The Park Service’s mission has dual objectives. On one hand, the agency is to provide for the public’s enjoyment of the resources that have been entrusted to its care. This objective involves providing for the use of the parks by supplying appropriate visitor services (such as campgrounds and visitor centers) and infrastructure (such as roads and water systems) to support these services. On the other hand, the Park Service is to protect the resources so that they will be unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations. Balancing these dual objectives has long shaped the dialogue about how best to manage the national park system. In the past few years, the dialogue about how best to manage the park system has taken on a new dimension. While the Congress and the executive branch have been working under increasingly tight budget constraints, the national park system has continued to expand—35 parks have been added since 1985. In addition, the Park Service estimates that its maintenance backlog, including the costs of general maintenance and rehabilitation to existing facilities and roads, exceeds $4 billion. One of the ways the Park Service has dealt with these conditions is to cut back or curtail visitor services in many parks. These cutbacks and curtailments in services have led to concerns about how the agency is being managed—particularly about how priorities are set within the agency. Most of the funding for the Park Service is for park operating budgets. For fiscal year 1997, the Park Service was appropriated about $1.5 billion. Of this, about $1.2 billion was appropriated to cover the operation of the park system—including the headquarters and regional offices. About 80 percent of the operating funds go directly to the parks to cover the costs of their day-to-day operations. This operating budget is the primary funding source for any park. At the park level, it is generally referred to as the base budget. The process for formulating park operating budgets is incremental. This process begins with the prior year’s budget as a base and focuses priority setting on requests for increases to the prior year’s base budget. Requests for operating increases primarily take two forms: mandatory pay increases and specific increases for individual parks—some for new or higher levels of ongoing operating responsibilities, such as law enforcement, and others for one-time projects, such as the rehabilitation of a historic property. Headquarters takes the initiative in requesting the funding for all required pay increases on a servicewide basis. However, for park-specific increases, the parks compete against one another for limited funds through their regional and headquarters hierarchy. Thus, the formal priority-setting process focuses primarily on marginal increases to last year’s budget—not on the priorities of ongoing park activities. While headquarters plays a key role in formulating requests for increases to the Park Service’s budget, decisions about spending and operating priorities associated with a park’s base budget are delegated to the park managers. The superintendent—the chief park official—at each of the 374 park units reports to one of several regional directors, each of whom reports to headquarters. However, upon receiving their budget allocation for base operations, the superintendents exercise a great deal of discretion in setting operational priorities. Many of the park officials we spoke with stressed the importance of this decentralized, park-based decision-making structure, under which park managers plan and execute their budget with as little involvement from regional and headquarters managers as possible. Park Service officials at all levels within the agency maintained that park-level managers were in the best position to plan activities at their park and make decisions about priorities and spending on a day-to-day basis. Hence, regional and headquarters officials generally do not get involved in priority-setting and spending decisions for parks. Typically, these decisions involve trade-offs among four categories of spending: (1) visitor services (e.g., opening a campground), (2) resource management (e.g., monitoring the condition of threatened species or water quality), (3) maintenance needs (e.g., repairing a trail), and (4) park administration and support (e.g., updating computer systems or attending training). In fiscal year 1997, about 70 percent of the Park Service’s operating budget is allocated for personnel services—salaries and benefits of park employees. The remaining 30 percent is allocated for items such as utilities, contracted services, equipment, training, travel, and supplies. As a general rule, the higher the proportion of personnel to nonpersonnel costs, the less flexibility an agency has to reduce costs in the short term when budgets are tight. Further limiting the Park Service’s flexibility is the large proportion—93 percent—of staff who are permanent employees. Because so many staff are permanent, the parks cannot reduce costs by reducing the largest component of their operating costs—salaries and benefits—during off-peak seasons. At the four parks we visited, the percentage of the park budget dedicated to salaries and benefits ranged from about 75 percent at Yellowstone National Park to about 85 percent at Olympic National Park. Park personnel costs will increase annually with required pay and benefit increases and other administrative actions. To the extent that a park’s budget does not increase at the same rate as its personnel costs, the park must absorb some or all of the increase in salaries and benefits. For example, Independence’s budget increased from $10.42 million in fiscal year 1994 to $10.64 million in fiscal year 1996—an increase of $220,000. However, during this 2-year period, salaries and benefits increased by $376,000 and an administratively required salary enhancement program for park rangers cost an additional $455,000. As a result, during this period the increase in the park’s funding did not cover the increase in salaries and benefits, and the park had to absorb over $610,000 in cost increases. Similarly, at Yellowstone, from fiscal year 1993 through fiscal year 1996, the park’s funding increased by $2 million while mandatory salary and nonsalary components, such as utility costs, rose by about $4 million—requiring the park to absorb about $2 million in increased costs over 3 years. At Great Smoky Mountains, from 1994 through 1996, the operating cost increases for personnel alone were more than twice as great as the funding increases. Since park budgets consist primarily of salaries and benefits, absorbing costs can be very difficult without reducing personnel. Parks frequently try to reduce spending for training, travel, and some supplies, but these costs are only a minimal part of their budget. In some cases, parks have had to make further cuts to absorb increases, either by not hiring seasonal employees or by not filling the positions of permanent employees who resign or retire. In either case, having fewer workers means that some activities will not be performed. For example, in 1996, Great Smoky Mountains absorbed increases in costs by hiring fewer seasonal staff. As a result, park managers chose to close two backwoods campgrounds for that year because there were not enough maintenance staff to clean and maintain them. Yellowstone also absorbed increased costs in 1996 and had to cut back on a number of activities, including the operation of a campground and two museums. During the same year, Olympic eliminated six seasonal law enforcement ranger positions. According to park officials, this cutback delayed the response time to park incidents. The officials also told us that reductions in resource protection patrols resulted in the accumulation of 50 to 100 tons of trash and litter that washed up on the Olympic coast during the winter months. Superintendents typically face numerous trade-offs in making spending decisions. For example, in 1996, Yellowstone faced several competing demands—several of which it was not able to fund. Providing the same levels of activities in 1996 as were provided in 1995 would have cost the park about $2 million more than it was provided. The additional costs were due to mandated increases for items such as employee background investigations, employee salaries and benefits, and increased water and sewage testing. To offset these increased costs, the park managers reduced spending for travel, training, and supplies; permitted several permanent and seasonal staff positions to lapse; and closed a campground and two nearby museums. Our past work has shown that such trade-offs occur frequently at many parks in the system. Although park managers need flexibility to effectively manage their park, accountability for the results achieved with the funds spent is also important. There is nothing inherently wrong with a decentralized management system or with delegating decisions about spending and operating priorities to park managers. However, the park managers we spoke with indicated that they rarely, if ever, discussed with regional or headquarters staff their park’s operating priorities or the results accomplished with the funds spent. Under these conditions, the current decentralized priority-setting and accountability systems lack a focus on the results that were achieved. Our prior work has shown that a good system of accountability would include elements such as (1) a process for establishing expectations for accomplishments, (2) a means of measuring progress against expectations, and (3) a means of holding managers responsible for achieving agreed-upon progress. Park Service officials told us that park superintendents set annual performance expectations with their regional director and are held accountable for meeting these expectations. However, park officials also told us these agreements generally focused on accomplishing tasks, such as completing a park’s general management plan, rather than on accomplishing measurable park goals, such as inventorying and evaluating the condition of cultural resources. Officials at the four parks we visited indicated that few, if any, reviews of or agreements on their annual operating priorities had taken place between regional or headquarters offices and the park. Officials at the four regional offices responsible for the four parks indicated that it was up to the parks to establish operating priorities and said that they did not get involved in setting park priorities. (These four regional offices are responsible for over 275 park units—or over three-fourths of the total number of parks.) Under this system, key components needed to hold superintendents accountable are missing.