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Guest Column: Where's The Vision For Properly Funding The National Park System?

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As a historian of the national parks, I followed with interest stories of how the government shutdown – thankfully concluded now – played out in the parks.

From World War II vets “storming” their D.C. memorial, to the private operator of Blue Ridge Parkway’s Pisgah Inn resisting closure in leaf season, to visitors complaining about canceled weddings and wrecked vacations, to state governments rescuing Grand Canyon, Mt. Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty, the parks garnered attention during the shutdown that they rarely get in regular times.

The boisterous public and political pressure for park access seems, at first glance, to validate the common perception (supported by poll data) that the national parks are one rare thing people across party lines agree on.

As lead author of a 2011 study “Imperiled Promise,” which documented problems created by longstanding underfunding of Park Service history programs, I hoped the closures were galvanizing support for public reinvestment in our parks as we approach their 100th birthday in 2016.

But the situation did not produce a clear consensus. Many of my colleagues rallied to NPS’s support, but fellow historian Larry Cebula pointed out that the closures also fed right-wing attacks on the Park Service. The National Review Online vilified rangers as “Park Service Paramilitaries.” In a tense House hearing titled As Difficult As Possible: The National Park Service’s Implementation of the Government Shutdown, Republican congressmen scolded NPS Director Jonathan Jarvis for his handling of the shutdown, while focusing on minor issues like tickets given to joggers running in the closed Valley Forge National Historical Park.

For me, the shutdown called to mind historian Bernard DeVoto’s 1953 Harper’s article, Let’s Close the National Parks.

In DeVoto’s era, the traveling public was “loving the parks to death” while parks funding remained anemic. The irreplaceable parks should be shuttered, DeVoto argued, until the federal government funded them adequately.

The mere specter of closed parks struck a chord. In short order, Eisenhower’s Republican administration crafted the 10-year, $1 billion Mission 66 program that upgraded park facilities in time for the Park Service’s 50th birthday in 1966.

But in 2013, the parks did close. And while people who love them and communities whose economies rely on them pleaded for them to be reopened, it remains to be seen whether closure will produce a groundswell of public support for increased funding.

To ensure that it does, we need to look carefully at who said what during the shutdown.

To my knowledge, Republican calls to reopen the parks were accompanied by no vision to address the parks’ severe (decades long) underfunding. Instead, those demands were wrapped in attacks on the Park Service itself – whose rangers were told that they should “be ashamed” for keeping the public out of the parks.

Meanwhile, commentators on the left noticed that the state leaders busily moving funds to open parks (such as Arizona’s Grand Canyon) were the same ones who initially stopped welfare payments in their states during the shutdown.

These observations remind us that many political leaders who cried the loudest for re-opening the parks are not reliable friends of the parks. They are not advocates of a robust notion of a “public good” that under-girds the park idea, nor protectors of parks’ resources, nor allies of visitors from all walks of life who clamor for access to them. They are demagogues who cynically used the parks’ popularity and patriotic symbolism for political gain while repeatedly kicking an agency that was already down.

This is no way for America to treat its Park Service on the eve of its centennial. It is the Republican Party – whose (Theodore) Rooseveltian fore-bearers created many of the early national parks – that should be ashamed. Meanwhile, those of us who love our parks must recognize that the greatest threat to them lies in the systematic demolition of our nation’s public sector. In coming days, we should watch vigilantly for those efforts to intensify, building on hyperbolic tales of “Park Service mismanagement” during the shutdown.

Park supporters should redouble our efforts to build a country in which reliable long-term investment in our parks is part of a broader recommitment to our nation’s public interest. A good starting point could be immediate action on a Mission 2016 national parks investment plan that can assure that our national parks always remain protected, staffed, maintained, enhanced – and open and accessible – for the benefit of all who look to them for economic survival, inspiration, education, recreation and renewal.

Anne Mitchell Whisnant is a historian with long experience writing about the National Park Service. Her essay appeared first in the News and Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Comments

I am sure that the NPS is under funded but there are things that the agency could do through reorganization to improve the situation.

1.) Less specialization. Break down the walls between divisions. I have seen too many parks with Rangers that have law enforcement commissions who have little law enforcement to do. Let them be more like the generalists type rangers of old. Put all the resources of a district under a single district ranger. Too often there are fee collectors lounging at the campground entrance all day while the interps are on their feet. Or Interps don't ever get to range in the park and learn first hand the resource they are interpreting. Let the VUAs & interps work with bio techs a couple days a week and have the bio tech do a program about wildlife now and then. This cant be done in all places but it can be done in some parks. Where it makes sense have non maintenance workers do minor maintenance and custodial work -let them.

2.) Close or transfer proprietorship of some parks. New Orleans Jazz? Women’s Rights NHP? I’m sure there are others. I’m sure the system can be trimmed.

3.) NPS leaders need to stop bending and breaking personnel laws to keep from having to pay people benefits by improperly using temporary appointments. If they can’t staff a facility or offer a service and do so without abusing labor they should close those facilities and not offer those services. Maybe if that is done politician will be forced to put funding where it needs to be.

4.) The Director of the NPS needs to keep the agency out of politics. The current director is clearly a far left man and that only alienates potential friends in congress when someone like Jarvis acts as he has.


I agree, Perpetual, that NPS hiring appears to be one heck of a mess now. Thank goodness I was in it in the old days. But I really wonder how many of those programs you mention are really the doing of Jon Jarvis and how many have been forced upon him and NPS by various special interests or even acts of Congress?

I don't know. I'm really wondering. Because as I've visited with seasonals all over the country, I've witnessed a lot of frustration and heartache. I don't understand much of it, but can certainly feel for those experiencing it.

Where did it all really come from and why?


so your employer could deny you job security and benefits

Why is it the obligation of the employer to do either? You reach a consentual agreement with your employer to work there. As long as he lives up to his side of the agreement, I don't see what the beef is.


Rick B. ---If you had to split your job with someone else with you working six months of the year and other person taking if for the rest of the year all so your employer could deny you job security and benefits I don’t think you would be so blasé about it. If having people in leadership positions in the NPS falsifying documents in order to carry on abusive labor practices doesn’t bother you that’s too bad. They have a “everybody does it” attitude about this. I’ve heard it from their own mouths. If we can get angry about multi national corporations breaking labor laws shouldn't we be all the more angry about our government doing it? And I speak out on this not just for myself but for others in the same situation and for the good of the NPS. There is no question this has a huge negative impact on the mission of the agency.

Also it is hard to love Director Jarvis when he is pushing policies that cut experianced dedicated people out of the few perm jobs that open and funnels them to people that have less experiance; and less dedication to the agency through programs like Pathways and Pro Ranger. All for the sake of diversity.


The practice is specifically banned under the law.

It shouldn't be. But, either way, you agreed to the terms when you took the job. If you don't like the terms, get a job somewhere else. Or become a superior employee that they can't afford to loose.


ecbuck, the beef is that many parks take what is permanent work and divide it among multiple seasonals so that they do not have to fill the position with one permanent position. The practice is specifically banned under the law. For example a park might hire ten seasonals for the summer and five for the winter doing the same work at the same pay grade. That means five of those positions should be combined and be permaent jobs.

More and more parks are using two year temporary appointments. This type of appointment was designed to be used for short term projects or to fill in for permanent staff on long term sick leave or something like that but that is now being used just to keep the doors open at may sites and to same the management the work that comes with rotating seasonals every six months. The whole thing is just a doge to avoid giving people benefits and job security.

When the Statue of Liberty reopened after September 11 they hired a bunch of people on four year appointments. When their four years were up these people all had to reapply for their jobs. Those who were still there all got rehired to another four year term. These at least did have benefits but you but no career status in the agency; no promotions; no trasfers; etc. and the agency could decide not to reappoint you each year. The finally ended this after ten years of people serving in what were "temporary" positions. Permanent positions were opened at the Statue of Liberty but because of the way the application system had changed many of these folks couldn't get rehired into jobs they had been doing for years.


The programs that are bing use to bypass regular competitive merit based hiring in the hopes of increasing diversity do come form Jarvis. They are part of the "Centennial Initiative" program. The part with the changes in hiring are what is known as "A Call to Action:

This is a quote from Jarvis:

"A Call to Action does not depend upon new funding or new authorities. Instead, he told the group, the plan is based on flexibility, creativity and partnerships."


Perpetual seasonal--I am sorry you can't get a permanent position. Most parks have not filled a lot of those positions due to budget sequestration and other budget issues. I was a seasonal for 11 years. It's still about the best job I ever had.

I have no idea where you get the idea that Director Jarvis is on the far left of the political spectrum. I have known him for at least 20 years and never heard him talk leftist politics.

The quote from the Call to Action is simply a reflection of political reality. The NPS cannot expect any new infusion of authorities or money in the current budget climate.

Rick


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