substantial analysis of what those park needs really

were, so parks grew often in sort of an ad hoc fashion, depending

on the leadership and the personnel and the time and the place,

and this is really the first time we’ve conducted I think a thorough

analysis of why each park was established, what its essential needs

are, what it really needs to be doing, given what Congress initially

asked it to do, and then to ensure that the resources it has goes

directly to those needs.

Mr. SOUDER. We work basically working under the 5-minute

rule, which we’ll be a little generous with you here. Because this

hearing is in the field, it’s not quite like Washington, but when it

goes red, that means on opening statement for the second panel,

that you need to start winding up to the degree possible, and we

want to make sure we get the information in the record, and for

Members it means we now know we’re ticking on overtime, because

we need to do a second round.

When you do a core ops review at a park, is there going to be—

are you looking at producing a document that will then go to the

regional, and then the national headquarters, that will give like a

tiered view of here is what we have, here is what we believe our

No. 1 priorities are? You do that to some degree now in your review

process to set up what you’re going to fund. How do you see this

kind of tiered proposal looking different as it comes up to the regional office and national office in budgeting?

Mr. FROST. This is a much more thorough analysis, and it will

include a provisional management plan based on the park’s priorities. It will include the kind of efficiencies the park believes it can

gain under a park-based budget increase, or to support the need for

additional funds if it shows that it can’t be used core operations,

and each park will generate with the help of the regional office a

report that goes to the director, and then that will be used as a

credible source of information to go to Congress to explain what the

needs of those individual parks are.

Mr. SOUDER. I don’t want to—what’s unusual about this Committee, because we do investigations, is we have the ability to subVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:09 Oct 25, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27379.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
17

poena any documents including e-mails and phone logs, which usually we don’t have to do. Occasionally we do. I don’t want to make

this as an official document request at this point because I want

to work on a friendly basis with the Park Service, but what I would

like to see at some point, if you can talk to the regional and the

national office so that we have a better idea of this, is if you have

completed the core ops at any park where it is that far along, compare it to a document that came up previously so we can see the

practical impact of how the decisionmaking process is occurring in

the budgeting process and what that difference might be, and if we

can just leave it and if you can take it back to regional headquarters and figure out what’s the best way to work this through,

because I don’t want to stifle a new project while you’re still trying

to work through the details, but at the same time trying to understand what the funding levels are and how we’re going to do tradeoffs in support for us to see what kind of requests are coming into

the system, whether it be the Resources Committee, the Appropriations Committee, and what type of future requests are coming in

and what form and what that process is in its early stages. So to

the degree you can look through that, and then we’ll in a friendly

forum try to work out a document request that is workable inside

the system.

You also had an interesting quote in here in your written statement that 28 percent of the work force in Mesa Verde is comprised

of Federal employees. One of the constant questions here is the

basis for contracting out.

Let me ask. Do you know, Ms. Wilson, how many in your park,

or also at Grand Canyon, would be contracted out versus Federal

employees in the group cluster of parks that you work with?

Ms. WILSON. We actually have 34 permanent employees for the

Flagstaff areas. You could probably estimate that we—for like our

cultural resources, we contract out about 35 percent of our work

there. For maintenance, we contract out about 50 percent of our

work. I can’t give you the exact numbers of people, but that will

give you a rough idea of what we’re currently contracting out.

Mr. SOUDER. What about at Grand Canyon.

Mr. ALSTON. I can’t give you an exact number, but I suspect it’s

in that same range. When you look at our concession employees,

I think we have about 1,500 concession employees, versus 400 permanent employees, and 360, I guess, is the actual number. You

look at all of the other things we contract out, all the way from

trash collection to research, to what have you, it may even be lower

than that.

Mr. SOUDER. Two kind of class pressure questions that come up

constantly, and I want to raise it, and I’d like to get each of your

comments. In contracting out, at what point in contracting out—let

me give you a brief side point. We had a big discussion in Homeland Security about after the U.S. Visit Program, we found people

were abusing that and were coming in who were on our terrorist

watch list. So we decided arbitrarily that people at the desk at the

State Department who were clearing people coming into the United

States, should be Homeland Security employees. What we found by

doing that, which was a form of contracting out to another Government agency, was that—that was the entry level point for training

18

State Department employees, and if we knocked them out of that

slot, the State Department employees were coming into a management position, and we had no integration system into the State Department.

At what point in contracting out in the Park Service—I understand it produces flexibility, but at what point do we not then have

a way for people to get started in the Park Service? We have seasonal rangers, and in contracting out our seasonal rangers, they’re

not just contracting out, they are your Federal employees. Is it now

only seasonal rangers working in the Park Service and now you

have seasonal rangers who have been doing it for 14 years trying

to get permanent status. At what point do we dry up the system?

Anybody want to take that?

I know it’s been debated on the floor of Congress a couple of

times as far as have we been spending money and are looking at

contracting out, and the figure you have is probably for the most

heavily contracted out Federal agency forever.

Mr. FROST. I think that has a lot to do with concessions operations, and those kinds of things. I think there are still a substantial number of positions for people to enter into the Park Service

and become permanent civil servants.

Ms. WILSON. I think one of the things we can show here in Flagstaff is some of the contracting out, as Rick mentioned in his statement, that we work closely with the CESUs, and one of the CESUs

actually happens to at Northern Arizona University [NAU], and so

through some of those contracts that we’re doing, for example in

archeology, is working with the students on NAU, so we’re providing them some sort of basis of what the Park Service is all about,

and, in fact, we have been able to hire some of those students on

after they work as intern or contract basis. They come in as a term

employee, and then eventually into a permanent position. And a lot

of that was through the program banishing produce that we were

able to bring on those archeologists. So there still is a conduit in

some respects.

Mr. SOUDER. One of the other controversial areas that you hear

at every park and from every superintendent is a basic reduction

in the number of seasonal or permanent that deal with interpretation, that as a Member of Congress struggling with—if anybody

goes with me to a park and wears a ranger hat, you are constantly

asked where is the nearest restroom, how to a get to so and so, in

addition to substantive questions, because clearly there is a market

demand to capital ratings on the ground.

On the other hand, in our whole society, whether it be at grocery

stores, retail operations, or everywhere, being that type of ability,

museums are declining and growing more automated.

Do any of you want to comment on that question inside the Park

Service, because it seems to me that we’ve had some improvement

in visitor centers, some improvement in Internet, but this is the

type of thing that we try to figure out to how to extend the value

of the human interpretation into new methods, is going to be one

of the big decisions that affect the personnel decision in the Park

Service.

Mr. FROST. One of the things that the core operations process is

doing, is it looks at each division inside the park and determines

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if that division is able to carry out its mission, and interpretation

is one of those divisions at every park, and in the core operations

analyses that I have facilitated, interpretation really has worked

hard to try to determine if it can do the job of educating visitors

in a variety of new ways using new technology, while at the same

time continuing to provide the fireside talks and the general interpretation that the public has come to love and respect in the parks.

Mr. SOUDER. At Grand Canyon, have you seen more insignificant

reduction in the numbers of people in interpretation in the talks?

What kinds of pressures do you have?

Mr. ALSTON. Well, as you said, the public truly loves that personal contact with our interpreters, and going back a little bit to

your subject on contracting out, our employees—one of the things

that we look at whether we can actually contract services in which

you write into a contract, as you mentioned, when a visitor comes

up and talks to somebody, they ask all of these questions, and

whether that’s a trash collector or whether that’s one of our interpretive rangers, or myself, for that matter, that’s part of the job we

do, and that’s an awfully hard thing to write into a contract.

But I would say that we’ve done a pretty darn good job. We’d always love to have more folks out there talking to visitors. We’d love

to give more programs, but we’ve tried to keep that division as

whole as we possibly can, and, in fact, over the last 5 years we’ve

moved a disproportionate number into that division. Of course,

those folks, they all do good work and they would like to see more

dollars there.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to state again

how impressed I am with the culture of our National Park Service.

When someone comes to our natural parks and they do meet a

ranger or someone who is in the National Park Service or working

for them, you have been able to maintain an incredible sense of

hosting the individual, welcoming the individual, and an incredible

sense of maintaining the wonderment that each new person that

comes in and sees these things for the first time is expressing, and

your echoing of that is something that I think really does enhance

the experience and is the type of culture that you really see

throughout your organization, and I think any Fortune 500 company would be jealous. So certainly, my congratulations to the leadership that you’re able to continue that and perpetuate it.

Mr. Frost, my question is going to be for the entire panel, but

it’s going to focus a little bit on your portion of your title that includes external relations. The one thing that strikes me when

you’re in the natural park, is looking at the functions that the superintendents are responsible for or that everybody there is responsible for. They’re mayors, they’re managers, they’re financial directors. They have all of these responsibilities in executing what is

preservation of the assets that are there and making it welcoming

for the people who come.

In the welcoming address that we had here this morning, one of

the first topics that was raised was the issue of economic development, and certainly our National Park System works closely with

the communities that host them to enhance the economic developVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:09 Oct 25, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27379.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
20

ment potential of the regions. You are in part an economic development driver, but it requires coordination and external relations.

Many of the issues that I heard about during our tour, related

also to issues of your host communities, some issues of Indian affairs, some issues of how small businesses might be able to impact

and nurture, issues of housing, transportation access.

A lot of these issues are addressed by other Federal agencies. So

you have, one, the interaction between the National Park Service

and the other Federal agencies that impact your operations, and,

two, the communities that host you, and the hope that both you

would have a better product and we would have greater economic

development.

So I ask that each of you would speak for a moment on your efforts and successes and things that you think we could do better

in supporting your efforts on both inter-governmental relations on

the local level and the Federal level. I look forward to your response, Mr. Frost.

Mr. FROST. Well, I think the Park Service culture has undergone

a bit of a shift in the last 10 years, and much of this is driven by

the fact that in the eight States of the intermountain west and

southwest, populations have exploded. So while park units were

once sort of isolated islands far removed from people and the people came to them in the summertime to visit and went away, now

they frequently find themselves surrounded by permanent communities, communities that have moved to that area largely because

of the beautiful landscapes, the scenery, and the attractions, and

the culture of those park units.

As a result of that, we have worked very hard to welcome people

and bring them into our decisionmaking process and make them a

part of what we’ve done, and that is, you know, taking some time,

and there have been some bumps along the way.

One of the issues that I was first confronted with when I came

to the Park Service is we had a superintendent that denied a special use permit for a run in his park, and the park was nearby the

communities of Grand Junction. Well, the people of Grand Junction

are politically very sophisticated. They went straight to their congressional delegation and they said, ‘‘Look at this guy, he’s not letting us do an event that we’ve done in this park for years,’’ and

the superintendent had significant concerns. He had safety concerns with people because there were both cars and people on the

road at the same time.

What he hadn’t done is gone to the community and explained,

‘‘Look, I’m really worried about your safety. Is there a way we

could do this and be protected.’’ He just did not sign the special use

permit, told the people they weren’t going to get it, and that was

it.

Well, they put a hold on the confirmation of the Director of the

Park Service, the Senators did, until we figured out a way to make

this work, and low and behold, we did figure out a way to make

it work.

But that I think kind of is more and more anomalous. We are

more tuned into the people around us, how to talk with them in

a way that is not bureaucratic, it’s straightforward in taking their

21

concerns into account, and still do the fundamental job we have to

do with resource protection and visitor enjoyment.

Ms. WILSON. One of the things I’ve seen over the years, I’ve been

a superintendent for almost 12 years now in a variety of parks, and

I think one the things we’ve seen over the years is where superintendents are no longer living in the parks. We are actually living

in the communities where we are neighbors to the folks who are

neighbors with the park.

I think we’ve also seen a great deal of work here in Flagstaff.

One of my members generally attends or regularly attends the

tourism commission meetings, working very closely with the visitor

and convention bureau so that we’re looking at spreading out and

lengthening the stay here for folks who are coming to Flagstaff. Besides going to Grand Canyon, we also have three other parks that

are within a 30-mile radius of Flagstaff, and we want to work very

closely with the city and the county and our other neighbors as we

go through this.

We’re active participants in fire planning in the community. We

were active participants a few years back with some land-use planning within the area. We’re currently working very closely with the

Forest Service because our land is adjacent to them, both in fire

and interpretive partnerships and other types of things, knowing

that we need to get together to get the job done, because all of us

have constraints within our budget, and if we put ourselves—kind

of get ourselves working together, we hopefully can get the job done

a little bit better.

Mr. ALSTON. Well, I would say that at Grand Canyon, we have

a pretty remarkable relationship with our business community. Not

only do we have a primary concessionaire that grosses literally tens

and tens of millions of dollars, but—I would have to get the exact

number, but probably a couple hundred other small businesses all

the way from backpackers, to river runners, to tour guide companies, and trying to coordinate all of that, of course, is a lot of work,

and all of those folks have their own special interests and want

their access to be just right, and we try to work with them as best

we can, but it’s obviously a fairly daunting challenge.

We are surrounding communities—my personal history with this

has been one of a pretty simple axiom. If the community is doing

well economically, then they’re pretty darn supportive of what you

are about, and if you’re working with them and at least being attentive to their economic interest—you can’t always accommodate

every proposal that comes in the door, obviously.

A lot of times, just by being receptive to new ideas, you can actually cause people to do a little better than they might otherwise,

and that’s been my experience, is that it’s in our personal interest

to have the people that are serving our visitors doing well, so that

they can continue to provide good services, and I think that’s—we

see that throughout the National Park System, and I think you go

into your meetings with the business community with sort of that

attitude, it resolves a lot of your issues and you find out that you’ve

got a lot of folks out there that have—they’re here for the same

reasons we are. They don’t want to see the resources spoiled. They

live in this part of the world because they truly value the quality

of life that is here, and that’s our common bound.

22

Mr. TURNER. In talking to superintendents or others about the

National Park Service, one of the things we talk about in looking

at funding and in needs, is the attendance of the parks, and when

you talk to the various parks as to its attendance increasing, is it

decreasing, what are you experiencing, one of the questions that

arises inevitably is the methodology for determining attendance,

and specifically it’s even compounded in parks like Canyon de

Chelly, at least that one would have, and even some data in which

to turn in justifying their numbers.

If I could get each of your thoughts on if you have a concern with

the methodologies that are being applied and whether or not we’re

being successful in capturing the true attendance of our parks.

Mr. FROST. Joe, why don’t you start with that.

Mr. ALSTON. If I could, I would like to refer to Leah back here

who is our fee collection coordinator for the park for a number of

years, and she has more than experience in counting numbers than

anybody else that I’m aware of.

Mr. SOUDER. Can you stand up. I’ll give you the oath, and spell

your name.

Mr. ALSTON. Sorry to put you on the spot, Leah.

Mr. SOUDER. Spell your name.

Ms. MCGINNIS. Leah, L-e-a-h, McGinnis, M-c-G-i-n-n-i-s.

[Witness sworn.]

Ms. MCGINNIS. I would have to say that I think that we do a

very good job of tracking our numbers right now. This last year,

or actually over the last 2 years at Grand Canyon, we have integrated into our cash register system different ways of counting the

cars that come in and the number of people that are in those cars,

and we use those numbers and work with our regional office on

statistics to make sure that the formulas that we have in our numbers match what is coming through the booth, and we made some

adjustments to those numbers over this last year, and we feel that

now we’re doing a very good job of capturing the number of visitors

and the types of visitors as far as recreational or non-recreational

visitors to the park.

Mr. FROST. We would be happy to provide you, too, with an explanation of the methodologies used in the Intermountain Region

and nation-wide so you have that.

Ms. WILSON. In the Flagstaff areas, we’re obviously much smaller than the Grand Canyon. We probably get in a year what you get

in a month, but we use basic methods, and that’s literally hand

counters, because in a lot of cases to access the most popular trail

at Walnut Canyon, you go to the visitors center, and to be able to

come in, we have hand counters, and things like that.

We’re starting in some cases, while redoing roads and things like

that, to put traffic counters in to get a more accurate count, but

I think we’re fairly accurate in where we are right now.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Renzi.

Mr. RENZI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Frost, thank you for

your testimony and your willingness to come out today. Let me cut

to the chase here. With the increase in fees being proposed at the

Grand Canyon from $20 to $25, we’re looking at 80 percent to be

retained locally. Is that correct?

Mr. FROST. Yes.

23

Mr. RENZI. From a timing standpoint, from a needs analysis,

what is driving the increase right now.

Mr. FROST. Well, I’ll let Joe answer this in greater detail, but

partly it’s to solve some of the transportation safety issues at the

park.

Mr. ALSTON. That is precisely right.

Mr. RENZI. Is it current transportation, or is it the transportation

plan that you and I have been working on?

Mr. ALSTON. The one you and I have been working on.

Mr. RENZI. So we’re getting ready now for the rate increase now,

and I guess you can anticipate new buses, the new construction

of——

Mr. ALSTON. Right, as well as the bypass road so we can help

reduce the lines in the park.

Mr. RENZI. Joe, when you and I were in Washington talking

about the transportation plan, I was under the impression, and it’s

my own assumption probably, and you know I have great respect

for you, that if an American patriot drives all away across country

with his 12 kids, and they become a patriot because that drive with

12 kids is hard, and they get to the park, and the average American has an alternative to get on the bus which costs them a lot

less compared to the fee now of possibly $25, then he’s got an option at that point. But right now, how long will it be before there

is an option to have, or is there an option right now, to have a lesser entrance fee for that family that has come all the way and made

the trek like Mike made?

Mr. ALSTON. I’m not sure what your question is.

Mr. RENZI. Right now, you can either drive in with your car and pay the $25, or you could park outside.

Mr. ALSTON. Right now there is no real alternative to get in the

park.

Mr. RENZI. My point is, shouldn’t we wait to increase the fee

until we have that alternative so that regular Americans have the

option, they have something cheaper? I’m talking about timing

issues.

Mr. ALSTON. Yeah, well, part of that is that we need to get on

with the business of trying to get that transportation system put

in place.

Mr. RENZI. That’s right, so what you do is that really you don’t

have the money. When we talk about capital improvements, Congress is not stepping up from an appropriation standpoint to fund

the transportation plan that we authorized.

Mr. ALSTON. Well, I suppose that is one way of looking at it. We

look at it a little different in that we have to put together a proposal to Congress for your consideration that lays out using those

fee demonstration dollars to fund this in the absence of a line item

appropriation.

Mr. RENZI. In the absence of.

Mr. ALSTON. Yes.

Mr. RENZI. Why would we go with the line item? Why wouldn’t

we go with—maybe you don’t want to go there.

Mr. ALSTON. Yeah. No.

Mr. RENZI. Mr. Frost, could you help me? Why wouldn’t we go—

you know I earmark. I have no problem earmarking for the park,

24

but there’s a lot of people that don’t want to. Why would we go

down there—if we are going to be holier than thou, why would we

go with a line authorization and then transfer that over to an

approps? Why do we go through the 3-year process.

Mr. FROST. Well, you know, I think this is getting into a philosophical discussion, but I think part of it is when you come to a

park like Grand Canyon and you pay the fee for that park, you’re

getting services at that park.

Mr. RENZI. You’re paying for infrastructure, but at $25, at what

point does it become too much?

Mr. FROST. Right, but, sir, you asked earlier, the family driving across the country, what can they expect? Well, if you buy a $50

park pass, you can stop at all the parks that Congressman Turner

mentioned. You get a great deal. That sort of amortizes your costs

to maybe $5 to $10 a park, depending on how ambitious you are.

With Congressman Turner, is was probably about 50 cents, but you

do get the great value, and it’s about half of what it costs to fill

up your mini-van.

Mr. RENZI. If we’re looking at raising fees, particularly tied to

transportation plans as you want to do here, and we’re looking at

what I think is a limited amount of funding to the park to take

care of operating costs, how do we then find the capital improvements that we need, for instance for the water infrastructure which

is aged at the Grand Canyon? In the 21⁄2 years that I’ve been here,

I’ve been there nine times. I can’t get away from this. It’s beautiful.

But I know what the Grand Canyon needs. I know the hardships

there, and I know—I see the infrastructure degrading as it is right

now.

So my point is if we don’t get out of the cycle of funding and finding new moneys through fees that are attached to capital improvements, and we don’t go with authorization of line item appropriations, then we really are totally burdening the public, and we’re

burdening the public of those who are the most avid outdoorsmen,

our healthiest public, our recreationalists.

Mr. FROST. Well, I mean, there is, of course, a whole variety of

pots of money that we draw from to do these things. We have fee

demonstration dollars. We have site maintenance money. So——

Mr. RENZI. I’m with you, but it’s not enough.

Mr. FROST. Well, that’s exactly why we’re doing this core operations analysis, because park to park, we want to be able to come

to Congress with a straight face and say in this park at this time,

these are our needs based on what Congress asked us to do with

this public trust.

Mr. RENZI. You bet they will come to us and say, ‘‘We can’t do

the transportation funding unless you give us the money, otherwise

don’t ask us to spend the money studying it, don’t ask us to take

all the people off their regular jobs and go do it, and then not give

us the money to do it on an authorization appropriations line, rather than constantly looking at fees. I think at $25, we’re looking at

a break point with the American people, in my opinion.

What do you think about the program? I don’t know if you want

to comment on this. This would be like American to American

maybe, possibly. American to American—sworn-in American to

American. The Centennial Program, what would you think about

25

new money, where would you go if you were in our shoes for new

money, whether it’s the Centennial Programs, the idea that Americans can send money from their tax—from their rebates from their

taxes to the parks. Where else creatively would you all go for new

money?

Mr. FROST. I have to tell you that what I see as our obligation

as a Federal agency, is to be able to look at the trust that we’ve

been given, and to assess what our needs are, to be stewards of

that trust, what resources we need to do that effectively, and then

come to Congress and say straightforwardly this is what we need,

and then it’s up to Congress to tell us, well, we’re going to give you

this money in this way. You can raise your fees, we can give you

an increased appropriation. You need to work with your partners.

You need private sector money, but that’s——

Mr. RENZI. You look at the private sector and the non-profits. In

my opinion, our pockets now—without the non-profits, we really

are dead in the water. We really do have such a unique public private partnership right now, that the park themselves, I don’t think

would sustain themselves without it.

Mr. FROST. I think we are increasing reliance tremendously on

partners, but we ought to. We’re all working together in this enterprise. We’re not lone wolves by ourselves doing this job. We have

to work with a number of people.

Mr. RENZI. Thank you for your honesty.

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Frost, I have a couple—we’ll give this to you

as a written question, but we’re going to make a request for the—

at least for the Arizona parks, what the staffing levels were in a

couple of chosen years and what they are now so we can have a

comparison of what’s happening inside the parks.

Do you have in the—I know in the bigger, more wilderness area

park, but let’s say here more predominantly in Arizona, do you

have many in-holdings in the park?

Mr. FROST. We have some in-holdings in the parks.

Mr. SOUDER. In the other parks in the Intermountain Region

where you have more in-holdings, do you keep by the Park Service—do you keep data on the amount of acreage in the in-holdings

by park?

Mr. FROST. I think most parks know that individually. Don’t

they, Joe?

Mr. ALSTON. Sure.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you have that at a regional level?

Mr. FROST. We can provide it. I don’t have it off the top of my

head.

Mr. SOUDER. It’s something that you keep as a data base.

Mr. FROST. Absolutely.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you have that also by dollar value estimate of

what——

Mr. FROST. Probably not, because we wouldn’t get dollar value

until somebody—one of the light in-holders said to us they were interested in either selling that park or selling that land and donating it, then we would have it assessed.

Mr. SOUDER. The acreage and estimated dollar of people who desire to sell.

26

Mr. FROST. We would probably have that, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Can we have that for the Intermountain? One of

the things we’re trying to figure out—one of the anchoring things

around the Centennial Act and other things we’re looking at, is the

100th birthday of the park is coming up, and we should plan

ahead. Last time we really had a vision for the kind of Park Service in Lowell’s vision in 1966, and the question is what can we do

to prompt that type of vision. Should it be for employees and maintenance? Should it be let’s close in-holdings? Are there gaps in the

Park Service in that there should be some kind of accommodation

thereof? And one thing that is absolutely clear is we have major inholdings questions in the United States. If you could see what you

have structured without having to do a bunch of research inside

the Intermountain Division, which has many of our wilderness

parks, as well as many of our smaller parks, and of those in-holdings, how many of those in-holdings are trying to sell now that we

don’t have the money to buy, versus those who conceivably could

come on, and those who are grandfathered in who are never going

to sell, and then as the pending resolution of the Colorado case—

if was a person that their land was—that they had a time limit on

it, and now they don’t want to leave.

Mr. FROST. That’s I think very close to resolution.

Mr. SOUDER. That is a terrible process on the in-holdings question, going into an agreement. I know one of our colleagues disagrees with that, and I’m shocked that he would be the person to

disagree with that, but the whole question on the in-holdings and

trying to fill out the parks, has been huge, and the Indiana Dunes

and the Sleeping Bear, National Lakeshore, clearly has erupted in

Alaska in a big way with the family out by McCarthy, the pilgrims

who are now gone, but it’s a huge question, because in some parks,

you have the parks destroyed if you don’t resolve this in-holdings

question, and I was just up to Acadia and they have a huge question at Acadia with questions on in-holdings, and that maybe to

somebody that ought to be a priority.

When you look at core ops, do you—in trying to analyze the vision of the park—this is an interesting process. Here you have inholdings in the park where you have a willing seller. You have traffic problems which are in every park. We were just hearing about

Grand Canyon. You have questions about the number of employees

and whether—almost all of our parks have pressure on the number

of employees they have right now, combined with wilderness responsibilities, fish and wildlife responsibilities, archeological responsibilities, how exactly do you bring these together to prioritize?

Because there are different types of goals that may or may not be

related. They are all related kind of to a mission.

Mr. FROST. That’s correct. What we do is we look at the enabling

legislation of the park first, and in some parks it’s very specific,

and in some parks it’s much more general, but that’s a good start

because that’s the direction that Congress has given us with about

what we should do with that particular park to park need.

Mr. SOUDER. The Grand Canyon has been through this process.

Mr. FROST. It’s going through this process right now.

Mr. SOUDER. So, for example, in Grand Canyon, in-holdings questions.

27

Mr. ALSTON. As far as I know, we have only one small in-holding

on the north side of that park of about 160 acres, and there’s no

adverse use out there, so it’s not an issue for us.

Mr. SOUDER. So clearly transportation, local traffic using road

that goes through, how many people can be on the rim in July and

August and not be on top of each other, and observation by folks

going up three decks. How do you balance the transportation system versus the priority for interpretation, versus the priority for

preservation, versus the getting off on things which probably were

there buried in the original enabling legislation, but may not have

been a major focus because the major focus was preserving the canyon, not saving mining sites, Native American sites, archeological

questions, probably one of the most driving questions in the enabling legislation. People were looking at preserving the Canyon,

and yet now other things may have come up. How did you resolve

this?

Mr. FROST. I think what you do is you look at things that the

Department has been asked to do through enabling legislation and

other documents, and then the park sets its priorities based on

what it feels it has to do to meet its basic resource protection, visitor enjoyment, and safety goals. The park sets those priorities and

then looks at it. The whole impact activity such as cleaning the

bathrooms, the road maintenance, the snow removal, to scientific

examination, to resource protection, to law enforcement, and see if

those—match those activities against the priorities, and see if those

activities are really clearly directed at those priorities, and if

they’re not, to adjust them so they’re really getting the people in

the park doing the job that the park basically needs to do, and in

that process it falls out whether you need to, for example, maintain

back country roads that you have had maintained before, is that

something that you need to do, or are you providing education programs in the schools nearby. Is that something that somebody else

can take up that you really ought to be doing as part of your park

resources and protection directive. It is the whole variety of activities that the parks are engaged in to try and make sure that those

activities match with the parks needs and priorities.

Mr. SOUDER. Are you setting grids up with points and then waiting with the different variables; is that how you——

Mr. FROST. Well, you look at all of the activities division by division, and the park goes through this in the initial exercise, and

then in subsequent months and it tries to make sure that what it’s

people are on the ground doing, matches up with the priorities it

sets for itself, based on the directives it’s been given by Congress

and through other supporting documents, and frequently there’s a

little bit of a disconnect because often parks grow in sort of an ad

hoc basis.

There’s project money to do this, or there is a very strong chief

of interpretation or chief of maintenance that gets money to do

other things, and it doesn’t have the sort of a strategic plan, so we

want to be able to come to Congress and say these are the things

that the park is doing, this is what its needs are, and here is exactly what they are and why we said that.

Mr. SOUDER. On the demonstration fee, if I could just pull—because this is a very unusual opportunity here at this hearing, and

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I know I’m going over with my followup questions. First off, one big

thing we hear in backlog dollars—excuse me—in demonstration fee

dollars, is that many parks would like to use that for operations,

or at least part of that. Is there any park that has a demonstration

fee that has eliminated the backlog?

Mr. FROST. I think that sort of an eliminating the backlog is a

loose—I mean, I have a house that was built in 1917. I don’t think

I’ll ever eliminate that backlog as long as I live. I’ll always be replacing sewer pipes or shingles or carpets, and while that is not a

precise analogy, I think it is on point.

Mr. SOUDER. Congress intended the demonstration fee to be

mostly used for backlog or new projects. If we were to relax that,

saying we’re running short, how would you set a figure that if

you’ve achieved 50 percent of your backlog, you could use 25 percent on operations? How would you—given the backlog is such an

illusory figure, would we—because the goal here was not to use

this fee for an annual raise.

At the same time, sometimes the backlog may not be as urgent

as in other places as the operations budget.

Mr. FROST. Our condition assessment system and the FMFS data

base we’re putting together allows the park to look at its facilities

and say these are facilities that are in poor condition, these are the

facilities that are in good condition, this is the kind of work that

needs to be done, and that does two things. One, it allows the Department to set its priorities, where it wants to put its resources

and what we need most to protect, and, two, it will help us get a

better handle on the illusive backlog figure.

We are getting better every year at honing in on exactly what

needs to be done inside the parks, and really that has been a process that we are undergoing that is going to help us be much more

effective in targeting the resources.

Mr. SOUDER. One of the major pressures in every park right now

in questions is can transportation systems be cut back during peak

seasons as opposed to the hema period. In Grand Canyon, if you

used the demonstration fee, are you looking to use that fee as the

primary source of funding, the sole source of funding for the new

transportation system.

Mr. ALSTON. Right now, we’re looking at least the vast majority

of that system being funded through fee demonstration.

Mr. SOUDER. So how long would it take to build the transportation system to accumulate—would you borrow against it? How

would you——

Mr. ALSTON. Well, if we implement the $25 fee next year, that

will help a great deal, but there is—we think we can get this done

in 4 or 5 years. We presented to Congress a schedule that we think

is realistic for paying for this primarily out of fee demonstration

dollars.

Mr. SOUDER. Could you submit a copy of that to this committee?

Mr. ALSTON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And you think that—would that use from that period of time all the $25?

Mr. ALSTON. I’m sorry?

Mr. SOUDER. Would the entire demonstration fee be used?

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Mr. ALSTON. No. It would not have to be used. It would still

leave us with $6 or $7 million a year to work on the backlog and

other projects we have.

Mr. SOUDER. Would it be sufficient then to maintain the system

under that?

Mr. ALSTON. That’s our hope, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. But it couldn’t—I’m sorry. I forgot. Superintendent

Rice is your Deputy.

Mr. ALSTON. Yes. That is correct. Craig.

Mr. SOUDER. Craig, could I swear you in.

Mr. AXTELL. Absolutely.

Mr. SOUDER. Could you state your name and spell it for the

record.

Mr. AXTELL. My name is Craig Axtell, C-r-a-i-g A-x-t-e-l-l.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Bryce has had a difficult challenge with your transportation systems. Could you explain a little bit what’s happened

and what the status of that is?

Mr. AXTELL. I can. We initially had a 5-year contract for both the

staging area outside the park and the actual operation service contract for the shuttle, and perhaps what was done for that contract

was not sufficient planning to coordinate our anticipated revenues

with the cost of the contract.

So unfortunately we had to use in that early period a substantial

amount of our fee demonstration program moneys. That 5-year contract expired last year, so this past summer was the first year

under a new contract. Again, a service contract, and, now for this

year, our transportation revenues that we collect of roughly about

$530,000 is about equal to our contract—our service contract. So

we’re really adjusting the number of hours we operate the shuttle,

really closely with the amount of revenue we’re getting, and fortunately for us, it really works out that is the amount of service

hours, which is approximately 5,000 service hours. That takes care

of the congestion at the various overlooks.

It is a voluntary shuttle system, but it’s very well accepted. A lot

of people like it, and the community likes it. The business community likes it, and so right now we believe we’re on track financially

so that the transportation system is sustainable.

Mr. SOUDER. What’s your current fee and price?

Mr. AXTELL. It’s $20, and half of that is the transportation fee;

$10 is the actual entrance fee itself. The fee demonstration, and

then $10 for the transportation fee.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. We’ll probably have some additional

written questions, and you could provide for this hearing record

anything you have in your transportation plan, some of that data,

so we can kind of maybe group a couple of transportation things

together at one hearing site, because this region has done more,

and Grand Canyon has had this debate for a long time, and we

kind of analyze as we go.

If I could ask Mr. Frost, is Zion operated under a similar—they

have had a transportation plan for a while?

Mr. FROST. They do. They have had a transportation plan a

while.

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Mr. SOUDER. And is it similarly operated through a demonstration fee.

Mr. FROST. Yes. Is it voluntary, too, Craig?

Mr. AXTELL. Zion is a little different. There is a mandatory shuttle system for part of the year up the main part of the canyon, but

there’s other portions of Zion park that are open where you can

drive in with your automobile. Their entrance fee is the same as

Bryce; $20.

Mr. SOUDER. What about Rocky Mountain? That is a small——

Mr. FROST. It’s a small bus system that is voluntary, that takes

you to a specific part of the park.

Mr. SOUDER. Is there a BMF?

Mr. FROST. No.

Mr. SOUDER. Is it partly funded through the demonstration fee?

Mr. FROST. I think it is.

Mr. SOUDER. If you can provide something on that, and also any

other—because Bryce and Zion probably are two of the biggest

right now that have the shuttle system. I’m trying to think if they

had one—I saw one in Acadia. There are others that have variations, and interestingly, in Acadia, the Island Explorer is heavily

funded by L.L. Bean through private sector donations and other

ways that have integrated the local community around it, and

there are multiple creative ways, as we have the pressures on tax

dollars, of how to do this.

And I also want to say for the record that we have another hearing record for the Members here we have been looking at, and I

would appreciate any suggestions from any of the witnesses today

and anybody else that wants to submit this, how to do this, because

basically the Resources and the Appropriations Committee have

more or less agreed with this question, and that is one of the problems with rising demonstration fees. I believe there are two problems. One is the parks pass is too cheap relative to the individual

park, and I know that Bryce and Zion always argue who is going

to get the payload on the park pass, but the more critical thing

here is that the concern is low income people aren’t going to be able

to get into the parks, and there’s general consensus in the Appropriations Committee, and I’ve talked to the Honorable chairman in

the Resource Committee, we need a way and everyone agrees we

need a way, to basically give a refundable credit to low income people.

The question is how do we establish and get them a parks pass.

One way is directly through their tax return. There are some objections to turning a tax return into that type of thing, but if you are

under a certain level, you can request from NPS a parks pass. Another thing would be to show at the gate—what would you show

at the gate? That your kids are eligible for low-income lunch? But

how to do it in a non-stigma way at the gate? That’s why we’re trying to figure out a way to do this, but nobody is trying to put pressure on. But for a middle class family, it’s still a very cheap event

that, particularly if you get a parks pass, but we don’t want to

price people we’re trying to get into the park system out of the

market with entry fees and the cost of the parks pass.

So anybody that has a proposal, we’ve toyed around with that,

but Chairman Regula, Hanson, Young, Pombo, I don’t think there’s

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opposition to this. It’s a question I have how to implement that.

Any other questions, Mr. Turner, Mr. Renzi?

Mr. RENZI. I have one followup. Mr. Frost, when you look at the

Grand Canyon as one of those visited parks in all of America, if

not the most visited, and you look at the fact that the funding for

the Grand Canyon is not even in the top 10, you look at the fact

that it’s one the eight wonders of the world. Do you think of—the

demonstration fees that you collect in the park, the 20 percent that

doesn’t stay local, it goes back where?

Mr. FROST. It goes to other parks that don’t collect fees and they

can apply for some of that money.

Mr. RENZI. Do you think it would be reasonable for Congress to

look at a formula where if there’s such a disparity between the

number of visitors, the infrastructure needs particularly of the

Grand Canyon, the disparity with the fact that it’s not in the top

10 in funding, that maybe until we do get caught up, that 20 percent that is leaving, should stay local.

Mr. FROST. I defer to policymakers with greater depth and vision

on that.

Mr. RENZI. Unfortunately, my vision is somewhat relying on your

vision.

Mr. SOUDER. May I make a brief comment on that. It is really

interesting because a number of years ago at Apostle Island, anyone coming in from western Nebraska from one of the—at Scott’s

Bluff, basically everybody going west stops there, and they have an

entrance fee, so they collect this huge amount of entrance fees with

hardly any park, and Apostle Islands has all these islands and nobody goes into the visitors center. All these boats come in and they

have no way to collect the entrance fee.

So less than 10 percent of the people at Apostle Islands pay an

entrance fee, and they have all these projects that need to be taken

care of and don’t have any entrance dollars. So the proposal was

to kind of address these extremes.

But you have an interesting variation, which is if you, in fact,

have a backlog, why is it going to spread, and the question is how

do we measure that, and one of the things if you could take back,

Rick, as a request to Intermountain, is would you have data inside

that would enable us to make that kind of a decision? Does the

data even exist, because the whole intent of this was to cover a lot

of the little parks that don’t get the entrance fees or parks that

don’t have a way to collect, but—and the assumption was that certain parks were accumulating dollars, but what about if we aren’t

going to do line item questions at Grand Canyon, why should they

be deferring money over to the National Park Service and then

have us have to do a line item to cover something that they already

have the dollars for.

Mr. FROST. I’m thinking this is because Joe is such an incredibly

generous guy.

Mr. ALSTON. I worry about that generosity. I would like to answer your question. One initiative that has been out there, and

people have played with this for a long time, but it seems to have

generated a little enthusiasm here lately, is developing something

called the Score Report which takes into consideration all of the

complexities of managing, I suppose, any land management agency,

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like visitation, size of the area, wilderness components, size of the

concession operation, number of miles of roads, number of miles of

trails, all of the things that go into—number of different housing

units, all of the things that go into putting pressure on the budgets

of the parks and trying to get some sort of universal or consistent

handle on that whole question, and really I don’t know where they

are with that right now, but I know it’s been back in here in the

last several years.

Mr. SOUDER. You said the Score Report?

Ms. WILSON. The Score Card.

Mr. ALSTON. Score Card, actually.

Mr. TURNER. I wanted to give one comment. We have an opportunity to submit questions and then followup. I would like to work

with both Joe and Craig to followup with written questions to highlight things I know you are working on, and I will be contacting

you to discuss the format of those questions, but they will go along

with the issue of Bryce and your transportation system and the

need for legislative authority that will help you with your contracting process.

And then with the Grand Canyon, two of the things that struck

me in the discussions that I’ve heard relates to your clean-up

issues with respect to the mines and the success that you’ve been

having there, and some of the difficulties, and the second is the important issue of we need a newer air space and how we might be

able to assume greater effectiveness.

And I wanted to add one point to the issue of the park pass.

Those park passes are worth such gold if you think of the Norman

Rockwell moment where my wife and I, upon losing our park pass

into a crevasse in our dash. We are in the parking lot outside of

the national park where we have our legs stuck out our doors, we

have flashlights and all kinds of contraptions, with our kids

peering over the back seat hoping we would not have lost the pass,

and were successful in digging it out.

So it was worth the effort. The park pass certainly is one of the

incredible opportunities that families have when they do plan the

great American vacation and go to multiple parks. We certainly, I

think the chairman’s statements are very important, to look at how

does the funding of our national parks get impacted by the manner

in which we construct them. So I want to do it right and in a way

that enhances your efforts.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you each for your testimony today. We will

followup with some additional questions. The first panel is dismissed.

The second panel could come forward. Our second panel is composed of Deborah Tuck, president of the Grand Canyon National

Park Foundation; Bob Keiter, board member in the National Parks

Conservation Association [NPCA]; Kimberly Spurr, board member

of the Arizona Archaeological Council; and Rick Smith, former associate regional director of the Natural and Cultural Resources,

Southwest Regional Office of the National Park Service. As soon as

you get settled, I’ll have you all stand.

[Witnesses sworn.]

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Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative. We thank you for coming today, look

forward to your testimony. We’ll start with Ms. Tuck.

Ms. TUCK. We have a question. Mr. Keiter’s testimony is about

the parks of this Region. My testimony is about one park. Do you

want to still start with me?

Mr. SOUDER. Why don’t we start with Mr. Keiter. You may proceed to give your testimony.

STATEMENTS OF BOB KEITER, BOARD MEMBER, NATIONAL

PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION, NPCA; DEBORAH

TUCK, PRESIDENT, GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION; KIMBERLY SPURR, BOARD MEMBER, ARIZONA ARCHAEOLOGICAL COUNCIL; AND RICK SMITH, FORMER ASSOCIATE REGIONAL DIRECTOR, NATURAL AND CULTURAL RESOURCES

STATEMENT OF BOB KEITER

Mr. KEITER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of this subcommittee. I am pleased to appear before you today to discuss the

future of our national parks. Thank you for holding this important

hearing to examine the challenges faced by our southwestern

parks, and for your commitment to making our National Park System the best that it can be. My name is Bob Keiter. I am the Wallace Stegner professor of law and director of the Wallace Stegner

Center for Land, Resources, and the Environment at the University

of Utah, where I teach and write in the areas of natural resources,

public lands, and constitutional law. I am here today in my capacity as a 7-year member of the National Parks Conservation Association Board of Trustees, and on behalf of NPCA’s 300,000 members nationwide.

On a personal note, I’ve had a life-long love affair with the parks

ever since during the 1950’s I grew up next to the C&O National—

the C&O Canal, National Historic Park, which as you know is located just a few miles from the Capitol. I still treasure the countless hours that I spent exploring that wonderful place as a child.

I would like to address three matters today that I know are of

concern to this committee. First, the budgetary and funding challenges facing the southwestern parks; second, the recent ill-advised

budget reconciliation proposal; and, third, equally ill-advised management policies rewrite proposal.

As to funding, one of the pervasive challenges facing America’s

national parks, is chronic under-funding, a problem that did not

occur overnight and that has grown under administrations and

Congresses of both parties. Business plans developed in more than

70 national parks across the Nation, show that on average, parks

operate with only two-thirds of the needed funding, a system-wide

deficit in excess of $600 million annually.

Compounding this problem are increased security demands

placed on the parks since September 11, 2001. In addition, individual park sites have been forced to absorb a number of un-budgeted

costs including costs of living adjustments, storm damage from

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and other fixed costs.

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Here in Arizona, the effects of increased homeland security demands are evident at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

which is located along the international border. The park has expended nearly $18 million between fiscal years 2003 and 2005, to

build a vehicle barrier, to increase border security, and to protect

the park resources. The park’s resources staff now spends virtually

all of their time monitoring law enforcement impacts on the park

itself.

Across the southwest, the national parks are facing an array of

budgetary and funding challenges. Insufficient operations and

maintenance funding is plaguing the Grand Canyon—I think we

will hear much more about that later—putting the park’s fragile

resources at risk.

As simply one example, the park has recorded more than 3,940

archeological sites and artifacts that tell the area’s historic and its

10,000-year-old human history, but only 3 percent of the park has

been adequately surveyed, compromising the protection of archeological sites yet to be discovered.

Looking at three national parks in my home State of Utah,

Bryce, Canyonlands, and Zion, we find many of the same challenges. NPCA has produced State of the Park reports for all three

parks within the past year, with the Zion report completed most recently in July of this year.

The September 2004 State of the Parks report found that

Canyonlands’s overall stewardship capacity, that is the Park Service’s ability to protect resources at the park, rated a score of poor,

concluding that inadequate staffing and an annual funding shortfall of $2 million is limiting the Park Service’s ability to address

these resource threats and to meet the needs of nearly 400,000 visitors annually.

NPCA’s June 2005 State of the Park report found that Bryce Canyon’s annual budget of $2.7 million falls $1.8 million short of

what is needed annually to adequately maintain popular trails,

educate visitors, and protect the nearly 40,000 museum artifacts.

Our July 2005 State of the Parks report found that Zion National

Park stewardship capacity rated a poor. The park’s operational

budget is $3.5 million short of what is needed to adequately care

for resources and provide visitor services. This means Zion lacks

the funding to hire more staff. The daily—the number of daily

guided trail walks and ranger talks have been cut in half. No interpretive rangers are present at trail heads or Zion Lodge, and the

park had been forced to deny ranger programs to school groups.

These chronic shortfalls are particularly troubling because of the

economic impacts that the parks generate in this area. Nationally,

approximately $11 billion in economic impacts each year in tourism

revenue alone, as well as 226,000 tourism related jobs in local

economies.

In the southwest, we see these impacts amount to more than—

in the southwest where more than 36 million tourists visited the

parks in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada, we see similar

economic impacts. These visitors spent over $1.6 billion in the

parks and gateway communities and supported over 39,000 jobs

and generated over $653 million in personal income for our communities, $377 million in Arizona alone.

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Very briefly, turning to the budget reconciliation matter, current

Federal budgetary pressures have the potential to further jeopardize the parks. The recent House Resources Committee drafted legislation, could require the sale and development of 15 national

parks and turn the remaining parks into commercial billboards.

You should know that an NPCA Commission poll found that well

over 75 percent of the respondents strongly opposed the sale or

commercialization of our national parks. I should add that even

during the height of World War II, when the Nation’s very survival

was an issue, Congress refused to open Olympic National Park to

timber harvesting for constructing military airplanes. Surely, we

can resist the same or even lesser budgetary pressures today.

Regarding management policies, the Department of the Interior

is considering revising the parks’ management policies. The contemplated changes would radically alter the Park’s Services interpretation of its mission and the fundamental purpose of the system

which for almost 90 years has focused on preservation.

When Congress established the National Parks System in 1916,

it expressly stated that the fundamental purpose of the system is

to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and

the wildlife therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same

unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.

Since then, Congress has consistently reaffirmed that the Park

Service is responsible for administering the system in conformity

with this fundamental purpose, most recently in the 1978 Redwood

amendments to the Organic Act.

The courts have regularly endorsed the same interpretation of

the agency’s mission, as has every scholar with whom I’m familiar

who has examined the Organic Act and its history. The Department’s efforts to rewrite the park management policies would undermine the very essence of the Organic Act’s non-impairment

standard.

As Pulitzer Prize Winning Author Wallace Stegner observed, the

national parks are the best idea America ever had. Our national

parks truly represent and speak to the essence of what it means

to be an American and to share in the American experience. It is

incumbent upon us, the generation now charged with caring for our

Nation’s heritage, to ensure that we leave these priceless places intact and un-impaired for our children, and indeed for generations

yet unborn.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman for holding this hearing, and I’m

happy to answer any questions that the committee may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Keiter follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much for your testimony. We’ll now

come back to Ms. Tuck.

STATEMENT OF DEBORAH TUCK

Ms. TUCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Representative Turner,

and Representative Renzi. I think in fairness to all people who are

here, I need to reveal that both Representative Souder and Representative Renzi are members of the Grand Canyon National Park

Foundation. Thank you for your membership.

My name is Deborah Tuck, and I’m here representing the Grand

Canyon National Park Foundation, the not-for-profit fundraising

partner of the National Park Service at the Grand Canyon. Today

I’m going to talk about three things. One, I’m going to talk about

philanthropy in the parks. Two, I’m going to talk with the budget

situation at this park, and I’m going to try to illustrate for you in

just one segment in the park why under-funding makes a difference.

In the case today, I’ve chosen science. It’s not because we couldn’t

do this for transportation, that we couldn’t do it for interpretation.

It is that it’s just very—this is an easy way to show what underfunding means. In the interest of time, I’ve eliminated a whole section about volunteerism which is an equal part of our mission, in

hopes that you will ask me about this during the questioning period in what under-funding has done to volunteerism in the park.

Our mission at the Foundation is to preserve, protect and enhance the Grand Canyon National Park. That means we really restore historic buildings. We take care—we help the park take care

of wildlife, and wildlife means everything from bacteria to buffalo.

It means we build new trails, and it means that we restore historic

trails.

The challenge for the Foundation is that we must refine the role

of stewardship for our national parks, because most Americans

simply assume that caring for our parks is solely the responsibility

of the Federal Government. I want to add, I know something about

philanthropy. There are many people in this room who have spent

their entire lives in the National Park Service. They do us a great

service.

I have spent my entire life in philanthropy. I run two family

foundations for two of the most wealthy families in this country

and did so for 16 years, and I have spent the rest of my life raising

money for non-profit organizations. Unfortunately, the truth is that

our national parks, as you’ve heard Mr. Keiter say, operate with

just two-thirds of the needed funding. What does that mean in

terms of the park I love and serve? A business plan study of this

park in 2001, let’s keep in mind that was 4 years ago, found that

the annual operating shortfall of the Grand Canyon was $8.5 million. That included $1.76 million for natural resource protection,

$1.5 for interpretation, and $1 million for maintenance. In short,

this park operates at 65 percent of what it needs every day to get

the park up in the morning, put it through the day, and keep it

safe through the night.

Here is what I want to ask. Think about your favorite well-run

business. Would it still be operating at 65 percent? My hat is off

to Joe Alston and the tremendous people who work at the Grand

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Canyon park. They do what private industry would and could not

do. The truth is that the fiscal year 2006 budget enacted for the

Department of the Interior, provided the NPS with its discretionary

appropriation of $2.289 billion, or 1.1 percent less than the NPS received in fiscal year 2005. And if you look at the National Park

Service’s own Web site, the fiscal year 2006 funding level is $2 million less than the agency received in fiscal year 2001, 5 years ago.

At the Foundation, we’re concerned about providing human, as

well as financial resources in the park, and this is the part where

I hope you will ask me about what a decrease in Federal funding

has meant so that this park is turning away volunteers for boy

scouts, Elder hostel and kids who don’t want to spend their spring

break down in Florida, but want to spend their spring break at the

Grand Canyon.

Protecting ecological diversity and maintaining the park, ought

to be a core responsibility of the Park Service, but if the funding

is simply not there, then we, the Foundation, must make a decision. Either we try to raise private funds to supplement insufficient

Federal dollars, or we walk away and let programs die.

So as I’ve said, the challenge for philanthropy is to define the

role of stewardship, as many donors who understand the critical

needs facing the park, nevertheless, want assurances that their private dollars will not be used to offset public responsibilities. They

want us and the Park Service to maintain the bright line between

Federal responsibility and private opportunity, but as you can see,

Mr. Chairman, that bright line is becoming increasingly blurred.

So now I’m going to talk about the example of just one department at the Grand Canyon; science. Science at the Grand Canyon,

according to Bob Moon in our Intermountain West Regional Office,

is 9 percent of our base budget. This is interesting, because in our

park, unlike the other icon parks, the science division also includes

planning and compliance. Generally, funding for science divisions

at icon parks in the west average about 14 percent, so in reality,

the science at the Grand Canyon, once you subtract compliance and

planning, is about half of what the budget is for science at Yellowstone.

Here is a snapshot of what that current situation means at the

Grand Canyon. At the Grand Canyon there is only one wildlife biologist on the staff. This park covers 1.2 million acres. You can ask

me about what this means, too.

There are only two archeologists on staff, and Mr. Keiter has discussed what that means, and amazingly, at a park known around

the world as a geological wonder, we have no practicing geologist

at the park. Increasingly, the park is abandoning its park on getting rid of invasive species, unless it can be paid by soft money. We

now pay for all of the work removing invasive vegetation below the

rim—the Foundation.

The establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, reflected

a national consensus that natural and cultural resources contained

within America’s parks must be protected and held in the public

trust and preserved for future generations. This park has a very

special relationship with Teddy Roosevelt who, before there was a

Park Service, set this land aside for all future generations, that it

remain un-impaired. It is a place that he said restores your sole.

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The word conservation and the concept of science-based management of resources, really didn’t exist in the public sector until Roosevelt became President. Teddy Roosevelt knew 50 years before it

became fashionable, that careful environmental stewardship is our

collective obligation to future generations. He established America’s

commitment to conservation, reflecting the sense we must safeguard our national treasures and our collective national heritage.

There is a crisis in our national parks, and it’s a quiet crisis, and

I want to offer five suggestions of things that Congress could do.

First, they need to increase the internal allocation to science within

the Park Service. You cannot make resource-based decisions without science. Congress can act by restoring the President’s Cooperative Conservation Initiative. This funded thousands of good projects

in our Park Service, and those projects are now not being funded.

Congress can act by passing the National Park Centennial Act as

proposed by Arizona Senior U.S. Senator John McCain, and I’m

proud to say our Congressman, Mr. Renzi.

And the last point, within the Park Service budget, funding equity must be restored among the major icon national parks. The

truth is that budgetary pain has not been equally shared between

the parks.

Earlier this year at the request of our board, we did some work

on the funding for our park, as opposed to funding for other parks.

What we found was that over a 12-year period of looking at 26

major national parks, the Grand Canyon got the lowest percentage

increase. This is the No. 2 park in the country in terms of visitation. It’s the No. 1 park in terms of foreign visitation.

If we look at some other icon parks as comparison, the Grand

Canyon received only 26 percent of the budgets for the three icon

parks of the west, and Yellowstone garnered 41 percent of the

money for the icon parks in the west. Cumulatively, from 1998

through 2006, the Grand Canyon received a total of $14.67 million

in capital appropriations, and Yellowstone received $125.9 million.

For the current 5-year plan, fiscal year 2007 through 2010, the

plan is for $2.5 million in capital funds for the Grand Canyon, and

$42.4 more million for Yellowstone.

Now, we don’t begrudge Yellowstone, or anyone any more money,

but this is unfair. Our Foundation would have to raise $150 million

to catch up with Yellowstone.

Those of us in friends organizations also know and understand

that there is an increasing need for creative partnerships to seek

private philanthropy support and an increasing need for citizen

stewardship, stewardship that can be expressed through financial

support for volunteerism in the park.

Philanthropy has had a long and successful history in the national parks, and we’re proud of that success, and while we’d like

to maintain our existence on a bright line, today’s budget realities

demand that we refine the role that private philanthropy and citizen stewardship can and ought to play.

Maybe I’m a cock-eyed optimist, but I believe the American people still embrace Teddy Roosevelt’s concept of conservation and environmental stewardship. Places like the Grand Canyon are part of

our collective heritage, and we all share the responsibility to ensure protection of these places with all of their resources.

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Wallace Stegner was right. This is the most beautiful place on

Earth. Thank you for your efforts to help us protect the Grand

Canyon.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Tuck follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. Ms. Spurr.

STATEMENT OF KIMBERLY SPURR

Ms. SPURR. Good morning. The Arizona Archaeological Council

appreciates the opportunity to submit testimony to this subcommittee, and we appreciate your being here to listen to this. The Arizona Archaeological Council is a non-profit voluntary association

existing to promote the goals of professional archeology in Arizona.

Its stated mission is to preserve cultural resources through education and advocacy. Our membership includes professional and

advocational archeologists working in academic, private business,

local communities, Federal and State Government, and Tribal

agencies.

The AAC strongly supports the National Park Service’s mission

to preserve cultural resources, its long-term leadership in this regard, and the commitment of its employees. We applaud the flexible programs that the NPS has implemented, such as the CESUs

for extending its limited funding.

However, a number of recent changes in the NPS, including the

re-organization of the Intermountain Regional Office and the

changes to the Keeper of the National Register, add to the challenge of responsibly managing America’s cultural resources. Those

changes have been the subject of a lot of attention from the professional archeological community.

Based upon information provided by the National Parks Conservation Association, the State of the Parks Program, a 2004 by

Colorado College’s State the Rockies Program and input from professional archeologists in Arizona, the AAC submitted on May 25,

2005, a letter to Director Fran Mainella expressing our concerns

about the asset management plan, the use of the FMFS system and

qualifications of cultural resources personnel.

This letter was also sent to the superintendents of parks in the

Four Corners area. On September 8th, we received a reply from the

Office of Director of the NPS. We are submitting copies of both of

these letters with our testimony.

The letter we received from the Director does not clarify our

questions or adequately address our concerns. The letter was quite

general in reply, and essentially directed us to contact each park

unit with specific questions or issues that we had. Our concerns,

however, lie with NPS-wide policies and procedures. We are, therefore, currently in the process of preparing a response, and we plan

to continue this dialog with the NPS.

As you will see in the letter that has been submitted for the

record, we have basically three specific issues that we would like

to open a dialog about. The first is the use of the single asset management system to evaluate the condition and assign maintenance

funds to all park facilities. This is a system that essentially equates

prehistoric and historic features as equal to modern buildings and

infrastructures. The use of this system has a high potential to result in minimum funding for cultural resources preservation when

budgets are tight. It basically comes down to cultural resources

versus visitor facilities, and we feel that this is not in the best interest of cultural resources.

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Second, recent restructuring and personnel policies have resulted

in supervisory positions being filled by people who do not necessarily meet the Secretary of Interior standards which are used

throughout the archeological community to establish qualifications.

The NPS should exemplify these qualifications that are required in

the professional community throughout the United States, but it

appears that cultural resources in some parks are suffering from

daily and long-term decisions made by managers who lack appropriate training and are unaware or do not follow legal requirements and standards for cultural resource compliance.

We have heard of several incidents where there has been damage

to cultural resources because the superintendents or the managers

directly in charge of daily operations, did not seem to be aware of

standard procedures and legal requirements before development

had taken place.

Finally, we are concerned that the system of review for National

Park Service undertaking, could be adversely impacting archeological resources. A programmatic agreement was set up in 1995,

which allows park superintendents to establish compliance, a task

that is normally undertaken by the State Historic Preservation offices in each State in the country.

We’re concerned this system has led to a lack of rigorous compliance with Federal laws to protect cultural resources, and this is

somewhat tied to the concern of personnel qualifications.

The Arizona Archaeological Council is grateful for the opportunity to provide the subcommittee with our perspective on these

changes in the National Park Service oversight.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Spurr follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. Mr. Smith.

STATEMENT OF RICK SMITH

Mr. SMITH. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and other members of

the subcommittee. My name is Richard Smith. I began my NPS career as a seasonal ranger in Yellowstone National Park in 1959,

and retired in 1994 as the Associate Regional Director for Natural

and Cultural Resources in the National Park Service’s former regional office in Santa Fe, NM. I, therefore, worked during both Republican and Democratic administrations.

In between these dates, I served in Yosemite, at the Service’s

ranger training center here in Grand Canyon, in the Service’s

headquarters in Washington, DC, in Everglades National Park, in

the Philadelphia Regional Office, in Carlsbad Caverns, in Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Santa Fe, with temporary assignments in Fredricksburg National Military Battlefield, and in Alaska. Following my retirement, I was asked to return to duty as the

acting superintendent of Yellowstone National Park.

I come before you today representing the Coalition of National

Park Service Retirees, a group consisting of 435 former employees

of the Service, all of whom had experience similar to mine and

many of whom were senior leaders.

Mr. Chairman, this is the first time in the 89-year history of the

National Park Service that its retirees have ever felt the need to

join together to comment on the management of our Park System.

Our group includes two former directors, 16 former regional directors, and more than 100 ex-superintendents. To quote an old cliche,

we have been there and done that.

What causes a group like this to give up fishing, hunting, travel

and golf, what most retirees do, and instead join together to monitor how the political leadership of the Department of the Interior

and our National Park Service are managing National Park Service

areas. Quite frankly, Mr. Chairman, it’s because we don’t like what

we see.

We don’t like it when these political leaders or their appointees

instruct our colleagues who are still working to lie to the American

people and call cutbacks in visitor services in parks service level

adjustments. Park employees we know have told us the real story

of reduction in visitor center hours, elimination of interpretative

and environmental education programs, reduction in resources

management activities, and even curtailment in resources protection programs. Parks simply don’t have enough money for their annual operations.

Now, we would normally applaud the effort going on in many

parks in the Intermountain Region to conduct core management or

core operations analyses. It appears to us, however, that the current analysis shows little regard for effectiveness in accomplishing

park goals and objectives, as opposed to its emphasis on efficiency.

Those conducting the core obligation analyses in parks are instructed to assume prior to the analysis that fully one-third of their

employees are likely to be engaged in non core activities. I was the

superintendent or deputy superintendent in four national parks.

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erations analysis is just another excuse to reduce employee numbers, rather than seriously looking at park operations, then we believe the current employees will not be very willing participants in

this exercise.

We are deeply disappointed, Mr. Chairman, that the departmental—that a departmental political appointee, the former director of the Cody, Wyoming Chamber of Commerce, is a department’s

lead on a process that will radically alter the management policies

of the National Park Service and impose a political agenda on

those policies. We are disturbed that, despite the President’s campaign pledge to eliminate the maintenance backlog in the National

Park System, that the Congressional Research Service in March of

this year, March 9, 2005, estimated that the backlog is somewhere

between $4.5 and $9.69 billion, depending on which assumption

one used.

Claims by the department political leadership that they have re- duced the maintenance backlog by $4.9 billion in the last 4 years

are bogus. Ask them how much of this is new money as opposed

to regular maintenance funding. While the NPS conducts regular

maintenance operations with available funds, the backlog just continues to grow.

We are saddened when the political leadership continues to lead

the way toward privatization and commercialization of our national

parks. Do we really want to turn over park maintenance, park administration and resources management to the lowest bidder? Do

we want to sell advertising space on park shuttle buses or on park

brochures, or even sell off parks, as Representative Pombo recently

suggested? I don’t think so.

Mr. Chairman, since 1872 with the establishment of Yellowstone

National Park, each succeeding generation of Americans has had

its opportunity speaking through its Representatives in Congress to

add the areas to the System they believe deserved protection and

perpetuity.

As a matter of generational equity and of respect for those who

came before us, we should manage these areas with the highest regard for their resource integrity and their ability to remind us who

we are and what we are as a people and as a Nation. We should

not be careless with this legacy, nor allow it to be subjected to a

political agenda.

I very much appreciate, Mr. Chairman, the opportunity to address you and members of the subcommittee this morning. I’ll be

pleased to try to answer any questions that you may have. Thank

you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. You know, Mr. Turner is going to have to leave, so

I’m going to start off with Mr. Turner.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that, and I appreciate

all of the time that everyone has spent on both of these panels in

preparing for coming before us. I’ve a plane to catch at 1:10, which

is the difference between my getting back to D.C. today versus tomorrow, as you know, some of you I have communicated with, so

I appreciate the chairman allowing me to ask this panel questions

prior to the time that I need to depart.

Mr. Smith, I got to tell you, in reading both your statement and

in the hearing what you presented, I’m really disappointed in your

statements. I’m really disappointed in the tenor of your statements.

I read your statement beforehand and I was going to be interested

in the manner in which you presented it. It really shows such an

unbelievable contempt for people who work very, very hard for the

National Park Service, some people which may have opinions

which are different than yours and some people may have challenges which you currently are not facing, but I counted in your

statement seven times you used the word ‘‘political.’’

You have three people up here who were elected in a political

process, and you will not hear us talking about political agendas

or political issues. You will hear us talking about substantive

issues facing the park district, and I think you have a tremendous

opportunity with your association to advance issues that those that

are on the inside of the system are not on a day-to-day basis free

to do, but to do it in a manner that is so disparaging the people

who are working on it, I don’t think is helpful for the process, and

I do not have a question for you.

Ms. Tuck, I do have a question for you. You invited us to ask you

about volunteers and the impacts the cuts are having with the volunteers, and I would like you to speak about that, and, also, I’m

very interested in having the national parks and seeing the extent

to which they’re struggling with invasive species, and you mentioned that in your comments and also in your effort to assist the

Grand Canyon in their eradication efforts.

If you might also, after you complete your comments about the

volunteers, speak a moment about that effort and its impact on the

Grand Canyon.

Ms. TUCK. OK. Thank you. I’m known for being long-winded, and

when I practiced this morning, I topped out at 12 minutes, so I had

to cut. So I know I still went over, but I did better than my usual

record.

Our Foundation, the budget of our park is $19 million. Over the

last 5 years, we’ve given—we’ve raised $13.5 million for this park,

with three employees. Last year alone, more than 1,200 volunteers

contributed 49,000 hours to a variety of—only resource protection.

We’re just measuring resource protection. I’m not measuring everything. And that’s time valued by the National Park Service as

$850,000.

But the limited Federal funding has meant that the Park Service

no longer has people who can train or supervise volunteers. We

have had a long tradition of hosting Elderhostels, boy scouts. The

relationship of people with parks, that’s really important, and what

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we think that relationship is, is that stewardship is more than

money. It is also service.

There is one program, the Greenhouse Program at the Grand

Canyon and the Re-vegetation Program that historically has been

heavily reliant on volunteers. Over the last 6 fiscal years, that program alone got 90,000 volunteer hours, labor valued by the Park

Service—we used this figure in a recent grant application to a private foundation, so these are the Park Service’s figures. They valued that volunteer time at $1.5 million.

As a result of staff cuts, this important program at the Grand

Canyon declined from nearly 19,000 in fiscal year 2004, to just over

6,000 in 2006. As a result of that, one of the things that we did

is to decide that we would hire a half-time volunteer coordinator

within the Foundation to help the park use volunteer experiences.

These are people—these experiences volunteering in the park,

make people stewards forever.

I had—one of the most wonderful weekends of my summer, was

spent on the North Rim with a bunch of Navajo boy scouts from

Tuba City who had never been to the Grand Canyon, and they had

the time of their lives, and I have to say that they asked to come

back for their winter camping experience, and I’m going to be the

only woman invited to the winter camping experience. So I’m pretty proud of this little group of boy scouts, and I think we need to

look at what cutbacks mean in terms of cutbacks in terms of volunteers.

The problem with invasive species is a horrible problem in all of

our parks. You will see on the table right outside here a little brochure we did with Park Service staff, looking and focusing on the

10 most wanted invasive species in the park. The park is now

using this brochure. It’s going out with every back country permit.

Some of the rangers have them so they can help identify them. It’s

a really difficult problem, and you can eradicate a species, and then

if you don’t come back in the next year and do additional clean-up

work, some of—all of the work you did the first year can get lost.

This year we raised $189,000 for the inner canyon vegetation,

and we’re currently looking—we have—we think we’re going to get

a grant for $250,000 to continue that program next year, but I

think this is a core operation of the Park Service. It’s not something that we should be doing.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you. I’m going to submit a followup question

on the issue of invasive species. I want to thank you so much for

holding this hearing. I learned so much about our national parks,

and whenever I hear from those who have the responsibility of

stewardship or those who are working diligently with them to preserve them for our country and our Nation, it gives us an ability

to serve Americans better in Congress the more that we know of

what’s needed.

I want to congratulate my fellow classmate Rick Renzi on his impeccable record on preserving and defending our national parks

and those things that are in his back yard, and some of the policies

that you pursue have a greater impact than just those that are in

your district, because you certainly have a national perspective

with respect to our national parks, and I thank you for your leadership there. Thank you, gentlemen, for including me.

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Mr. SOUDER. Thanks for coming.

Mr. Renzi, would you like to go next?

Mr. RENZI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mike, thank you so very much for coming all the way from Ohio

to be with us. I appreciate it.

Mr. Keiter, I was really taken—and I want to thank you for your

honesty when you said that over time both Republicans and Democrats deserve the blame over many administrations, so the underfunding problem has gone on for years. I feel like we’ve reached a

point with the critical infrastructure, particularly some of the capital improvements—major capital—it’s like a home that you

didn’t—as you described, that you haven’t invested properly in

maintaining.

When you look at new sources of money, when you look at trying

to make up the major deficit now that we’re so far behind, can you

share any kind of creative thoughts you have on ways for us to

come up with that funding?

Mr. KEITER. A few thoughts that have both occurred to myself

and to NPCA, one obvious potential source of revenue, which I

know that several of you have been involved with, would be obviously the Centennial Act, and the check off scheme that is included

within that legislation, and that certainly is one potential source.

I probably should add that NPCA has prepared several dozen

State of the Parks reports that I alluded to in my testimony, and

I believe you will find in those reports for each individual park

some suggestions of potential additional revenue sources.

Mr. RENZI. In the Centennial Program, how much money do you

think from your outside budgeting look—how much money do you

think we could raise on the Centennial program.

Mr. KEITER. You’re taking me into realms that a dirt lawyer

would be very reluctant to venture into.

Mr. RENZI. Do we have a projection on—that is the chairman’s

bill. I give him great credit for it. Do you have an idea of what the

Centennial Program may raise over 5 years or 3 years.

Mr. SOUDER. No, to answer your question, because the way the

Centennial Act is drafted, which won’t pass in its current form because what it says is that the shortfall that sets the target goals

of the amounts the departments are behind. Then it says what we

don’t raise is national Federal expenditures. It isn’t matched. It is

made up by the difference.

I think the best opportunity we have here that is realistically

within the budget, we are looking at something where the dollars

are matched by Federal dollars, rather than the shortfall made up.

But it’s uncertain what that will be, and none of us really know,

but it could be significant, particularly if there is a Federal match,

because that would really help the Foundation as they go out and

try to do that.

Mr. RENZI. Particularly if we spend some money educating people on the idea that you could check on your tax form that your

rebate money, money you may want to donate. I cut you off.

Mr. KEITER. Well, just very quickly. The business plans that

NPCA has done on a number of parks include some suggestions at

the end of those plans for possible revenue sources. I don’t have

specifics right in front of me for individual parks, but we do have

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those business plans—or, excuse me—State of the Parks plans completed for several of the parks in this Region.

Obviously private philanthropy is a potential source, but as we’ve

heard today and as you’re well aware, the key there is that this

source of revenue has historically gone to provide the park with

something that they do not otherwise have or receive or should expect through core operations and maintenance funding, and I think

it’s key that we maintain that distinction, and in some cases, as

we’ve heard today, get back to maintaining that distinction.

Mr. RENZI. Thank you very much.

Mr. Smith, I know Mr. Turner took you to task. Mr. Pombo is

a good friend of mine. He’s chairman of my full committee, and he

is a good man who is bipartisan. He has returned a lot of land to

Native Americans. In your—the record needs to reflect an inaccuracy in your statement, which I read three times last night—I’m

not here—I’m going to give you a chance to talk, but you said that

the parks, the acreage in the system remain relatively static.

You’re aware Chairman Pombo pushed through legislation to add

122,000 acres to Petrified Forest. So that’s inaccurate to say that

about the man.

What he said was the fact that his request to find out whether

or not what it was going to cost should not have been released, and

that request actually came out of the subcommittee.

I do give you credit, though, sir, because with your criticism you

did go and take five points on a call to action and try not to just

criticize, but find solutions. When you look at new money and you

look at—in my—I get criticized by some of my colleagues sometimes for earmarking. Somebody is going to earmark. You turn

your money over to A DOT, they earmark at the State level. You

turn your money over to the Park Service, they’re going to earmark. So I use my earmarks to make up for the deficits and the

deplorable conditions in my district.

I then say on top of that we need to appropriate and authorize

and look at those solutions, but authorization of appropriations can

be a 2 or 3-year process, as we all know, so with the earmarks and

with the authorization of appropriations, with creative solutions as

we’ve seen coming out of the chairman, what else do you have as

far as a solution for us to come up with new moneys, given the conditions that we are in the country?

Mr. SMITH. Well, Mr. Renzi, what we did in the call for action

is to suggest the formation of a Blue Ribbon Committee, and I recognize that takes a couple of years, but we need to, I think, rethink

how we fund the National Park System, and I think we need to

rethink how we manage the National Park System.

One of the things that has been talked about, and I think a commission like this could study, would be the removal of the National

Park Service from the Department of the Interior and make it

somewhat similar to the management of the Smithsonian, an independent agency that then would not—you know, I certainly am not

just critical of the current administration. Other administrations,

as you pointed out, have contributed to this problem, but under—

something that kind of gives us a fresh look, because what’s happening now is that we’re down this path of annual appropriations.

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rior, and it isn’t working. It doesn’t work very well, and our parks

are slowly declining, and the reason—and as proof of that, you’re

holding these hearings.

Mr. RENZI. I agree.

Mr. SMITH. So I think we need to do that. We also suggested, Mr.

Congressman, the formation of a technical committee that would

advise this Blue Ribbon Commission on this horrible problem with

the maintenance backlog. I applaud the Park Service now for its

new maintenance management system. I went through the first

generation of computerized maintenance management system, but

to separate fact from fancy—to separate fact from fancy and bring

to the American public in time for the Centennial of the Park Service, 2016, a plan to resuscitate and reinvigorate the management

of our National Park System.

Mr. RENZI. Thank you. Deborah, I want to thank you, because

you have mentored me in areas when I needed knowledge, and you

and I also have been great friends, and the trips I’ve taken to the

Grand Canyon, you have helped me—we’ve worked on projects together.

Since you’ve been around over the last 5 years, how much money

has your organization raised roughly?

Ms. TUCK. About $13.5 million.

Mr. RENZI. And the goals that you have in the future are phe- nomenal. When you look at taking the $13 million and change that

you raised and putting it into different projects, is there a coordinated effort? Are you able to know what Joe needs to where you

could stop the bleeding, or is it that you’re—go ahead.

Ms. TUCK. Yes and no. You know, we can always improve, but

the Foundation—and I think this is true of all of the friends organizations—we’re not an independent agency. We’re not co-dependent, but we’re not an independent agency, either, so what we raise

money for are projects that Joe and I agree upon.

I think what would be helpful is when the park starts its budgeting process, because Park Service people don’t necessarily know

what philanthropic possibilities are, that, in fact, the Foundation at

the local level sit down with the park managers and hear what the

needs are, so that you can say, ‘‘Gee, you’re talking about’’—for example, I’m not sure how this happened, but there was a renovation

of a railroad station at the Grand Canyon. Well, there are a couple

of different kinds of Federal sources and national sources in which

that money could have come out of, so I think that we could improve that a little bit, but one of the things we’re contemplating

doing, we have 660 miles of trail below the rim. We have 880,000

hikers on those trails, so one of Joe’s biggest problems every year

is how do I find the money to repair the trails. You know our climate. You know what happens when the Bright Angel washes out.

So we’re hoping to create a $20 million endowment in honor of a

member of our board and Arizona’s first person in the cabinet,

Stewart Udall, so that every year we will produce for the park $1

million if we meet that goal, so that Joe no longer has to worry

about where is the money going to come to repair our trails.

But here is your responsibility and the responsibility of the other

elected officials. Then once he has that, don’t downgrade the dollars

so that if he’s had $19 million, you can say, ‘‘Oh, Joe, you’ve got

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$1 million a year, so therefore you’re only going to get $18 million.’’

That’s not fair.

Mr. RENZI. I agree.

Ms. TUCK. What foundations are doing is providing the margin

of excellence, not meeting core operations money. That’s where we

should be.

Mr. RENZI. I agree. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank you for your testimony. Each one of these

hearings, we learn more, and it gets harder and not easier to try

to figure anything out about how to deal with this.

First let me, Mr. Keiter, say that without the data and regular

information from the NPCA, it would be impossible to hold these

hearings. And to the degree we can coordinate together, which is

not easy in the political environment we’re in, we can increasingly

delineate the fact that the decisions that we’re making, that each

year we’ve tried to increase funding. We’ve worked with that on a

regular basis, and in the perspective of the overall discretionary

budget, the Park Service has done well. That means they’re falling

less behind than every other agency in the U.S. Government.

I’m going to digress a second on a couple points. You gave me

questions. It’s our tremendous challenge as we look at this, that all

of us sit on all kind of committees, and this is a zero sum game,

and sometimes people advocate for the parks or advocate for other

things, don’t understand that this is a zero sum game.

The question is, is each marginal thing we’re going to do in the

parks, is that worth reducing the amount we pay for prescription

drugs for the senior, is it worth reducing the what we’re paying for

Katrina for people who are coming back and make them pay more

of their share? We have to make tough decisions of whether we’re

going to have 8 percent, 12 percent, or 20 percent flu vaccinations

held back in case we get hit with the bird flu. If we increase that,

it isn’t available for parks. It’s a zero sum game.

We can have philosophical arguments about taxation, but the

fact is that no party in any State is increasing taxes right now.

There may be some shifting around in things, but if you look at

what’s happening in welfare expenditures and juvenile delinquency

and mental health, all funds are going down at the State and Federal level.

Part of our problem here, quite bluntly, is the State Parks are

not coming up with their share, and in almost State in the budget

meetings, has had more land and responsibility options moving to

the Federal Government, and even as I visited joint operations,

whether it be Indiana at Indiana Dunes, California Redwoods,

Alaska, Washington State, what we see is the State and Federal

Government partnership and the Federal is getting an increasing

percentage of that share because the State Governments are

strapped and not putting the dollars in. This is the uniform difficult challenge.

That said, as we kind of drown in our day-to-day problems, part

of my commitment with this and part of the reason we’re doing

these hearings, is that the question is that you can’t be so shortterm focused that you don’t leave a long-term legacy for your kids

and grandkids. And in our National Park Service, one of the things

we have is our long-term legacy, and we have to understand what

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our restrictions are and what realistically we can achieve, but seek

high, but understand that whenever we have multiple hurricanes

and the types of disasters we have and if we get hit with another

terrorist attack, that these things change, that when people say are

you screening—to Homeland Security, are you screening every bag

on every airplane? If we do, it means a funds reduction in the National Park Service.

It is not going to be that there’s going to be this sudden boost

up in revenue and we’ll be able to screen every bag. We have to

take risks and tradeoffs, and the question is how do we take those

risks and tradeoffs. Now, today’s testimony was helpful and, for example, this archeology question is very complex, and we’ll probably

have some followup in trying to sort out the differences between

the new buildings, the prehistoric buildings, and the current buildings. I’m on the Board of Indiana Landmarks, and one of the things

we have to have out of landmarks groups is, not just this isn’t the

way we’re going to do it, but how do we propose to make value

judgments.

We are not going to preserve everything. We cannot afford to preserve everything. I think it’s a good point about separating visitor

facilities from historic facilities, but in those historic facilities, the

50-year rule isn’t working. What happens—and we also can’t have

this egalitarian thing that every building is of equal value.

Some things have hierarchies of values, uniqueness of values,

and those concepts maybe change over time, but clearly I wanted

to make sure that historic and archeology resources stay in the

mix. But to do that, we’re going to need aggressive specifics, because I agree with your fundamental, that it is not in many cases

as high a priority in the debate system, and some of these debates

are pretty nasty.

When I first went on the Park Subcommittee, my first debate

was about Gettysburg. Do you tear down the cycloramic theater

which was a historic structure sitting on this historic framework.

Which was the forethought of the park? Was it the battlefield, or

was it to preserve cyclorama which was designed by a very significant designer, one of his best creations. It had meant a lot to visitors, but it meant you couldn’t appreciate where the key point of

the battle turned.

And these are very tough questions that we have to sort through.

At Lexington and Concord, there are buildings there that the Park

Service has that were built on the trail that inhibit, in my opinion,

some of the ability to understand what the battlefield looked like,

but we kept them because they’re historic buildings, but they don’t

have anything to do with the time period that we set the park up

for.

And how we resolve these things is very critical because by not

making the decisions of how to prioritize, we don’t have the money.

Now, this leads to a very fundamental challenge here on kind of

the crown jewel of parks versus the mid level parks versus the

smaller, everything from postage stamp to political—what our

former Park Director from my home State called park rail projects,

that—and that anybody who manages the Park Service tries to

come up with different types of ways to try to discourage Congress

from adding things to the System.

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One of the big debates we had in the Centennial Act that we’re

still trying to work through is how do we not only relate the private sector money, but how do we on the public side balance—if

you focus too much on maintenance and operation and backlog—

everybody focuses on maintenance, operation and backlog—and you

don’t add new things to the Park Service?

So, for example, another thing I support is Curt Weldon adding

the heart of the Brandywine Battlefield to the Park Service. The

problem with it here is that it’s not a—it’s a somewhat degraded

area. It was offered by a seminary. They offered it at a lower cost

than it would—I think it was a couple million dollars compared to

$6 million if they sold it for condos. If the condos would had gone

over that battlefield, we would never had that battlefield. It is adjacent to a fish and wildlife area, and it is one of the only open

grassy areas of the areas in the area of Philadelphia. That’s not a

problem they have as much in the west, but it’s a problem out east

for any kind of green space.

Now, when that park ran potential comes up, do we in effect divert resources from operations in other parks and from bigger

parks where there is a lot of public support, to add something that

once it’s built over, it will never be part of the Park Service? We

will never tear down the condo, and it offers green space in areas

where there isn’t green space, and while it wasn’t a critical battle,

it was an important battle.

One of the tradeoffs here, and we push too much in one direction

and another. Partly, we don’t want to make judgments, generally

speaking, but in my State, there’s a total of 3 percent public lands,

total. Federal, State, local, township and county; 3 percent Federal

land. Not a problem—the same problem that my friend Rick faces

or Greg Walden where we’ll be next up in Oregon. I sat next to him

on a Resource Committee. He’s 90 percent. And Jim Gibbons on the

other side was 96 percent in Nevada.

We only have 3 percent. So guess what. We can’t stitch together

big parks. We want heritage areas, and the heritage area money

is coming out of the Parks budget. It’s coming out of the Interior.

So now the National Park Service has to manage areas for which

they have no control, and that what was intended as a well meaning attempt not to, in effect, reduce Park Service core budgets, as

a result of the further diffusion. And then in Boston we have a

thing called the National Park area, which in Boston Harbor we

didn’t own any land, the Federal Government. All they were doing

was coordinating a bunch of things including Logan Airport which

sits inside the boundaries of the National Park area.

The Park Service is so diffuse right now, and nobody wants to

say what are the crown jewels, what are the mid jewels, and what

are the others. So there has been a back door, in my opinion, when

you refer to the amount of dollars that goes to Yellowstone, Grand

Canyon and Yosemite, and not to have those dollars shifted—the

American public, when they say they don’t want any change to the

National Park Service, they’re thinking of the crown jewels and

their local park. If you told them, ‘‘Would you rather have Grand

Canyon be under-funded, or cut out some of the small parks,’’ they

would say cut out some of the small parks. Unless you’re representing that area or unless you have an archeological national view, it

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is a very tough challenge in polling, because they don’t even know

how many units we have or the diversity of the Park Service or the

challenge.

One of the hot things we’re going through right now on the tax

code question is land donations. Should you be able to take a land

donation, and there is a proposal in the Senate we need to fight

because it could be critical to the Park Service, which is, ‘‘can you

value land donations at its market value, or the value you bought

it at?’’ Well, this becomes a huge thing to the Nature Conservancy,

to different groups working easements, that one of the things we’re

doing for new land, instead of buying it, we try to get easements,

because that way we preserve the views and try to keep cattle

ranches and other things there in the area without disturbing the

park.

But to the degree the tax code changes, to the degree we have

these different pressures, this is incredibly complex. I thought

these hearings were going to be a little more narrowly targeted.

When I realized we were looking at the funding of the Park Service, we were automatically into questions of how you do core ops,

how do you do an assessment of prioritization, how you do—personnel costs are eating up—we just had a huge company that had a

great impact, the Indiana Delphi, declare bankruptcy, that GM and

Ford are both teetering. U.S. Steel, the steel companies, they can’t

pay the pensions.

We have the problem with the Federal Government. Nobody put

aside the money to match the pensions and the health care, so

every time you look at an employee tradeoff as opposed to contracting out or a purchasing tradeoff, the numbers are staggering that

are facing us in the Park Service.

We’re talking about 5 years. You look out 15 years, these shortfalls are staggering, and they are not going to be able to be met

without a lot of creative type thinking.

I have registered aggressively my concern, and I understand that

there are other politics going on, that Chairman Pombo’s proposal

to sell off parks isn’t going to pass. Partly—and I made it clear that

I won’t vote for a budget bill that includes that.

At the same time, this is partly a battle over Alaska, because

most of these lands are in Alaska, and how are you going to do

budget offsets, and basically it is somewhat of a battle over drilling

on the Arctic Refuse. It was a push on one side to try to get another issue. It wasn’t over selling parks. Parks aren’t going to be

sold. I’ll just tell you that.

The other question of how much commercialization is going to be

in the parks is a very tough challenge and something that we need

to visit. I appreciate all your comments, but I have—for example,

I referred earlier to the transportation system that mostly isn’t in

the park, but goes into the park in Acadia where L.L. Bean does

have their name on the back of it.

The question is how far are we going to go and where are we

going to go in allowing commercialization? And I think this is a

valid question. We see little Kodak moment spots around. It’s a little naive to say that it hasn’t already been in the park, that they

clearly—the concessionaires have it, but I think there’s a general

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consensus that there has to be a cap that we ought to talk about

where this is going to be.

The American public doesn’t want to pay for the parks, and then

walk in the parks that look like a constant advertising gimmick.

The question is how can we meet these tradeoffs.

I think that the Hoffman memo which popped up in the Seattle

hearing, as well, isn’t going to be implemented in the way it was

proposed, but it has significant fundamental challenges to the way

we’ve done business. I don’t think it will be in that form, but some

of these questions are going to be hotly debated, partly because,

quite frankly, and I don’t think we will probably get into this, but

I want to raise this to give you a broader prospective, is that we

have as somebody that came in from the outside—I don’t have a

park in my district. I don’t have any Federal land in my district.

I’m interested generally in the subject and care passionately about

it, so I don’t have a dog in the sun, so to speak.

But I tell you what, coming in as a management person and trying to figure out what national monuments are and what preserves

are and what’s a recreation area and what’s under the BLM, what’s

under the Park Service, what’s under the Forest Service, it is incredibly confusing, and why Mount Saint Helens National Monument inside the National Forest are both operated by the Forest

Service, but one works under Park rules and one operates under

Forest rules, I don’t understand, and what’s happening here is

we’ve confused the general public who is trying to figure out what

is a mixed-up goal of the Federal Government of what’s wilderness,

what is recreation, what’s kind of a blend of wilderness and recreation, and where are we going to get the money. If it’s not BLM

land, where will we get resources out of this country?

If we don’t clarify this as we move toward 2016, and try to figure

out what should be vital in debates like the Hoffman memo, and

then when you say, we heard earlier in the first panel, it was

agreed in the park plan as far as cooperation, in order to get a park

in, there are so many deals cut. You can use snowmobiles on these

2 acres, but not this 170 acres. You can use a jet ski over as you

come into the park on this one lake, but not over on this lake. You

can use watercraft only going 15 miles an hour here, 20 miles an

hour there, and 25 miles an hour over there.

The agreements we have, although we’re trying to get some

worth, are just extraordinary and complex, and it makes it very

hard to come up with a national vision. That’s how we put our

Park System together, but now as we look at it, often what we’ll

hear, quite frankly, from the environmental groups, is over here,

and what we hear out the pro heavy usage groups is over here,

when, in fact, it’s very complex.

Now, I want to pursue a couple specific things. I think when we

have an organization like this, and so many of you are—a number

of people here have vouched for your organization. It’s interesting

to kind of look beyond what is immediately in front of you and see

that nationally this is a huge challenge, but this is what a commission would be helpful to help you out in trying to say what is our

vision, how does the Park Service fit in. All of you retired and have

the experience to help us come up with how did it get this way,

how could this be changed, not just in the funding question, but

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how we should be—as we try to figure out when are we going to

add new land, when not, what are the tradeoffs? Mr. Smith.

Mr. SMITH. I think, Mr. Chairman, if we could do that outside

of the normal arena in which we debate these kinds of issues, and

have this independent commission appointed by the Congress or by

the administration or by whomever, that would represent then a

detailed and no-political look at how these issues—you’ve brought

up 15 issues here in the last couple of minutes that are really troublesome, that are difficult, and we need to resolve them, and I don’t

see that we’re in the process of resolving them very well under the

current situation. So if we could do something outside the box.

You know, in 1963, you may remember that the Department of

the Interior appointed a committee headed by Professor Starker

Leopold from the University of California to look at how resources

management should be conducted in the National Park Service.

The commission met for, if I’m not mistaken, for 6 months, a

year, whatever, and came back with the recommendations, and the

Park Service was able to adopt those recommendations, and it’s

made a significant difference in the way that the Park Service conducts its resources management activities.

It’s that kind of commission that I’m thinking about that would

help us sort out or sort through the kinds of questions that you’re

raising.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me pursue that just a second. I want to go over

to this Foundation question, which we haven’t dealt with in the

other hearings, and I want to talk about how you address that

question. I learned this early on. I was a baby politician when I

never thought I would be a politician, but I learned as I took cost

accounting and as we did case studying in grad school at Notre

Dame, that—let me define the parameters and other people can figure out the solution based in fact by how I define the parameters.

The problem with the commission in this political environment

is—how would you feel if I picked a commissioner picked by Secretary Norton? I just make that comment to illustrate here how the

commission is really going to be a function of who picks the commission. Isn’t it?

Mr. SMITH. Well, of course, and I would think that the responsibility to pick the commission would be distributed equitably so

that everyone would have an oar in the water and it couldn’t be

accused of being overly partisan. You know, the Leopold Commission was composed of professors, it was composed of resources management specialists from various fields, and the recommendations

that they brought back, were not—and I pardon using this word,

‘‘partisan’’ in the sense that they could be traced back to either

Democratic or Republican roots. They were recommendations that

really went to the heart of the question; how should the Park Service manage its natural resources within the Park System, and

that’s the kind of commission that we’re envisioning as a way to

sort through and make recommendations to the President.

Mind you that these recommendations would have to be adopted

by whatever administration was in power, so, I mean, there obviously would be some political tinge to what happened, but it seems

to me, again, that we’re not making much progress at the present

time in arresting the slow decline of the parks in the System, and

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if we could think about some different ways of Governments, if this

commission could think about some different ways of funding the

kinds of question that you asked, Mr. Renzi, about other kinds of

innovative, creative funding mechanism, we think that’s worth a

try.

Mr. SOUDER. It’s interesting, and we’ll continue to followup to see

whether that actually is a viable presentation—a viable thing. Let

me suggest two things about—a couple things about commissions.

The advantage we have here is we look at it as looking around the

centennial as an organizing principle, that the premises and the

language of how you define it. To the degree that it attaches blame

that looks partisan makes it impossible. I find that commissions

are generally much more enthusiastically supported by those not in

power than in power, which is to say that the Republicans are less

likely to be enthusiastic about a commission than the Democrats

who don’t have majority in any particular area right now, arguably

within the Supreme Court.

The second thing related to the commission is the majority tends

to like a commission if they use a commission to pass the buck, and

so if we don’t want to know how to deal with Social Security, we’ll

get a Social Security commission, because then we can blame the

commission for making the hard decisions.

In trying to think that out, the political reality of how a commission would play through here, if this plays through going into a

very close election, it would be finger-pointing that the Republican

Party didn’t spend enough money, it’s dead on arrival. If it’s moves

to be more like a Social Security commission where it’s taking decisions that are out and say or just it isn’t going to happen, just to

be honest, that says look we have a challenge here that needs to

be addressed outside the political process. Maybe even its report

comes in—it’s a qualified year that comes in after the next Presidential election so it doesn’t get caught up in the back and forth

of the political process. The national parks have historically been

bipartisan.

Let me be blunt. The environmental movement hasn’t endeared

themselves to the Republican Party, and the Republican Party

hasn’t endeared themselves in the environmental movement, and

because of that, to the degree it gets caught up in those kind of

issues in a very bitter divided country, that the previous consensus

for the national parks starts to fall apart. In minutes, it’s easier

for Members not to vote for the funding bills because you say well

this group here tried to beat us, wants an increase in funding.

The other side tries to use that then to try to gain power, and

it’s inevitable to some degree, but it hasn’t been historically as

much that case. What’s been interesting about it is the hearing

process because we’ve had many Republicans attend, and on the

centennial bill, we’re trying to work through something.

So the breadth of what this commission pursues, if it gets into

clean air and clean water, which visions out of the Park Service immediately come into play, you get a different dynamic than if it

stays more focused narrowing on the park, so even defining how

broad the vision of the commission would be, would be very, you

know—make it more or less political.

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Mr. SMITH. I’m confident, Mr. Chairman, that we could figure

that out. This is a great country, and we’ve figured out difficult

problems before, and if management and preservation and protection of our National Park System is an important issue, which I

think it is, I think we could find a way to appoint a commission

that would operate, as you point out, outside the political realm,

and to come back and bring to the Congress and to the President,

good, solid, professional recommendations about how the Park System should be governed and how it should be financed, and I’m

confident we can do that. This is a great country. We can do that

kind of stuff.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Ms. Tuck, you raised a really challenging question that we hear constantly from private sector people, including right now, say, FEMA versus private relief efforts in Louisiana. It’s not unique to parks. This is true when we get into child

care questions, how do we provide juvenile services in the United

States, that there is really kind of a double part to this, that to

some degree Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Yosemite, and your

funds in the parks themselves, because of their popularity, this is

used in effect where we go down on the House floor and argue for

more funding for the parks, then multiple Members come down and

argue that the Lincoln Memorial Home is under funded in the

State of Indiana. You use the crown jewels—in effect, you get used

to get funding for everybody else.

Ms. TUCK. Correct.

Mr. SOUDER. To some degree, to the degree that the demonstration fees are collected at those parks and the private funding

groups give to those parks, to some degree you’re supporting the

rest of the system. Do you think your donors like that or dislike

that? When they give money to the Grand Canyon, the suggestion

that—because the hint underneath that was, look, they want to

just give to the Grand Canyon, you don’t want to see the money

replaced by having Federal funds transfer to other places because

we’re giving to Grand Canyon, but in a effect, they’re helping the

Park Service as a whole and it’s not like the funds are going to

education.

Ms. TUCK. Right. I think there are two issues. No. 1, to the extent where the boats rise for the Grand Canyon and the rest of the

icon parks, the boats rise also for the other parks. I think everybody understands that. What cannot happen is if a group becomes

tremendously successful in raising money for a park, then you cannot cut the appropriations for that park, or philanthropy will cease.

I think we’re at a very interesting time with parks and philanthropy. There is a lot of argument about this within the friends

groups that raise money for parks, but if you think about it and

you think about where State universities were at the turn of the

last century and you think about where they are now—you know,

if State universities had to exist now on tuition and what they get

from legislature, they would be terrible, pathetic places.

I think the promise for philanthropy for national parks is really,

really great. I mean, if I had to pitch you about what you’re going

to leave in your will, what is the greater legacy than the Grand

Canyon? What is a better legacy gift? And we haven’t done very

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much about that, but I think it is a double-edge sword. It’s going

to take a while to develop.

When a park accepts philanthropy, then sometimes things have

to be done a little differently. The world with philanthropy is not

the same world as the Park Service, and sometimes the Park Service doesn’t like that. Sometimes it does like it. But if donors give

money for a specific item, then they expect that item will be completed, and completed more or less on time.

That creates a different kind of dynamic within the Park Service.

Philanthropy can offer a lot of possibilities in terms of dollars over

the long-term, but it will mean that some part of the Park Service

will have to operate differently, and there is really not a very good

discussion about that, yet, between both the friends groups and the

Park Service.

Mr. SOUDER. You raised a question about doing—you suggested

there ought to be defined boundaries as to what philanthropy does

and what Government funding does, which is a very interesting

question. To some degree—I keep wanting to say—I don’t remember whose testimony, but one of you pointed out that at Grand

Canyon—it may have been yours—that it was 80 percent personnel, it is now 90 percent personnel.

Isn’t that to some degree what’s happening, is that the Federal

Government is basically saying, ‘‘we can barely cover personnel

cost?’’

Ms. TUCK. This should be Joe’s question, not mine, because—Joe,

it’s your question about where—what the personnel costs are and

what percentage personnel costs are at the Grand Canyon.

Mr. ALSTON. Could you restate the question?

Mr. SOUDER. Could you come up to the mic? One of these testimonies said that at Grand Canyon 80 percent had been—personnel

had risen to 90 percent.

Mr. ALSTON. I think our figures are about 82—83 percent.

Mr. SOUDER. But that has been rising over time.

Mr. ALSTON. No, I don’t think so. It’s been relatively constant

here for about 5 years, maybe even decreasing a little bit. For us,

what it comes down to in our department is how much flexibility

you have in your budget. Not only do you have your personnel cost,

a fixed cost, but then you have all the other things you have to do,

buy trash bags and toilet paper and cleaning supplies, and all

those things that are necessary. So how much flexibility would you

have——

Mr. SOUDER. Let me ask the question. Have you had a reduction

in full-time permanent employees.

Mr. ALSTON. Over the last 5 years, I think we looked at—we reduced our base-funded personnel by five positions over the last 5

years.

Mr. SOUDER. So how many positions do you have.

Mr. ALSTON. I think 360, so——

Mr. SOUDER. So it’s a minimal reduction compared to other

parks. How were you able to—is it because it’s a crown jewel and

it has received more steady increases in your park? How have you

not had the reductions in personnel.

Mr. ALSTON. Some of that—well, there was a variety of reasons

for it. For example, cost of collection. We have increased the numVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:09 Oct 25, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00106 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27379.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ber of fee collectors through the fee demonstration programs. So we

have people out on the gates. That’s been one of our—actually increased the number of positions that way, so that some of the other

positions have been offset, so what you’re seeing—you take those

out, then you’re actually seeing maybe reductions in some of the

other base-funded positions.

What else. Basically, it’s been fairly constant. If you look at the

soft budget, you would see that it’s been in the last 5 years fairly

constant.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Ms. Tuck, listening to that, my other

question is, as I understood that, and it is more than having—and

Mr. Keiter’s testimony shows that all of the parks have made significant reduction in numbers of employees, and we heard that

across the country.

We also heard there is a shift in employees. Some employees

take collection at the gate, and some blend into Homeland Security

questions, Organ Pipe Cactus being an example. So what you have

is a reduction in people who are wildlife personnel, biologists, archeologists, as what we heard from Ms. Spurr. Given the fact that

trend—even if we increase the park budget at a greater rate than

three, and hypothetically get this out to double, and forgetting the

Centennial Act for a minute, that the pressure is still going to be

on the foundations to pick up some of the gaps, because the health

care costs are going up to raise—let’s say conservatively 8 to 10

percent, and I don’t think anybody would sign up for 8 to 10 percent, and pension plans are—the cost pressures are just huge.

If your park budget focuses on the maintenance, where would

you draw the lines? In other words, as far as specifics, I found it

very interesting, because I agree with you. If people pay for the

things substantive, but how would we draw the lines here? If we

drew them as science or archeology, the practical impact may be

there’s no science or archeology.

Ms. TUCK. That’s a dilemma that you face, and it’s a dilemma

to the point that I have some colleagues that raise money the same

way I do, and you’ve met some of them like Ken Olsen, I think. It’s

a dilemma. Where is—the code word we use is ‘‘bright line.’’ Where

is that bright line.

And unlike some groups, the Grand Canyon friends group has

crossed that line, and we’ve crossed the line to make sure that

science, in fact, exists at the Grand Canyon.

Here is an example. One of the great success stories of the last

50 years is the California condor. It was headed toward Dodo bird

status, meaning extinction, as sure as you and I are sitting here.

Twenty-two years ago, there were 22 condors. We have more than

50 condors in our park.

The Park Service doesn’t have any money. There is a legal responsibility to take care of those condors, but the only money it has

comes from our organization. Condors are wonderful birds. You

may think they’re ugly, but they are comical. They are inquisitive.

Don’t knock them. They’re great birds.

And if you don’t have some inner, you know, where some visitor

is not as in tune as Rick would be with his children, says, ‘‘Susie,

hold up your ham and cheese sandwich,’’ and as a 3-year-old, for

the little condor, the condor can take that hand. So why is it that

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if the Park Service has a responsibility to care for threatened and

endangered species, they don’t have the money?

Joe has to make tough decisions every day. I wouldn’t be in his

position for all of the rocks in the Grand Canyon, but somehow as

we define what these parks are about, we have to be clear that if

we’re making decisions in the natural resource parks, there has to

be adequate science to make those decisions.

So, back to your question about the philanthropy, the wise people

that are on my board, and there is one here today, one of my board

members, along with Joe, makes those decisions. Joe can propose.

And what we decided was we didn’t want weakened science at our

park, so we agreed to take on some things that are, in fact, core

operation. We hope that changes.

I mean, there are a lot of needs this park has, and I have chosen

today to use science just as an illustration. We could have the same

conversation about transportation, interpretation, historic buildings, archeological sites. We all have difficult—there is a difficult

choice for the Park Service, but then the Foundation has to choose,

and if we get into too much of core operations, then our donors are

not going to support this.

They want to provide that margin of excellence. They’re excited

about our project to restore historic boats. They’re excited about

building 73 miles of rim-side trails, all of which are wheelchair accessible. They want the Stewart Udall Endowment. Do they want

to help with the toilet paper budget or slogging out the toilets

along the trail? No, siree. That is a core operation.

So that bright line question becomes important for everybody as

we really try to grow the potential for philanthropy, to essentially

provide the kind of support that State universities get in our country, and that’s what I think the opportunities are.

Mr. SOUDER. One of the challenges that I agree with is that as

we—one of the things I’ve been debating on the Centennial Act as

we look at 2016, is at Mission 66 giving the vision as the highway—interstate highways were going, and the visions of the parks.

It’s not clear that they also will motivate the taxpayer to increase

their giving or their spending directly through the budget to say

we’ll pay for the toilet paper, but somebody has to pay for the toilet

paper or they’ll be very mad, particularly if they say put $5 in to

have toilet paper if you go into this john. That would be less popular than the trail map.

One last question, and I’ll see if Mr. Renzi has anything. Mr.

Smith, we were talking earlier—Ms. Tuck basically said Yellowstone was getting way too much money. You were acting superintendent after you retired. Do you know why this would have

been? Is this a recent blip, or has historically that been true?

Mr. SMITH. Well, we often refer in the Park Service to Yellowstone as the mother park, as being the first park, and I assume

that the long history of support for Yellowstone has just continued

on growing. I don’t have any idea at the present time whether Yellowstone is getting more or less of its share than it deserves, but

I would assume that historically, since Yellowstone was the first

national park, that it has continued to occupy a preeminent position in the Congress mind when it goes to—I mean, you know, almost anybody you ask in the United State, name a national park,

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they’re probably either going to say Yellowstone or Grand Canyon,

and I assume that’s the same way in the Congress, too.

Mr. SOUDER. I think that we’ll look into the particulars of it. I

think that they just redid their sewer system, which is something

when you have a blip up you’re going to have over a couple years.

We know the wolf and visitor projects. I’m just trying to figure out

how did—we did Old Faithful. Are we doing some of the lodge?

That’s a huge annual difference, and the question is what would

it be. They don’t have a big delegation in Congress.

It may be that the Grand Canyon, because for a while it was a

projected budget expansion of the transportation system. It may be

that got transferred out and wasn’t used, but we’ll look into that

question because it is a basic equity question that puts tremendous

pressure on the individual Congressman when it is raised.

Mr. Keiter, thank you for the detailed by-park information that

you presented. Do you have any additional comments you want to

make after listening to my comments and the exchanges here?

Mr. KEITER. How did you know that a professor could stay quiet

for this entire period of time. My students would have been amazed

that I made my remarks in 7 or 8 minutes, and I appreciate your

forbearance at the beginning of my testimony.

The only real comment that I have to make, and I appreciate

your observation, Mr. Chairman, is the fact that NPCA has attempted to work and will continue to work under the aegis of its

board, etc., on a non-partisan basis, and our goal has been and will

continue to be to try to provide hard, good, solid, detailed facts

through such exercises as the State of the Parks reports that I alluded to in my testimony, as well as the business plans that we initiated and got underway that the Park Service has put under its

wing currently, and I hope that through that sort of clear, detailed

information, that the committee can make some good, sound judgments about how we might go about providing the resources the

parks so clearly need.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you, and I wrote down in the margin a couple of particular followup things on some of your testimony that

will be on my mind. Anything else.

Mr. RENZI. No.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you for hosting us. Thank you all for participating in this hearing, and this will be published as an official committee record. We’ll have much of this up on our Web site, as well,

and then a final report will probably come out late next year sometime. With that, the subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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