Obama Administration Proposes $12 Billion Interior Department Budget, Extra National Park Funding

President Obama is proposing a 2010 budget that would provide $12 billion for the Interior Department.

President Obama's proposed 2010 budget carries $12 billion for the Interior Department, though exactly how much will trickle down to the National Park Service is hard to say at this point.

While Interior officials today released highlights of where some of that $12 billion would be spent if Congress approves the appropriation, there are few concrete details. A department spokesman told the Traveler the proposal is more of a "blueprint" than a specific budget.

That said, the projected budget is about $500 million more than the Fiscal 2009 Interior Department appropriation carried. The Park Service's '09 budget, by the way, was right around $2.4 billion, and that is being provided through a continuing resolution, as Congress has yet to finalize the '09 budget.

While today's Interior release did not offer a specific 2010 budget figure for the National Park Service, it did mention that the administration wants to provide "$100 million in additional funds to operate and maintain park facilities and resources and $25 million to leverage private donations for park projects."

Reading between the lines, that sounds as if the Obama administration intends to continue President Bush's Centennial Challenge initiative to annually provide the Park Service with $100 million above its base budget to help polish the National Park System in advance of its centennial in 2016, and to provide $25 million with hopes it would be leveraged by a like amount of private donations.

In a nutshell, the initiative was envisioned as a way to generate $3 billion in funds for the Park Service en route to its centennial. One billion dollars would come from private donors, another one billion would come from a federal match of those private dollars, and the third billion dollars would come from ten years of an extra $100 million -- a presidential bump, if you will -- in the agency's budget.

Well, things didn't turn out exactly as President Bush and former Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne envisioned, as Congress last year approved only $25 million in matching funds -- not the $100 million the president requested -- for the initiative.

While the Obama administration released an outline of its 2010 budget proposal today, the fine print isn't expected to arrive until April