[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
H.R. 3094, NATIONAL PARK CENTENNIAL FUND ACT; AND H.R. 2959, NATIONAL
PARK CENTENNIAL CHALLENGE FUND ACT.
=======================================================================
LEGISLATIVE HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS
AND PUBLIC LANDS
of the
COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
Thursday, August 2, 2007
__________
Serial No. 110-39
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Natural Resources
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COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia, Chairman
DON YOUNG, Alaska, Ranking Republican Member
Dale E. Kildee, Michigan Jim Saxton, New Jersey
Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American Elton Gallegly, California
Samoa John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee
Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland
Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas Chris Cannon, Utah
Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado
Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Jeff Flake, Arizona
Islands Stevan Pearce, New Mexico
Grace F. Napolitano, California Henry E. Brown, Jr., South
Rush D. Holt, New Jersey Carolina
Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona Luis G. Fortuno, Puerto Rico
Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington
Jim Costa, California Bobby Jindal, Louisiana
Dan Boren, Oklahoma Louie Gohmert, Texas
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Tom Cole, Oklahoma
George Miller, California Rob Bishop, Utah
Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Bill Shuster, Pennsylvania
Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon Dean Heller, Nevada
Maurice D. Hinchey, New York Bill Sali, Idaho
Patrick J. Kennedy, Rhode Island Doug Lamborn, Colorado
Ron Kind, Wisconsin Mary Fallin, Oklahoma
Lois Capps, California Kevin McCarthy, California
Jay Inslee, Washington
Mark Udall, Colorado
Joe Baca, California
Hilda L. Solis, California
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, South
Dakota
Heath Shuler, North Carolina
James H. Zoia, Chief of Staff
Jeffrey P. Petrich, Chief Counsel
Lloyd Jones, Republican Staff Director
Lisa Pittman, Republican Chief Counsel
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS AND PUBLIC LANDS
RAUL M. GRIJALVA, Arizona, Chairman
ROB BISHOP, Utah, Ranking Republican Member
Dale E. Kildee, Michigan John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee
Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii Chris Cannon, Utah
Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado
Islands Jeff Flake, Arizona
Rush D. Holt, New Jersey Stevan Pearce, New Mexico
Dan Boren, Oklahoma Henry E. Brown, Jr., South
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Carolina
Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon Louie Gohmert, Texas
Maurice D. Hinchey, New York Tom Cole, Oklahoma
Ron Kind, Wisconsin Dean Heller, Nevada
Lois Capps, California Bill Sali, Idaho
Jay Inslee, Washington Doug Lamborn, Colorado
Mark Udall, Colorado Don Young, Alaska, ex officio
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, South Kevin McCarthy, California
Dakota Don Young, Alaska, ex officio
Heath Shuler, North Carolina
Nick J. Rahall II, West Virginia,
ex officio
------
CONTENTS
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Page
Hearing held on Thursday, August 2, 2007......................... 1
Statement of Members:
Bishop, Hon. Rob, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Utah.................................................... 3
Grijalva, Hon. Raul M., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Arizona........................................... 1
Statement of Witnesses:
Baird, Hon. Brian, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Washington........................................ 8
Prepared statement of.................................... 9
Bomar, Mary A., Director, National Park Service, U.S.
Department of the Interior................................. 21
Prepared statement of.................................... 22
Cipolla, Vin, President and CEO, National Park Foundation.... 35
Prepared statement of.................................... 37
Kiedaisch, Gary A., President and CEO, The Coleman Company,
Inc........................................................ 39
Prepared statement of.................................... 41
Kiernan, Thomas, President, National Parks Conservation
Association................................................ 45
Prepared statement of.................................... 46
Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana........................................... 3
Tiahrt, Hon. Todd, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Kansas............................................ 5
Wade, John W. ``Bill,'' Chair, Executive Council, Coalition
of National Park Service Retirees.......................... 51
Prepared statement of.................................... 53
LEGISLATIVE HEARING ON H.R. 3094, TO ESTABLISH IN THE TREASURY OF THE
UNITED STATES A FUND WHICH SHALL BE KNOWN AS THE NATIONAL PARK
CENTENNIAL FUND, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES. (NATIONAL PARK CENTENNIAL FUND
ACT); AND H.R. 2959, TO ESTABLISH A FUND
FOR THE NATIONAL PARK CENTENNIAL CHALLENGE, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.
(NATIONAL PARK CENTENNIAL CHALLENGE FUND ACT)
----------
Thursday, August 2, 2007
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands
Committee on Natural Resources
Washington, D.C.
----------
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m. in
Room 1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Raul M.
Grijalva [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Grijalva, Bishop, Kildee,
Christensen, Kind, Capps, Herseth Sandlin, Lamborn, and
McCarthy.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. RAUL M. GRIJALVA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA
Mr. Grijalva. Let me call the Subcommittee on National
Parks, Forests and Public Lands to order.
Today, we will hear testimony on two very important bills
that have much in common. They both seek to commemorate the
upcoming centennial of the National Park Service and to prepare
the National Park System for its second century.
I am pleased that there is bipartisan interest in
recognizing this important anniversary and, more importantly, a
common desire to invest in the future of our national
treasures.
We have three panels of distinguished witnesses. I want to
welcome the panelists and thank them for joining us.
Established in 1916, the National Park Service has grown to
protect and interpret nearly 400 spectacular places across the
country. Our National Parks welcome more than 270 million
visitors each year and are a source of tremendous pride for all
Americans. Our National Park Service, which employs more than
20,000 passionate and professional employees, is a world leader
in conservation and interpretation.
As the centennial approaches, there is a consensus among
policymakers and the American people that this milestone must
be viewed as an opportunity to recommit ourselves to building a
stronger, more diverse, better trained, and better equipped
National Park Service.
H.R. 2959
Mr. Grijalva. In February, the administration proposed
legislation to increase funding for NPS over the next decade,
in recognition of the centennial. Two of our colleagues on the
Subcommittee, Ranking Member Bishop and Full Committee Ranking
Member Young, have introduced that legislation, by request, as
H.R. 2959.
H.R. 2959 establishes a Centennial Challenge Fund for
private sector cash donations and provides a mandatory Federal
match of up to $100 million. Money from the Challenge Fund,
authorized for 10 years, will be spent on signature projects or
programs broadly defined as ``any project or program identified
by the director of the National Park Service as one that will
help prepare the National Parks for another century of
conservation, preservation, and enjoyment.''
In my view, however, the administration's proposal is
incomplete, most notably, in that it lacks a way to pay for the
increased spending it proposes. Further, I remain troubled by
the incentives created by the bill's matching requirement.
H.R. 3094
Mr. Grijalva. Therefore, Chairman Rahall and I introduced
H.R. 3094, which authorizes mandatory spending expected to
total $100 million a year for 10 years. Our legislation builds
on the administration's proposal by establishing six specific
areas on which this increased funding is to be spent. These
areas include education and the parks, diversity programs, an
environmental leadership initiative, professional development,
resource protection, and capital improvements.
This mix of funding priorities, investing in education,
bricks and mortar, and human capital, will ensure that our
parks and park employees can meet the challenges of the next
100 years successfully.
H.R. 3094 provides this new spending without requiring
private matching funds. While we recognize the critical role
private giving has played in creating and sustaining our
National Park System, we remain concerned about the ever-
increasing reliance on private funds. This bill encourages
private giving but makes it absolutely certain that NPS
spending priorities are determined by Congress and the
administration without regard to which projects might or might
not be most attractive to private donors.
Finally, H.R. 3094 is paid for. We are certainly open to
discussing the funding mechanism, but we must be clear. Any
centennial proposal must have an offset if it is to move
forward.
Again, I look forward to our distinguished witnesses today
and thank them for their presence and thank them for their
testimony.
With that, let me turn to our Ranking Member, Mr. Bishop,
for any comments he may have. Mr. Bishop.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. ROB BISHOP, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF UTAH
Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am anxious to hear
the testimony today. I know that Mr. Tiahrt and Mr. Souder do
not want to listen to me, so we will jump right into what they
have to say. I appreciate you coming before us.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much. Let me welcome our
colleagues and thank them for taking the time to discuss this
very, very important centennial anniversary and their ideas for
it. Let me begin with The Honorable Mark Souder for your
comments, sir.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. MARK E. SOUDER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF INDIANA
Mr. Souder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ranking
Member Bishop. There are a number of points I want to cover
relatively rapidly here, and I would ask unanimous consent to
insert a number of documents into the record.
Mr. Grijalva. Without objection.
Mr. Souder. Congressman Brian Baird and I, a number of
years ago, introduced the Centennial Act, which had, in fact,
somewhat of a combination of what the Chairman referred to in
his opening remarks, which was an encouraging private sector
giving and, at the same time, with target goals each year that
the Federal government, through spending, would make up some of
the gap of that difference.
In that bill, Senators McCain, Feinstein and Alexander
carried it in the Senate. In the House, we had strong
bipartisan support, both from the conservative and the moderate
flank of the Republican Party and all flanks of the Democratic
Party. In fact, we tried to keep the sponsorships relatively
even, and, at the end of the day, I think it was up to 55 or
60, including a number of appropriators, which is unusual
attention given to something that has increased funding in the
National Parks area, particularly, quite frankly, in the
Republican Party, we have not been as aggressive.
Out of that, as the Chairman of the Government Reform
Subcommittee that had oversight over the National Parks, we did
nine oversight hearings, worked particularly with the National
Parks and Conservation Association--Mr. Kiernan will be
speaking later today--as well as the National Park Service and
different friends groups.
One of the documents I would like to submit in the record
is the list of the nine hearings and the witnesses at those
nine hearings, which outlined the challenges of the parks, the
needs for the additional funding, and where, as we head into
the centennial, we need to go. Each testimony is available on
the Web site, and I would like to insert the hearing record,
where they are and how people can find that.
Another challenge that we had, and I want to speak directly
to this because I know, from talking to Full Committee Chairman
Rahall, as well as Mr. Grijalva, that one of the questions is,
how do you deal with private sector funding not driving the
goals of the National Park Service? This has actually been
something that is not new.
My friend, Brian Baird, in particular, climbs Mount
Rainier. I read books about Mount Rainier. I have been to 170
parks and historic sites myself, many multiple times. I have
read probably approaching close to 80 to 100 books. I love to
read books about how parks were formed.
This was a dilemma from the beginning. Two pieces of
testimony I would like to put into the record, actually three,
from the hearings will touch on this, and people can see this
debate more completely. One was in Boston, Ken Olson and the
Friends of Acadia. Acadia was put together predominantly, and
there is a little book about it by a man named Dorr that talks
about basically how very wealthy landowners near Bar Harbor put
together that park, and then Rockefeller gave the National Park
Service the carriage roads, but he also put in a fund with
which to maintain them.
We have always had this challenge. Probably the biggest one
we have had in the Park Service is the Golden Gate National
Recreation Area, and I also want to insert, in addition to
former National Parks Director Kennedy's testimony from Boston
and Ken Olson's, Brian O'Neal's testimony from Golden Gate.
Golden Gate was our biggest challenge in the park system. It
had something like four or six percent of all of the historic
structures in the entire park system. It was put under a
mandate from the Federal government that it had to use a high
amount of private sector funding, and it has been an innovative
combination.
We discussed this at length at both of these hearings. How
does the private sector not do it, when L.L. Bean funded the
bus? We could not get a visitors' center in Acadia National
Park, so it is outside the park being constructed. It is called
the ``Bean Bus,'' and it runs in.
Without that type of cooperation--it is not a matter of
putting billboards that say ``Yosemite Falls''--it does not say
``Yosemite Falls brought to you by GM.'' But, nevertheless,
Yosemite Falls and up doing that area took tremendous private
sector involvement. We have done this at Rocky Mountain
National Park in public/private cooperation at a visitors'
center. It is being done in the new visitors' center, and I
would like to put in Governor Thornburg's excellent testimony
about how they worked with the private sector in building this
new Gettysburg Center that we could not fund through the
public.
Nevertheless, what we heard in all nine hearing is if we do
not have a hold-harmless in the private sector match, the
private sector will not give additional dollars if they think
that what that is going to do is reduce the public funding. We
have a backlog as well as needs that, particularly, in a lot of
the recreation areas where it is actually growing in
attendance, cannot be just met by private funding.
I just want to briefly say a couple of things that I
learned from my visits and from these hearings. There are
several points, in addition to the preparation from the
National Park Service. One is that I think the parks need to be
a science incubator. The core places around Old Faithful,
around Yosemite Valley, around the Grand Canyon south rim, that
we are probably not going to be able to handle that many more
people, even with better transportation systems, and the Park
Service seems to have had a relatively flat population or
attendance at many of the major parks; it will go up and down
little bit.
But it should be a science incubator, and as we look at
science, our park system, as well as our fish and wildlife and
other areas, are a key thing.
Another thing is we ought to have more educational
interaction with our schools. Local areas around the parks have
tremendous interaction, but it is not extended across the
country. I believe that you ought to be able to see a ranger
fireside chat and be able to be, as we get bigger screen TVs
and connections, you ought to be able sit at home and choose
which ranger talk you want to see. That is how we extend the
value of each ranger. To do that, that brings the next
question: technological innovation in the parks. And then, of
course, the parks should be the environmental model.
Those are a number of things that, I think, can bring the
parks toward the centennial, in addition to, which the
Subcommittee Chair related to, is that we need some kind of a
baseline of whichever bill passes, and I support basically all
of the different concepts. But there needs to be a Federal
investment that is not reduced and is increased, in addition to
the private sector investment if we are going to meet the needs
of the National Park Service. It is a legacy we want to pass to
our kids and our grand kids, and to do that for the hundredth
birthday, even with all of our other financial pressures, this
is our big chance to do it. Thank you for our tolerance.
[NOTE: Documents submitted for the record have been
retained in the Committee's official files.]
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much, sir.
Let me turn to the gentleman from Kansas, Mr. Tiahrt, for
any comments he might have.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. TODD TIAHRT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF KANSAS
Mr. Tiahrt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Chairman
Grijalva and Ranking Member Bishop and Members of the
Committee.
As Ranking Member of the Interior Appropriations
Subcommittee, I have come to be familiar with not only the
programs of the National Park Service but, more importantly,
the joy our National Parks bring to Americans each year.
As you consider the needs of the Park Service, and
especially the Centennial Challenge Initiative, it is wise for
you to garner the perspective of those who use and promote the
parks, as well as the National Park Service.
I am especially pleased that Mr. Gary Kiedaisch, president
and CEO of the Coleman Company, Inc., is here today. Mr.
Kiedaisch has a vision of partnering corporate America together
with the National Park Service Centennial Celebration in hopes
of encouraging Americans to recreate in our National Parks and
enjoy all that the National Parks have to offer.
I am proud of the fact that the Coleman Company is located
in my congressional district. Mr. Kiedaisch has more than 25
years of leadership experience building global brands and
guiding complex international companies to profitability.
He began his career in his family's sporting goods store in
Lexington, Massachusetts, where his love for the outdoor
recreation industry began. As president and CEO of the Coleman
Company, Kiedaisch has grown the base of business, improved
operations, launched new products, reinvested in the company's
brands, and created a platform for acquisitions. He has also
renewed the company's commitment to the outdoors and is
inspiring people to get outside.
Representative Bishop, I am pleased to note that, under Mr.
Kiedaisch's leadership, Coleman hosted an outdoor summit in
2006 in Park City, Utah. The purpose was to pull customers
together to grow the industry by recognizing each has a
different role in the process of inspiring people to go
outside.
In the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, we heard
extensive testimony on the need to encourage children to spend
more time outdoors, a concept known as ``Leave No Child
Inside.'' Kiedaisch is championing this idea of emphasizing the
social responsibility of the industry to get young people
outdoors to learn lifetime skills and benefit from the outdoors
experiences and create memories that last a lifetime.
He has also been working vigorously with the administration
to aid in the campaign of enhancing our parks and help
formulate their proposal to encourage recreational activities
in our National Parks. Back in February, Mr. Kiedaisch was
invited by the president to attend a roundtable on the National
Parks Centennial Initiative, along with Interior Secretary Dirk
Kempthorne; National Park Director Mary Bomar, who is with us
today; and ARC's Derek Crandall, who is also here, to
brainstorm and advance this effort.
Mr. Kiedaisch attended New York University and the Calvin
Coolidge College in Boston. He has served as a state chairman
of the United States Olympic Committee, chairman of the New
Hampshire Tourism 2000 Commission, lottery commissioner for the
State of New Hampshire, board of directors member of the United
States Ski Team Foundation, and National Ski and Snowboard
Areas Association, and of the Vermont Institute of Science,
Math, and Technology.
He is a current board member of the Outdoor Industry
Association, American Recreation Coalition, and serves on the
board of directors of Students and Free Enterprise.
No stranger to the outside, Mr. Kiedaisch is a former
nationally ranked, competitive skier and continues to enjoy the
outdoors with his wife and family through alpine skiing,
mountain biking, hiking, rowing, and sailing.
His presence here today is testimony to the partnership
that this bill is intended to foster. I am pleased that Mr.
Gary Kiedaisch is able to testify before this Subcommittee on
this very important initiative.
I just want to say, from the experience that I have had
over this last year, that getting kids outdoors is really a
high priority that this nation needs to focus its resources on.
Obesity is one of the big problems that our children face
today, and getting kids outside helps them get beyond this
problem of not having exercise. It makes them healthier, and,
hopefully, they can overcome the obesity problems.
But obesity contributes to diabetes, and, by getting kids
outdoors, we will give them a healthier outlook, plus, I think,
reduce the medical costs for them that they will face as they
age. But also, people in poverty, the number one problem they
face today is obesity.
So we need to figure out a way to have our National Park
System encourage people, regardless of their financial status,
to get involved in the Park Service.
I think that this program of combining our national
resources and our tax dollars with individuals' and private
companies' investments is a good way to get not only kids in
the outdoors but also those who are challenged financially. It
is a great way to get out in the parks.
One of the things that Coleman has done is stick coupons in
their coolers to encourage people to get outdoors, to get into
the park system, and I think, by having this corporate/
government partnership, we can achieve the goals that all of us
want to meet, and that is getting people outdoors so that they
are healthier, they live longer, and it gives them more time to
contribute to our society.
I appreciate the opportunity to testify, and I hope that
you will give Mr. Kiedaisch a wonderful opportunity to express
his vision of how we are going to get people into our park
system and make a healthier America. Thank you.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much.
I am waiting for the last remaining colleague, but we are
going to begin the questioning. I have no questions for my
colleagues, but I did want to comment briefly, Mr. Souder. I
think your point is very, very well taken about the hold-
harmless, maintenance-of-effort concept that you spoke about,
as well as the technological needs of the future for our Park
Service.
I appreciate those comments very much, and, Mr. Tiahrt, I
think, as we move forward, I think the working relationship and
the cooperation between the authorizing committee and the
appropriators is going to be critical to putting something
together that is good and lasting.
With that, let me turn to the Ranking Member, Mr. Bishop.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you. I appreciate both of you being here
again today, Mr. Tiahrt.
Mr. Chairman, I thought we had a rule about talking about
obesity in front of me here.
Mr. Grijalva. Yes. I take it a little personally myself.
Mr. Bishop. We are just nutritional overachievers here.
I appreciate you coming here. I appreciate the witness who
will be speaking in a minute. The next time he has a conference
in Park City, I would appreciate it if he would leave more
Republicans there. I am trying to get above that 70-percent
ceiling in my district.
I do have a question for Mr. Souder, though, that is
legitimate. You actually had some bills that were introduced in
the past.
Do you want to wait for Mr. Baird before we go with these
questions?
Mr. Grijalva. Yes.
Mr. Bishop. All right. I will withdraw that. I am going to
ask you about the funding mechanism you had in your bill, but
let us let Mr. Baird speak first.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Let me welcome our colleague, Mr.
Baird, for his comments and testimony, sir.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. BRIAN BAIRD, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON
Mr. Baird. Thank you very much. I was literally testifying
just up the hallway, and I had to run here, but I am grateful
for your indulgence, and it is good to be with my friends.
I appreciate you holding this important hearing on the
National Parks Centennial. As you know, Congressman Souder and
I are co-chairs of the National Parks Caucus within the
Congress. Our purpose is to educate colleagues on National
Parks issues. The caucus has organized briefings, advocated for
funding, and worked to raise the profile of the parks in
Congress. We have 50 bipartisan members from all across the
country.
As we approach the 2016 centennial anniversary, it is
imperative that Congress, the administration, and the people
renew their commitment to the great treasures that are our
National Parks.
I would like to congratulate both the Chair and the Ranking
Member for introducing their respective bills to establish a
new Centennial Fund to help prepare for the centennial. The
administration should also be credited for seeking a change.
The president, Secretary Kempthorne, and Director Bomar have
initiated an aggressive National Parks Centennial Challenge
that deserves to be commended.
As the Subcommittee knows, our National Parks face chronic
funding shortfalls. There is a current annual operating deficit
of $800 million and a maintenance backlog estimated between six
and $12 billion. This means our parks are understaffed, sites
are closed to the public, facilities are growing older and
outdated, and roads are not maintained.
As you know, Congressman Souder and I have reintroduced for
the Third Congress our own proposal for the centennial, the
National Parks Centennial Act. The bill has 45 co-sponsors,
including 11 Members of this Subcommittee. I would say,
parenthetically, by the way, that I think there are no Members
of this Congress who have more affection for the parks than my
friend, Mr. Souder. He has a personal goal of visiting every
single park in the country and is a tireless advocate, and it
is a pleasure to work with him on this worthwhile effort.
Our bill creates a National Parks Centennial Fund that
specifies that 60 percent of the money will be used to
eliminate the maintenance backlog, 20 percent for natural
resource protection, and 20 percent for cultural resources. It
would also allow taxpayers to designate a portion of their
repayment or overpayment for the fund. This would not replace
regular congressional appropriations but would allow
individuals to directly show their support and contribute to
the revitalization of the park system.
There is a $200 million target specified for 2008. The goal
would increase by 15 percent annually, ending up with $612
million in Fiscal Year 2016. Our goal is nothing short than to
redress this backlog in our national treasure.
I know you have heard from our colleagues and have
questions, so I will keep my remarks relatively short, at this
point. I thank you for considering this legislation, and I
thank you for your leadership on this issue and look forward to
chatting further about this and urge support for this or,
possibly, some hybrid bill that would reflect the best of the
various three pieces of legislation, which all have great merit
to them, I think. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Baird follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Brian Baird, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Washington
Thank you, Chairman Grijalva and Ranking Member Bishop. I
appreciate you holding this important hearing on the National Park
Centennial. As you know, Congressman Souder and I are co-chairs of the
Congressional National Parks Caucus. The purpose of the Caucus is to
educate our colleagues on National Parks issues. The Caucus has
organized briefings, advocated for funding, and worked to raise the
profile of the National Parks in Congress. We currently have 50
bipartisan members from all across the country.
As we approach the 2016 centennial anniversary of the National Park
Service, it is imperative that Congress, the Administration, and the
American people renew their commitment to the great treasures that are
our National Parks.
I would like to congratulate both the Chairman and Ranking Member
for introducing their respective bills to establish a new Centennial
Fund to help prepare for the centennial. The Administration should also
be credited for seeking a change. The President, Secretary Kempthorne,
and Director Bomar have initiated an aggressive National Parks
Centennial Challenge that deserves to be commended.
As this Subcommittee knows, our National Parks face chronic funding
shortfalls. There is a current annual operational funding deficit of
$800 million and a maintenance backlog estimated between 6 and 12
billion dollars. This means our Parks are understaffed, sites are
closed to the public, facilities are growing older and outdated, and
roads are not maintained.
As you may know, Congressman Souder and I have re-introduced, for
the third Congress, our own proposal for the centennial, the National
Parks Centennial Act. The bill currently has 45 cosponsors, including 7
bipartisan members of this Subcommittee.
Our bill creates a National Parks Centennial Fund. It specifies
that 60% of the money in the Fund will be used to eliminate the
maintenance backlog, 20% for natural resources protection, and 20% for
cultural resources protection.
It would also allow taxpayers to designate a portion of their tax
refund, or overpayment, for the Fund. This would not replace regular
Congressional appropriations, but would allow individuals to directly
show their support and contribute to the revitalization of the Park
System.
The legislation specifies a $200 million target for Fiscal Year
2008. The goal increases by 15% annually, ending with $612 million in
Fiscal Year 2016. If contributions from taxpayer designations fall
short of this goal, they will be made up of deposits from the General
Fund.
Our legislation also requires a biennial report by GAO on the
progress of eliminating the annual operating deficit of the National
Park System.
Finally, our legislation requires the Department of Interior to
submit four reports about the current state of the Parks and their
future. This includes:
A report on the historical, cultural, and environmental
resources currently represented in the National Park System and
recommendations about what gaps exist that the National Park Service
could fill.
A report on the National Park Service's outreach efforts
to raise interest in the Parks among young people and different ethnic
groups, including an analysis of local partnerships and recommendations
for improving these programs.
A report on the condition of roads and bridges in the
National Parks and recommendations for repairs, replacements, and
additions.
A report on alternative transportation systems in the
National Parks and recommendations for repairs, replacements, and
additions.
I hope that the Committee will give serious consideration to the
elements of our bill as it considers and develops legislation to
address the funding challenges at our National Parks.
Each of the proposals that we are discussing today has good
features that are worthy of inclusion in the eventual Centennial Act.
While I do not want to prejudge the outcome, I believe a proper blend
of the approaches set forth by all parties will have the strong support
of Congress and the American people.
Regardless of what the final Centennial package looks like, I
believe there are two key points:
First, we must invest serious resources into our National Parks.
These are America's most cherished places. I would challenge anyone to
visit Mt. Rainier, Zion National Park, or Yellowstone and not only be
amazed, but also inspired, by the magnificence and beauty. We must also
remember the lesser known, but equally worthy sites. My district is
home to the Fort Vancouver National Historic Reserve and the Lewis and
Clark National Historical Park. While not as famous as the Grand
Canyon, these sites are visited by thousands annually. Unfortunately,
they have not been funded at a level that allows them to realize their
full potential. The entire National Park System is worthy of our
protection and investment.
Second, we must bring more Americans into the Park System. The
Park-going population is aging. We need a renewed focus on bringing
younger and more diverse individuals to these sites so that future
generations will continue to appreciate the Parks and engage in all the
activities they have to offer. To achieve this, we should review
current outreach programs and consider new ones. Additionally, the Park
System can and should partner with more local schools and engage in
national education programs.
Preserving our National Parks takes a commitment on our part that
all Americans need to understand. It requires careful environmental
stewardship and hard work. But I am optimistic that we can make
significant progress toward addressing the current problems facing our
National Parks.
Again, I thank the Subcommittee for holding this hearing. I look
forward to working with this Subcommittee to craft Centennial
legislation that supports our National Parks.
Thank you.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much. Mr. Bishop?
Mr. Bishop. Mr. Souder, the funding mechanism you had in
your bill; it ran in my mind that it was some kind of a
checkoff system. I may be inaccurate with that. Can you just
tell me what the funding mechanism was or is?
Mr. Souder. What most people focused on, quite frankly, in
the co-sponsorships was the checkoff mechanism and--it is more
buried in the bill, which not every Member is noted for reading
every detail of the bill--that we actually set in the bill a
targeted amount that the Park Service needs to reach if they
are to take care of the backlog and meet the demands that we
need to maintain rangers and Park Service quality. In fact, it
says in the bill that if we do not meet it through the
checkoff, the Federal government would make up the gap.
We always knew that there would probably be some sort of a
hybrid bill, that we set our goals high. We have achieved some
of those in this last appropriations process to increase the
funding, but it is still not enough. I believed one of the
compromises might be, in fact, matching funds combined with
some baseline increase in regular funding.
I believe there are additional dollars to be gained if the
Parks Centennial can become a Hollywood celeb, a high-tech
guru's kind of thing, like Farm Aid did, like different
crusades become, because this is a lasting legacy to take some
of the new wealth in the United States. They are already
putting it in the Park Service, but by having a match with
that, I think we can stimulate bigger gifts into the Park
Service to meet some of these needs that are being raised.
The bottom line is that, in fact, there needs to be
protection, so we do not have what happened to, for example,
the Hoosier Dome becoming the RCA Dome and this type of thing.
There needs to be some sort of restrictions as we move through
this. There needs to be public input as to what the projects
are going to be.
So, ultimately, ours was a checkoff, combined with Federal-
supplemented funding, but I believe a match that the
administration has is where we were likely to head as the
legislation moved forward.
Mr. Bishop. Did you ever gain, from either the CBO or your
own estimations, a rough ball-park figure of how much could be
generated from a tax checkoff approach?
Mr. Souder. I will let my friend, Congressman Baird,
address this more, but, as I recollect, the battle here is
that, given that there was not a match, and given that we had a
target figure that we were trying to reach annually, that the
amount that was going to be generated from the checkoff was
less clear. It did not have quite the match mechanism. It had a
Federal government thing.
So we had a target on the bill, and we know what that
target was over the course of the bill, and I will let him say
the target.
Mr. Baird. Well, it is very difficult to guesstimate
exactly how much people will put forward. Congressman Souder
and I are of the belief--I think we all are--that the American
people love their parks, and if they believe that they are
contributing something, and they know exactly where it is going
to go, and we have an occasion like the centennial, we think
that alone will be pretty stimulative. But we also think that a
matching kind of program, such as that put forward by the
administration and some of the other proposals, would further
stimulate that.
So the hope would be that, with publicity for this,
publicity at the parks themselves, publicity elsewhere, of if
you have a refund coming to you, or you have made an
overpayment in your taxes, you can actually designate where a
portion of this goes and not only know, as in the initial draft
of Congressman Souder and I, that your money will be there, but
there will now, hopefully, possibly, also be matching funds.
Mr. Bishop. I find it an interesting concept and something
we should pursue.
I just wondered if there was ever a range of possibilities
that people were looking at.
Mr. Baird. Well, we have the target numbers we have
identified, but----
Mr. Bishop.--no one ever came up with something.
Mr. Baird.--we do not have any empirical data from surveys
or anything that I know of.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. If I may take one more stab at that, because it
sounds like we are being evasive, but because we put the total
number in----
Mr. Bishop. I would never say you are evasive, sir.
Mr. Souder. Because the total number is in the bill, we did
not need a CBO scoring, and we did not really plunge into that,
and because we did not have a direct match.
What our assumption is, is that by the administration
setting, say, a $100 million target, that you can probably
reach the private sector target. The question is, would that be
sucked out of other funds that are already in existence, and if
we do not have some way to address that? For example, Yosemite
Fund, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone have huge, already donation-
based, Acadia; how do you make sure that that money is going
there, that it is new money? My assumption is that whatever you
set a match, that is what you are going to be able to raise.
Mr. Bishop. All right. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Mr. Bishop. I understood your
question perfectly, but, then again, you know, English is my
second language.
Mrs. Christensen, any questions?
Mrs. Christensen. I do not have any questions, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Mr. Kind?
Mr. Kind. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and
Mr. Bishop for holding this important hearing, and I also want
to thank my colleagues for the obvious passion that they bring
to this issue, and I share that.
If we get out of here at the end of this week, I am going
to get home as soon as I can, grab my two little boys, and head
over to the Teddy Roosevelt National Park and try to spend some
quality time with them inside the park.
We have been doing that on an annual basis; during the
August recess, trying to hit a different National Park. Last
year, it was Grand Teton's Yellowstone; the year before that,
Glacier; we were in the Black Hills the year before that. These
are truly our monuments to civilization as a nation.
Some countries have the Great Wall. Some have pyramids. We
have our public lands, our National Parks, our refuge system,
that we have to live up to in regard to the stewardship, that
we have responsibility over, and pass it on to the next
generation.
As I go into the parks and meet with the park personnel, I
am so impressed with the level of professionalism and
dedication and the hard work that our park personnel bring to
their job and the volunteers who are going in there each and
every day to make it work. But each park is faced with their
own unique challenges. When you sit there, and you listen to
it, and they are unique from park to park to park, but also
common themes, and I think you all have identified the backlog
in maintenance and repair, between $610 billion or so and
counting, that we have to be concerned about.
I think, given the Centennial celebration coming up in a
few years out, we have an opportunity really to focus a lot of
attention, and that is why I appreciate, Brian and Mark, you
guys forming this bipartisan park caucus to help the rest of us
get educated and up to speed on these issues as we approach
this centennial celebration, and also the various ideas, Todd,
yourself, the ideas that you are bringing with regard to what
we might be able to put together, whether it is the checkoff,
whether it is a private contribution match that the
administration has been proposing, what responsibilities we
might have operating under the pay-as-you-go budgeting, which
is always a challenge around here to meet these challenges.
I am concerned with some of the trend lines we see out
there: a huge drop-off in visitors to our National Parks; we do
have an aging population; a greater effort for outreach, trying
to get the youth and younger people more excited about these
visit opportunities; that we are going to have to be creative
in trying to figure out.
I think, Mr. Souder, you referenced the fact that we also
need to be careful in regard to the private match or the
private contributions because I do not think anyone would
particularly like to see ``Yellowstone McDonald's National
Park'' or the ``Grand Google Tetons National Park'' at the end
of the day. But I think the administration's proposal, in
trying to get private partnerships and maybe corporate America
to step up, too, and see if they can ante up. All of this is an
idea worthy of further exploration and merit.
So we will look forward to working with all of you on that
as we move forward and certainly appreciate your testimony here
today. But if any of you have a thought, and I will just leave
this to any of you who might want to address it, is the serious
concern of the trend line right now the drop-off in visitors
that we have seen in recent years and the impact that is going
to have on the park system, but also the response we are
seeing, which is increased park fees now--they are going to be
kicking in--and whether that might be acting as a deterrent in
the future for more visitors going to the parks.
If any of you have thought about how we can counter that
with any specific proposals or programs, we would be interested
to hear from you.
Mr. Souder. I actually have a number of thoughts. I tried
to work with former Chairman Regula on this. I believe there
needs to be some kind of a tax offset for people below a
certain income to pay for the fees. The problem is how to
identify that at the gate or whether they would get it through
the National Park Service directly through application and
would address some of that.
The fees for parks, while we are not getting complaints,
there is not any sign that there is actually deterrence, but we
do not know what the indirect is, and certainly for lower-
income families, it could become a challenge. This is hard to
say. We do not necessarily want more people in Yosemite Valley.
We want everybody who wants to go there to be there.
The potential growth here are the places like Santa Monica,
Golden Gate, the gateway parks in Cayuga, Indiana Dunes
National Lakeshore, places near population areas which will
have the long family vacations, the traditional-type things
that are there. That is likely to stay relatively stable.
When you go to Great Falls--that is the closest one here--
but also San Antonio Missions, you will see large populations
of Hispanic families not going to actually see the mission
necessarily or the falls but to picnic and to use that open
space, and then some go look at the falls. It is much like any
other new group, as they get exposed, and as their income goes
up, and as they start to appreciate the nature, we need to
encourage things like Angel Island in California to reach out
to those different groups to make sure that it is affordable,
where there is a blockage.
It is very hard to count at these national recreation areas
people coming in. We do not have counters. So it is not
necessarily true that the total people visiting historic sites
and others are dropping. Apostle Islands; how in the world do
you count Apostle Islands? They are coming in by sailboat. But
we do know that the crown jewels are relatively flat.
So I do not think it is as big a problem, but I would also
like to see this technologically move forward.
If I can make one other thing that I have this burning
desire to get into the record, and that is, part of the funding
challenge here, particularly for the baseline funding, needs to
be the Park Service has had tons of Homeland Security missions
dropped on them. Much like in the highway, we cover a lot of
the park roads through the highway bill.
Some of the other appropriation subcommittees need to take
up some of the burdens as we move to broaden this. If it is
Homeland Security mandated by other agencies, there needs to be
in the budget not all of that borne within the Park Service
because then it means a reduction in traditional Park Service
things.
Similarly, in ``No Child Left Behind'' or in science bills,
we have the greatest incubator of art, of education programs,
of wildlife, of science, and we need to try to get a little
more less stove piped by committee and try to look creatively
how we are heading into the next centennial. Thank you.
Mr. Baird. Congressman Kind, if I may, Mr. Chairman, just
very, very briefly address that in light of this legislation.
If you look at the history of our parks, as you have said
so eloquently, our parks were, for Americans, a source of great
national pride. From the early days of inception, people looked
at Europe and said, You have cathedrals, you have the
Colosseum, you have all of these other things; we have our
natural resources. There have been various times, as we all
remember, of national campaigns celebrating the parks.
I think something like that would be worth investigating,
but I also think our legislation might help that. People tend
to value things that they have paid for, and if you make a
checkoff on your taxes and say, even if I am not seeing this
particular park this year, I want to know it is being taken
care of so that one day, as you are going to in a week, if we
get out of here, you are going to visit a park with your
family, you will know you helped preserve that park.
So I think, and what may, to some, be paradoxical but makes
sense to me, by giving people the opportunity to pay for the
maintenance of their parks directly through a checkoff, I think
you enhance the awareness of the parks and the commitment to
the parks and their values.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much. Let me just say, I could
not agree with you more, Mr. Souder, that representing various
parks along the border, 30 to 40 percent of park services are
diverted toward security and enforcement activities that are
mandated by Homeland Security.
There has to be a mechanism down the road to reimburse or
make whole some of these expenses that are diverting from the
real enjoyment and the real preservation of those parks. A
point well taken, sir.
Let me turn to Mr. Lamborn.
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and, Mr. Tiahrt,
actually any one of you could answer this question. We have two
bills with worthy and great goals before us. However, the
Bishop bill has a component that I really like, and that is the
opportunity for the private sector to contribute.
In your experience, Mr. Tiahrt, on appropriations and
dealing with the dollars and for the other two of you as well,
do you feel optimistic that it would be successful, that asking
the private sector to step up and meet this Centennial
Challenge would actually get the job done?
Mr. Tiahrt. We have seen some interest already in
corporations and companies and individuals that want to be part
of our park system in a big way, and matching funds is a very
encouraging way to get them to become committed. In some of the
parks in Florida, we have seen a big response already.
So I think this is a good way to give people more ownership
in what they already know is our natural resources, but they
feel like they can do something through their company resources
or through their individual resources, especially if it is
matched. It seems to be a big incentive. I think it would be a
great fault of this nation if we did not give them that
opportunity because the desire is there, the capability is
there, and I think it will happen.
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you.
Mr. Baird. I would concur with that. We see examples. One
of the things, certainly in our neck of the Northwest, we do
not refer to Mount Rainier as ``Mount Rainier.'' We refer to it
as ``the mountain,'' and it is beloved. I mean, sincerely,
people will call, there will be little automatic, spontaneous
phone trees if there is a beautiful sunset. People say, ``Run
outside and look at the mountain. You have to see it.'' This
happens all of the time.
We have a number of fairly well-to-do people, thanks to the
high-tech boom, and if they could adopt projects within that
National Park or down in Lewis and Clark National Park,
preserving an area or expanding and improving a resource,
people, I think, would be actually eager to do that, and that
is why I am actually very positive about this. I think,
oftentimes--Mr. Souder is absolutely right--we need to be
careful to not have the ``Google National Tetons.''
I think, many times, folks are perfectly willing to do
something just because it is the right thing to do, without
asking for a logo on something, just to say, ``We believe in
this, and we want to support it.''
By the way, the matching program that Congressman Souder
and I are putting forward might be a way to help find some
offset for the big contributions under the Bishop bill. The
individual taxpayer could contribute to the fund, and that
might be able to be used as a match for the larger direct
contributions.
Mr. Souder. The National Park Foundation, NPCA, and others,
and, in fact, every major park has had examples of major
private sector giving. Clearly, there are corporations that
have some stake with the outdoors, whether it is Coleman or REI
or L.L. Bean, RV manufacturers, GM, Ford, Toyota, and others,
``Kodak moments''--you see that at the parks.
The question is how to broaden it beyond just the
traditional. Some, by what Mr. Baird said earlier, was getting
individuals to feel that they have a stake in the system, small
donations, and if we can reach out to schools and get these
kinds of programs into the schools, people will feel ownership
in that system.
The other is, how can we get to the new money and the
younger money in our society, which is why I mentioned
Hollywood, why I mentioned the high-tech investors and others,
that has been going to different various causes, how can we
make parks the cause celebre for the hundredth birthday? And
that is a slightly different donor challenge and requires some
thinking beyond just kind of the traditional ways we have had
private donors go in, which are basically regional support, or
I visited that park, or I have a financial stake in promoting
tourism. We need to figure out how to get to the next tier of
donations.
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you for your answers. I have a park pass
right here, and I feel like this gives me a buy-in. I feel like
I have an ownership. I have a role. I have a contribution that
I have made, even though it is modest. These goals that you are
talking about are so great, I am really glad that you are here
today, and thank you for your work.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, sir. Ms. Herseth-Sandlin, any
questions?
Ms. Herseth Sandlin. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate my colleagues' interest. I think I know at least one
of you, and, hopefully, all three of you have been to Mount
Rushmore and the Badlands. I know Mr. Tiahrt has. He grew up in
that neck of the woods in South Dakota, the eastern side.
I want to explore this issue of project selection because I
do think, as you described, Mr. Souder, you have sort of
regional groups, as we do with the Mount Rushmore Society, the
Friends of Mount Rushmore, that have done a lot to preserve and
enhance the visitors' experience, working with the National
Park Service officials.
So we have heard some different ideas in terms of the
individual levels, who may not be individuals who are not
necessarily a part of those regional associations that are in
the locality situated next to a National Park, and then you
have those regional associations, and then you have this next
tier that you described of donations.
So separate from how we get to those donations, what do we
do with project selection because I know that we have the
Friends of Mount Rushmore, who would be very interested in
being able to access a match for a particular project at the
park. But yet we also know that we could then come into the
problems you described with the next tier of donations, where
the donor expects something that maybe we are not comfortable
giving because of the public resource that it is and naming
rights of what have you.
So is there a way to set this up and maybe preserve some
matching proposal, either the one that you are describing, Mr.
Baird, that the caucus is working on, or the concerns that I
know the Chairman has and that I share, to a degree, too, about
who is best situated to make the selections: the National Park
Service, Congress?
Should there be different tiers of what the donation is,
and should it be bricks and mortar? Should it be separated into
categories, as the Chairman's bill provides? Should a regional
association that has a long track record of supporting that
park have some influence in the type of project selection that
would qualify for the match? I would be interested in your
thoughts on that.
Mr. Baird. It is a great question and one that Congressman
Souder and I asked when the administration first rolled out
their proposal under Secretary Kempthorne.
One of the things that has been happening and has already
been going on is a process to address precisely that. There
have been so-called ``listening sessions'' held throughout the
country already to hear of possible needs and priorities, and
those listening sessions have been regional, but within that
regional focus, there have been focuses on specific particular
issues. For example, in my home district, would additional
money be useful for the visitors' center in Vancouver Historic
Reserve? Would it make sense to try to purchase some dunes to
expand the Lewis and Clark National Park?
When you look at those, then there is a prioritization of
needs, and, frankly, to some extent, also a prioritization of
resources in the sense that if someone comes forward and says,
``I am willing to spend X amount of dollars because I believe
this need needs to be met, and no one else is spending money
elsewhere.''
I think that all of these proposals have one thing in
common. This would supplement but not supplant the existing
Postal Service budget. So we are not saying, ``OK. If extra
money is brought in by a private donor or a matching target in
a certain area, then take it away from somebody else.'' This is
over and above the operating budget.
So I think it would be a combination, frankly, of the
legitimate resource needs, the Postal Service prioritization,
and where various donors see that they might want to allocate
their funds.
Mr. Souder. I agree with that. It is a messy process, and
it always will be a messy process, and the National Park
Service is not known as a big risk taker. They tend to move
slowly. You have the advocacy groups as well, NPCA, as well as
the Wilderness Society, which often weigh in differently. It is
not that different from the jet ski-snow mobile type of end-
holding types of fights of how you work it through. It is a
combination of local and national. If it is a nationally funded
park, add donors to that.
Should this be viewed as a private preserve of the local
community, which sometimes it is? Should it be viewed as a
National Park?
Often the people who seek this Committee or elsewhere are
mostly on a committee because they have something in their
area, and they are not necessarily looking national, but they
want the national money to come into their area, but they look
at it as they do not have the property taxes on that land.
These are the kinds of classic problems we are going to
have. Obviously, the size of the donation is going to matter
some, and there are going to be earmarks in the process, as we
always go through and put our little thing in it.
But the bottom line is that, at the National Park Service,
there are so many strong national advocacy groups, in addition
to congressional oversight, it is likely not to be egregious.
But there should be some sorts of mandates, like the public
process, like limitations, in my opinion, on how it can go and
how extensive it can go, and, basically, complete transparency
on every step.
Mr. Tiahrt. If I might add to that, thanks for the
opportunity, and the Friends of Mount Rushmore have done a
great job, and I think it is a good example. If we do not want
to take away the resources that have already been established
by some of these groups, but we do want to allow regional
emphasis, one of the things that I was talking to Mr. Kiedaisch
about was having an opportunity for a mountain bike path close
to the D.C. area.
A lot of people like to mountain bike, and yet, in some of
our close parks, they have horse trails, they have hiking
trails, and they do not have very many people come here because
the big popular thing quite often is to get the exercise
through mountain biking.
Well, if we could, in this region, establish a matching
grant to get a mountain bike path, I think we would see the
number of people that use the park go up dramatically, and
those kinds of regional opportunities should not be ignored.
Now, I think it should be a cooperative effort with the
Park Service because, ultimately, the Park Service is
responsible for our National Parks, but I think we should allow
people to come up with an idea that would satisfy a region, if
it is Mount Rushmore or something on the Massanutten Mountain,
that they can use their resource, combine it with Federal
government, and come up with a way to increase the number of
people that come to our parks system. I think it is totally
possible. It will be little bit messy, like Mr. Souder says,
but still possible, and I think it is one way that we can use
to get people outdoors.
Mr. Souder. By the way, you actually have one of the best
examples of the difficulty, and that is the parking garage at
Mount Rushmore. It was done with outside funds. It is not
included in the park fee.
Therefore, one of the only places they get complaints about
the park fee is that the parking part is not covered in the
Mount Rushmore fee, but there was no other way to get that into
the mandates to build the parking garage. So they basically
went along with an unusual hybrid in order to do that, and
sometimes you have to do that.
Ms. Herseth Sandlin. Well, thank you for mentioning that,
and thank you, too, for mentioning the Homeland Security
mission that especially places like Mount Rushmore have faced,
and it has put the squeeze on other aspects of their budget. So
thank you very much, all three of you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Mr. McCarthy, any questions?
Mr. McCarthy. Mine is just more of a comment. I, one, like
the idea. I think it is very creative. Yes, there could be a
few challenges as we go, yes, but I think I go back to your
statement. As long as there are transparencies, I think it is
worth the challenge. Why miss the opportunity?
I think we are going to find out in the public there is
going to be all new ideas that come forward. There is going to
be new ownership from people. It is going to be a rebirth as we
go forward, and I applaud you for bringing it forward and
championing it, and I will work to have the challenges as we
move forward, so I thank you.
Mr. Baird. If I could make one other comment. I know you
are going to have other witnesses. I do not know that we have
mentioned the international appeal of our National Parks. If
you go to almost any U.S. National Park, you will see people
who have traveled the world to get here. I had the privilege of
kayaking the Grand Canyon about 15 years ago.
There was a couple from East Germany, actually, who had a
picture of the Grand Canyon above their breakfast table and had
looked at it every single day for 35 years and had set money
aside. It was their dream to visit the Grand Canyon: 35 years,
from a country pretty far away from us, to come visit a U.S.
National Park, and that is the treasure. We have this
opportunity.
There are good proposals before you. I would hope this
Committee will seize this opportunity, take the very, very best
of these three things and do something very creative and bold
to preserve and celebrate these National Parks. As we
anticipate the centennial, we are grateful for the chance to be
part of that effort.
Mr. Grijalva. Any further comments? Let me turn to our
colleague, Mrs. Capps. Do you have any comments, questions?
Mrs. Capps. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
holding this hearing. I do not have any questions of this first
panel. I do with some of the subsequent ones. But I want to
thank you for inviting our colleagues in and thank our
colleagues for their testimony.
It is interesting to hear, as someone who has a National
Park, the Channel Islands National Park, in my district, to
hear comments, I particularly want to associate myself with
those that our colleague from Washington State just made about
the importance of our parks and what this legislation that our
Chairman has introduced will do to strengthen and preserve and
celebrate the centennial. I yield back.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. One last general question, and
then I will offer the opportunity to Mr. Bishop, a hypothetical
question, gentlemen, if you could.
We have a park unit. The grave need in that park unit is a
waste water treatment plant, not a visitors' center, and as we
attract private donors, how is that priority factored in, and,
talking about the messy point that you brought up, just a quick
response? How would we handle that?
Mr. Baird. My own belief is the issue I raised earlier. I
think we have certain base needs, in terms of maintenance and
operation of a park, that we, frankly, ought to fund as
directly as we can through the normal appropriations process.
Congressman Souder and I, our bill is somewhat hybrid in
that effort. I hate to overuse the term, but, remember, we have
set a target and said we are going to give the public an
opportunity to contribute directly, but we must meet these
funding goals.
So we would say--Mark, correct me if you see it in a
different way--we would say there are base funding needs for
these parks that must be met by the U.S. Congress through our
appropriations process from the general fund. We believe that
ought to be part of the appropriations process. We also want to
give the taxpayers a way to signify their support for that by
so designating money over and above it.
It should not just be the glamorous, new visitors' center
or something like that. It should also be the basic day-to-day
maintenance and operations, and we have to make sure we do not
neglect that.
Mr. Souder. If I may add, I concur, and off the top of my
head, an analogy might be, at a university, the park pass or
your fee coming in may be like the football tickets that
contribute some to the university, but you get use out of it. A
university, when they do fundraising, for example, the
University of Notre Dame, they do not do fundraising, saying,
``We need to get our power plant updated, and we need to
improve our sidewalks, and that our electrical bills went up by
10 percent last year.''
They will do it for a building, for a science project, and
so on, and the private sector does that. I agree with my
colleagues that the basic funding has to be out of Federal, but
the Park Service, in one of their goals, says that the Park
Service should be an environmental model, and I have heard this
at different parks.
I was able to sit in with some of the private sector
research groups at Yosemite, as well as the funders, and one of
their complaints was how can the National Park Service be a
model to the world about how we should do it environmentally
and have all of these sewage problems in these different parks?
How can we be having vehicles, buses, that are not the latest
in environmental strategy? I think that the goals of the new
program are that the Park Service reflect that, but the bulk of
the Park Service funding will always be baseline funding.
Mr. Grijalva. Mr. Bishop?
Mr. Tiahrt. Let me comment on that, Mr. Chairman. One of
the challenges that we face in the appropriations process is
watching a sustaining level of funding for our park system,
making sure that we have the essentials: keeping the lights on,
keeping the place clean, keeping enough rangers on staff so
that we can just meet the basic level of keeping the place open
and accessible to the public. That has been a challenge, and
the waste treatment facilities, as you know, have been part of
that. They get backlogged, and it becomes a real problem.
This corporate funding really has to be sold under the best
part of the park. If you have ever had a corporate sponsor, I
do not think you could get one for the waste treatment plant.
Maybe Mr. Clean would like to do it. I am not sure, but it
would be a challenge.
So I think that, when we look at the tax dollars we spend,
we ought to look at what do we think it takes for a sustenance
level, and that is where we ought to make sure that we have
those kind of resources.
I look at the opportunity for corporations to be involved
is gravy, or the real cream, where we can get some wonderful
things done, bring more people in the park, enhance the
wonderful resources we have, but let us figure out a way to
sustain the National Park Service.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Mr. Bishop?
Mr. Bishop. Todd, you came close. The three of you missed
your answer. Obviously, Ms. Bomar, her first call is to Roto-
Rooter. He will solve it easily then.
I appreciate all three of you for your testimony. We have
kept you far too long. I apologize for that.
Mr. Grijalva. Let me turn to our colleague, Mr. Kildee, for
any comments or questions he might have.
Mr. Kildee. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it, but I have no
questions at this time.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Let me thank you all and welcome
the next panel.
[Pause.]
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Welcome, Director Bomar, again,
and we look forward to your testimony and the opportunity to
have a discussion with you about this very important
anniversary, as I said. Welcome, and your testimony, please.
STATEMENT OF MARY A. BOMAR, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Ms. Bomar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning to all of
you.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to present the
Department of the Interior's views on H.R. 2959 and H.R. 3094,
bills that would establish a fund for the centennial of the
National Park Service.
The Department strongly supports establishing a special
fund to provide $100 million a year for the next 10 years to
support the National Park Service projects and programs, as
both bills would do.
We appreciate the time and interest that you, Mr. Chairman
Grijalva, and Mr. Bishop and others have already devoted to
this effort. We are grateful to you, Mr. Bishop, and to Mr.
Young for introducing H.R. 2959, the administration's
legislative proposal for establishing the National Parks
Centennial Challenge Fund.
Secretary Kempthorne and I are very excited about
partnering with the American people on innovative projects and
programs that will capture the imagination of the public and
that will welcome and inspire generations who will inherit the
great national treasures under our stewardship.
We also appreciate the alternative approach that you, Mr.
Chairman, and Mr. Rahall have introduced. The emphasis of H.R.
3094 places on diversity programs, professional development,
and education is consistent with my own goals, as director of
the National Park Service.
The president asked for a report on implementation of the
Centennial Initiative by May 31, 2007. Secretary Kempthorne led
the Department and the National Park Service in an
unprecedented effort to reach out to the American public to
listen to their ideas for future goals for our National Parks,
with ideas from more than 40 sessions throughout the nation,
and for further discussion among park managers and staff. From
these sessions, five overarching goals emerged. They are
articulated in the Secretary's May 31 report, ``The Future of
America's National Parks.'' Our efforts now are focused on two
fronts.
First, each park superintendent and program manager has
been asked to complete implementation strategies documents this
summer for every unit that describes their vision desired
accomplishments for their individual areas to support those
five overarching goals.
Second, the Service, park employees, and partners are
working together to propose centennial projects and programs
for 2008 and 2009. Secretary Kempthorne and I plan to report on
the individual park and program centennial implementation
strategies and announce centennial projects and programs
approved for funding for consideration for 2008 later in
August.
There are four areas in which the bills before us today
approach the centennial differently and which we look forward
to working with you to address.
First, we believe that the Challenge Fund matching approach
will stimulate more private donations and involve more
Americans in the future of their National Parks. The
possibility of matching funds has excited our partners and
enticed new donors, and we have every indication that we will
readily raise more than $100 million a year necessary for the
$100 million annual Federal match.
Second, we believe there should be flexibility in
allocating funds to different categories of projects and
programs rather than a formula established by law. By having
this flexibility, the process for determining signature
projects and programs will be more responsive to the changing
needs and conditions over the next 10 years.
Third, while we understand the Subcommittee's need to meet
pay-as-you-go requirements, we would prefer that any offsets
included in the bill come from one or more of the proposed
mandatory saving proposals listed in the president's Fiscal
Year 2008 budget.
Fourth, H.R. 2959 would provide up to $100 million annually
in mandatory funds that would supplement annual appropriations.
H.R. 3094 would make the availability of funding contingent
upon subsequent appropriations and would, therefore, compete
for funding with annual appropriations.
Despite some of the differences, the two bills are similar
in many fundamental respects. Given our shared goals, we hope
that we have the opportunity for further discussions that will
enable us to move forward on legislation with language we can
all agree on.
Again, we thank you for your time and efforts you are
devoting to prepare our National Parks for another century of
conservation, preservation, and enjoyment.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement. I would be
pleased to answer any questions that you have or any other
Members of the Subcommittee.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Bomar follows:]
Statement of Mary A. Bomar, Director, National Park Service,
U.S. Department of the Interior
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today to present the Department of the Interior's views on H.R. 2959
and H.R. 3094, bills that would establish a fund for the centennial of
the National Park Service.
The Department strongly supports establishing a special fund to
provide $100 million a year for the next ten years to support National
Park Service projects and programs, as both H.R. 2959 and H.R. 3094
would do. Establishing a fund to prepare for the National Park
Service's centennial in 2016 is one of Secretary Kempthorne's top
priorities, and we appreciate the time and interest that you, Mr.
Chairman, and Mr. Bishop, and others have already devoted to this
effort. We are grateful to Mr. Bishop and Mr. Young for introducing
H.R. 2959, the Administration's legislative proposal for establishing
the National Park Centennial Challenge Fund.
Secretary Kempthorne and I are very excited about partnering with
the American people on innovative projects and programs that will
capture the imagination of the public and that will welcome and inspire
the generations who will inherit the great national treasures under our
stewardship.
We also appreciate the alternative approach, H.R. 3094, that you,
Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Rahall have introduced. The emphasis that H.R.
3094 places on diversity programs, professional development, and
education is consistent with my own goals as Director of the National
Park Service. Those goals are to:
Re-engage the support of the American people for the
National Parks and rejuvenate their pride in ``the best idea America
ever had,'' in the famous words of a British diplomat;
Increase the capacity of the National Park System,
through increased funding, to meet the needs of a changing population;
and
Recruit, retain, train, and prepare a new generation of
leadership for the National Park Service.
While we have serious concerns about the funding mechanisms and
certain other provisions contained in H.R. 3094, we look forward to
working with this subcommittee to reach agreement on the best means of
securing the funding necessary to achieve our shared goal of preparing
our national parks for the next century of stewardship by the National
Park Service.
The legislative proposal that the Department transmitted to you
this past spring began with a directive which was announced on August
25, 2006, the 90th anniversary of the National Park Service. The day
before, the President issued a memorandum directing Secretary
Kempthorne to ``enhance our national parks during the decade leading up
to the 2016 centennial celebration'' [and] prepare them for another
century of conservation, preservation and enjoyment.'' From that bold
directive, the Department developed the multi-year Centennial
Initiative, which was presented in February as part of the President's
FY 2008 Budget.
The Centennial Initiative proposes $3 billion in new funds for the
National Park Service over the next ten years. Of that amount, $1
billion is the ``Centennial Commitment''--$100 million in additional
annual appropriations for each of the next ten years. The other $2
billion would come from the ``Centennial Challenge''--the challenge to
individuals, foundations, and businesses to contribute at least $100
million annually to support signature programs and projects. Each year,
$100 million in donations would be matched by $100 million of Federal
funding from the National Park Centennial Challenge Fund, the mandatory
spending fund that would be established under H.R. 2959.
We greatly appreciate the support Congress has already shown for
the Centennial Commitment portion of the Initiative. Both the House-
passed and the Senate committee-approved versions of the FY 2008
Interior appropriations bill contain the $100 million in additional
operations funding identified in the President's Budget as Centennial
Initiative funding. Including the centennial funding, total operations
funding for FY 2008 would increase by $199 million under the House-
passed version over the FY 2007 level, and by $196 million under the
Senate committee-reported version. Enactment of operations funding in
that range would mean that all parks would receive enough funding to
cover fixed costs in FY 2008, and many would also receive more seasonal
rangers, more maintenance funding, and more resource protection
funding, all of which would better enable parks to provide visitors
with safe, enjoyable, and educational experiences.
The President asked for a report on implementation of his August
24, 2006 directive by May 31, 2007. To begin the process of determining
signature programs and projects, Secretary Kempthorne led the
Department and the National Park Service in an unprecedented effort to
reach out to the American public to listen to their ideas for future
goals for the national parks as we move toward the 100th anniversary.
During March and April, after planning 12 listening sessions, we
expanded to more than 40 sessions throughout the nation after the
initial sessions generated such excitement among the American people as
well as National Park Service staff. Some of them were led by the
Secretary and me personally. We also took comments through our website
and by mail; in total, we heard from more than 4,500 people, including
many National Park Service employees. From these sessions, and from
further discussion among park managers and staff, five overarching
goals emerged. They are articulated in the Secretary's May 31 report,
The Future of America's National Parks, as follows:
Stewardship: The National Park Service will lead America
and the world in preserving and restoring treasured resources;
Environmental Leadership: The National Park Service will
demonstrate environmental leadership to the nation;
Recreational Experience: National parks will be superior
recreational destinations where visitors have fun, explore nature and
history, find inspiration, and improve health and wellness;
Education: The National Park Service will foster
exceptional learning opportunities that connect people to parks; and
Professional Excellence: The National Park Service will
demonstrate management excellence worthy of the treasures entrusted to
our care.
The report established these goals not only as the foundation for
decisions about specific projects and programs, but also to guide the
work of the National Park Service as we work toward our centennial in
2016. The report also identified specific performance goals within each
overarching goal, and gave examples of actions that would fulfill those
goals.
Our efforts at the present time are focused on two fronts: First,
each park superintendent and program manager has been asked to complete
an implementation strategy this summer that describes their vision and
desired accomplishments for their individual areas to support the five
overarching goals. Second, across the Service, park employees and their
enthusiastic partners are working together to propose centennial
projects and programs for 2008 and 2009. The projects and programs
proposed for 2008 are being evaluated in terms of the criteria that
were finalized in June. At the Secretary's request, the Inspector
General is engaged in conducting critical point evaluations of how we
intend to implement the Centennial Challenge. In particular, he has
highlighted the issues of transparency in the project and program
selection process and financial accountability.
Secretary Kempthorne and I plan to report on the individual park
and program centennial implementation strategies, and announce
centennial projects and programs approved for funding consideration for
2008 at the end of August.
The criteria adopted in June require that all proposed projects and
programs:
provide for authorized activities in existing units;
contribute toward at least one of the five centennial
goals;
be consistent with our management policies and planning
and compliance documents;
require little or no additional National Park Service
operating funds to be sustainable; and
have partners willing to contribute at least 50 percent
of the project cost in cash from non-Federal sources.
Beyond those basic requirements, projects and programs are being
evaluated by National Park Service interdisciplinary review teams.
Projects approved for 2008 will be analyzed to ensure that the programs
and projects represent a mix of different emphasis areas--the five
centennial goals, different-sized parks, different-sized projects,
multiple park projects, national initiatives, and a mix of projects and
programs. We have been very clear in our quest for a diversity of
centennial undertakings; this is by no means strictly about ``bricks
and mortar'' construction projects. There will be opportunities to
consider additional bold and innovative projects and programs in future
years, as parks and their partners rise to the challenge. Over time,
the list will be updated to add new projects and programs and remove
completed ones. We look forward to working with you to identify such
projects and programs.
Turning to the legislation, H.R. 3094 diverges from H.R. 2959, the
Administration's proposal, in four fundamental ways, and it is these
differences that we have concerns with:
First, H.R. 2959 establishes a partnership program: it makes
funding from the Centennial Challenge Fund available only upon the
receipt of funds from non-Federal partners for specific signature
projects and programs. H.R. 3094 makes funding available from the
Centennial Fund regardless of how much, or whether any, non-Federal
funding has been received.
We believe in the Challenge Fund approach--the idea that if
obtaining Federal funding for projects depends on first obtaining
private contributions, we will stimulate more private donations and
involve more Americans in the future of their national parks. The
challenge component was first developed in collaboration with
philanthropic, non-profit, and private groups, and we found broad
support for the idea of a public-private match in the public listening
sessions we conducted this past spring. We found the ``challenge''
approach to fundraising to be a familiar and accepted concept. The
possibility of matching funds has excited our partners and enticed new
donors, and we have every indication that we will readily raise more
than $100 million a year necessary for a $100 million annual Federal
match.
Many of the private contributions are likely to come from small
cooperating associations and small friends' groups, who are more likely
to fund innovative educational programs than large, expensive capital
projects. The Challenge Fund approach makes it possible for these small
groups to make a vital contribution to the centennial goals.
Second, H.R. 2959 gives the National Park Service, working with its
partners, the responsibility for determining which programs and
projects are eligible for funding, while H.R. 3094 would allocate
certain percentages of funding for certain types of projects, and have
decisions on individual projects made by Congress as part of the annual
appropriations process. We agree that it is desirable to devote
centennial funding to projects in all of the categories listed in H.R.
3094: education, diversity, supporting park professionals,
environmental leadership, natural resource protection, and line-item
construction. We would add to that list ``enhancing the recreational
experience'' and ``cultural resource protection'' and then these
categories would cover most, if not all, of the same types of
activities and projects that our five overarching goals cover. However,
we believe that there should be more flexibility in determining how
much funding is allocated to various types of projects than is possible
if the spending formula is established by law.
By having this flexibility, the process for determining signature
programs and projects will be more responsive to changing needs and
conditions over the next ten years. Also, we cannot anticipate the
categories of projects and programs that will be available year to year
through our selection process. We would not want to miss an opportunity
to fund a critical program or resource management project because of
the limitations of the categories.
Third, while we understand the subcommittee's need to provide
offsetting funding to meet ``pay-as-you-go'' requirements, we would
prefer that any offsets included in the bill come from one or more of
the proposed mandatory savings proposals listed in the President's FY
2008 Budget. H.R. 2959 does not include any offsets for the mandatory
spending for the Centennial Challenge Fund, because the
Administration's proposal was offset by mandatory savings within the
President's Budget. In contrast, H.R. 3094 proposes to offset funding
for the Centennial Fund through new or higher fees on commercial
activities on Federal lands.
This offset provision would be unacceptable to the Administration
and difficult for the Department to implement. An across-the-board
increase in fees would have no correlation to the purposes of those
fees, while selective increases could result in litigation. Fees are
not royalties, bonus bids, or rents. The Department charges many
different cost-recovery fees, and the fee levels are based on the costs
related to the activity at issue. The Department also charges other
fees for specific purposes. For example, the National Park Service sets
franchise fees for concession contracts at levels based upon a detailed
statutory standard. Such fees are contractual, and changes to existing
fees require renegotiation of the contracts or referral to binding
arbitration when agreement cannot be reached, as provided under
statute. Diverting such fees would be detrimental to these important
programs; raising the fees could result in contractual disputes and
litigation and make those activities cost-prohibitive for the users.
Fourth, H.R. 2959 would provide up to $100 million annually in
mandatory funds that would supplement annual appropriations. Yet, while
H.R. 3094 provides that ``unobligated amounts in the Fund shall be
available without further appropriation,'' the bill would make funds
available ``only for Projects approved in Acts of appropriation for the
Department of the Interior.'' Since availability would be contingent
upon a subsequent act of appropriations, these amounts would be scored
against that appropriation action and thus counted against the
discretionary cap. In effect, the Centennial Challenge funds would have
to compete for funding within annual appropriations, rather than be in
addition to annual appropriations.
Despite these differences, the two bills are similar in fundamental
respects:
Both bills provide for an infusion of $100 million a year
in Federal funding for Fiscal Years 2008 through 2017 to pay for
National Park Service projects and programs that would fulfill certain
purposes or goals;
Both bills use the mechanism of a separate Treasury
account in an effort to supplement annual discretionary appropriations;
Both bills allow for donations from private entities to
help pay for projects while retaining current rules pertaining to the
solicitation and receipt of donations by National Park Service
employees; and
Both bills require annual reports to Congress on
signature programs and projects, ensuring a flow of information between
Congress and the Department on the use of funds provided in the
Centennial account.
Given our shared goals, we hope that we will have the opportunity
for further discussions that will enable us to move forward together on
legislation with language we all agree on.
As Secretary Kempthorne said in his report to the President, ``the
golden years for the national parks have not passed, but are ahead.''
Again, we thank you for the time and effort you are devoting to the
effort to prepare our national parks for another century of
conservation, preservation and enjoyment.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement. I would be pleased to
answer any questions you or other members of the subcommittee may have.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much, Madam Director, and, as
always, we appreciate your presence and your comments and
testimony before the Committee.
Ms. Bomar. Thank you, Mr. Grijalva.
Mr. Grijalva. Just a couple of questions. I think you
mentioned, right now and also in your testimony, that your
preference and the preference of the Department is to use the
mandatory proposals listed by the president in his 2008 budget
as the method to go.
Let me reference one, which, I think--there are six or more
there, but the one that is the biggest revenue generator, I
would think, is the drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge. I bring that point out because the historic reality is
that the plan to drill in the arctic refuge has failed to
become law even under previous majorities, so is it realistic
to propose that that is the principal revenue source for the
challenge and the match?
Ms. Bomar. Sir, I know that we did not address the pay-as-
you-go in our legislation. However, we have a list of offsets
that are in the budget, the Fiscal Year 2008 budget, and I
would be glad to offer you a copy of that so I can pass that in
today. Thank you.
Also, I have with me today Pam Hayes, who is the director
for the Department of the Interior for budget and finance, and
she would be glad to discuss the dialogue with you on the----
Mr. Grijalva. Madam Director, I think, specifically, my
question is, if ANWR is the source with the most sufficient
revenue to deal with the question we are talking about, and it
realistically has not received a majority and has not been
acted upon, then what guarantees on that offset do we have in
the future, if that is a sufficient revenue source that we are
talking about as one of the mandatory proposals?
Ms. Bomar. Right. Sir, again, my testimony did not reflect
that, as I said, but I have a list of proposals as offsets for
the Department of the Interior, and I would be more than glad
to share that with you or discuss that. I hope that we can
continue dialogue, Mr. Chairman, and that we can talk further
about this, but the Department is certainly willing to work
with you, sir, and, again, I would be glad to address those
proposals or have our director do that for you.
Mr. Grijalva. Yes. I bring that point up because, as we go
forward with both pieces of legislation, the offset becomes the
critical question for whether it is the match or whether it is
the proposal that I have introduced, the point being that, in
your testimony, you talk about how commercial activities that
we propose as an offset, that they are set to just recover the
costs associated with them, yet multiple GAO studies have found
that the Department's fees do not come close to covering agency
costs.
Assuming that is the case, and I will let you respond to
it, shouldn't these cost recovery fees be raised so that the
agency's budgets are not subsidizing any of these commercial
activities?
Ms. Bomar. Many of the Federal fees, Mr. Chairman, already
in place are in place through legislation, as with the Federal
recreation fee program, and already designated to cost of
operations for those fees. We feel that the administration's
bill, certainly showing the mandatory funding, is the way that
we would like to proceed. We do feel that the fees right now
are designated toward certain, whether it is commercial or
leasing, leasing fees in National Parks stay the National Park
where those fees are generated, just as the cost of operations
for entrance fees, for example.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. How can you make sure that
projects which are attractive to donors, big-ticket projects
and big-ticket donors, will not take priority over the basic
necessities, maintenance backlog, that you have spoken to this
Committee in the past?
Ms. Bomar. Yes. Coming back to the projects, the projects
have all been generated as a need by every National Park unit.
We have a system, a management information system, a database
that is in place that all projects have to come through that,
and they are generated at the park.
The parks, working with their partners, and I brought with
me today, you will see here partnership letters from all over
America. There are over 300 partnership letters of support of
commitment for funding that are going through a screen-out
evaluation process this week. As we speak, we have a review
team that has come in to review all of the projects.
These are absolutely not dominated by the partners. It is
started from a grassroots effort from the parks that have come
up through the system. It is in accordance with all Federal
regulations. These projects are consistent with management
policies and are generated at the park level certainly in
tandem with the partners.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Let me turn to my colleague, Mr.
Bishop, for any questions. We are going to be called to a vote.
We will try to get as many questions as we can.
Mr. Bishop. Ms. Bomar, I hope you can also stay through
this panel because I know there are going to be several rounds
of questions that we are going to have for you.
Ms. Bomar. Yes.
Mr. Bishop. First of all, just for the record, the director
has actually submitted at least seven different potential
saving areas, each of which by themselves would fund the yearly
requirement that is there. However, if you were actually to go
to ANWR--to be technically correct, no one has ever suggested
drilling in ANWR Section 1002 that was set aside by President
Carter for economic development. If you did that, you could
fund the 10-year program in one fell swoop. Actually, you could
do it four times with the 10-year program and have energy
independence at the same time.
So you have a wonderful idea, Mr. Chairman. We should go in
that direction.
Ms. Bomar, you have described your plan in a way that
involves both new partners and the public. The alternative
proposal seems like a no-brainer; it is easy. There are no
strings attached to the billion dollars; it will always be
there. Why, then, is the plan that actually involves a matching
grant preferable to you?
Ms. Bomar. It is not just about the money. Mr. Bishop, good
question. It really is about reengaging the American public
with their National Parks. We have found that reengaging
foundations, communities, individuals, and individual Americans
with their National Parks; they want to be part of their
National Parks.
We believe that, over many years, we have had many of our
friends and foundations that have been friends working with us
now as partners for the last 30 and 40 years. I, myself, have
come from many partnership parks, as you know, from the
Northeast Region and parks throughout America. This book
confirms that, that partners want to be involved. They want to
be part.
Often, they will say, ``We will put in a dollar-for-dollar
match, but when is the Federal government going to step up also
and show really good-faith effort to be a partner on both sides
of the house?'' And you can see here, from all of the
partnership levels, that many of them--it is, again, about
building constituents. It is about building the future stewards
of America. They want to be involved with their National Parks.
This team that has just come in before me, sir, this panel,
have answered those same questions by saying they want to be
involved. Americans love their National Parks. The challenge
funding approach, matching private funds with Federal funds,
will leverage, and it gives more of an incentive also to
Americans to get involved with their National Parks.
Why should donors and the private sector be interested, you
say, in the funding? Many of our partners, as I said, in every
state; they do not want to pay for basic services. It is
augmenting. It is giving the margin of excellence from
partners. I have been involved in many large partnerships.
Looking at one of the projects that we have talked about
before, at the Ben Franklin Museum, that is an $18 million
project. Twelve million would be put up by partners that care
about their community, that care about the National Parks. They
are looking for a Federal match to be a true partner with the
National Park Service.
Right now, there is a large credit company that has just
put out a recent survey that has said, Tell us what your top
priorities would be as card holders, and many of them come back
and said, About caring for the National Parks. They have
actually voted on this. It came out as one of the number one
projects that Americans would like to be involved with.
Mr. Bishop. Ms. Bomar, I have actually got eight questions,
so I am, obviously, going to run over time with this one.
Let me just get one comment here, as my time runs down.
Sometimes I think we underestimate the expectations of what the
private sector is willing to do, as to what they will pay to do
it. Just as a personal example, and this is not a one-to-one
match, but it is as close as I am going to come. I am an old
school teacher sitting in the school, realizing that every
athlete got some kind of a scholarship because it was the
popular thing to do in going to the community, and also the
business department could go to every business and get
scholarship monies.
I was the department chair of history, and I decided I was
tired of that. There is no natural constituency out there in
the business world for history scholarships, but what we were
able to do was become creative, and, as a department, we came
up with a whole new approach to something, which actually ended
up, after a whole lot of effort on our part, coming up with
more money that we were giving out for history scholarships
than the athletic department was giving out for their
scholarships.
People are willing to pay for the so-called ``non-glamorous
grunt things'' if they think they are contributing to the
whole.
I think we are really being a little bit skeptical about
what people will support and what they will not support, even
though I made the crack about Roto-Rooter. It is possible. It
is not only possible; I think it is probable.
In my experience in the state legislature, I saw the same
thing in our capital facility outlook, in our capital facility
budgeting.
Ms. Bomar. Yes.
Mr. Bishop. I think sometimes we are underestimating the
ability of people to step up to help.
Ms. Bomar. Absolutely right. Many companies, and it is not
to commercialize the National Parks, have come in----
Mr. Bishop. Wait. That is my third question, so go ahead.
Ms. Bomar. All right. They have come in to say, that have
owned air-conditioning companies. I was at the missions for
seven years. There was an air-conditioning company. We needed
some air conditioners for the missions. Many companies stepped
up to say they would be glad to put air conditioning. That
might not be a sexy project to some. Again, I try not to lose
sight of--we have construction money, we have fee money. We
have done a terrific job of improving our facilities. The
President and Congress, I salute you for keeping us focused on
improving our facilities, our maintenance.
Again, you are right, sir. The American public, when it
comes to their home back yard, in any of our cities where our
parks are located, people are glad to step up.
Mount Rushmore is another perfect example. My deputy
director here. We have found that the American people do love
their National Parks, and they are willing to step up and fund
many projects that we often hear they are not sexy projects,
but after working with many friends groups, and, again, these
letters verify that.
At universities, you talk about sports or education.
Universities have stepped up. We have many university partners
in here: city, state, local government. There is a group in
this week that are evaluating the projects under very stringent
criteria.
Mr. Grijalva. If I may, we are going to recess so we can go
take these votes and return and continue this discussion with
you.
Ms. Bomar. All right.
Mr. Grijalva. I think the point Mr. Bishop made is well
taken. I think private donations are important. I think that
the fundamental difference in the two bills is we do not tie
the two together. There is no prohibition that people, private
folk, can give to our parks. We just do not tie them together.
We will get back and discuss that.
Ms. Bomar. That is right. Thank you very much, Chairman.
Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 11:17 a.m., a recess was taken.]
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much. Resuming the meeting,
Madam Director, thank you for your patience, and let me turn to
our colleague, Mrs. Capps, for any questions or comments she
may have.
Mrs. Capps. Thank you and welcome, Director Bomar, and
thank you for you testimony and, again, for this hearing, which
I think is very timely and important. My questions will follow
along and, I hope, not be repetitive to what our Chairman was
asking, but I think it is very important for us to get to the
heart of what this partnership is. The administration bill
which proposes to leverage additional private funding by
creating a matching program where Federal funds would be made
available equal to amounts contributed by nonFederal sources,
up to $100 million a year.
Here is my question, and these are hypotheticals, but this
is what we need to work on. What happens if only $25 million is
raised?
Ms. Bomar. Yes.
Mrs. Capps. You talk about the interests of the private
sector, but we do not know for sure if they are going to step
up to the plate.
Ms. Bomar. Yes. We have had many friends groups that have
been donating to the National Parks, Mrs. Capps, for many, many
years, and we have 170 friends groups that, in 2005, donated
$68 million to the National Parks. You know, it is sad that
there was not a matching fund in place for the partnership
then.
We look at the National Park Foundation: $22 million came
in.
So I do feel it is very important, on the partnership side,
and it is also the incentive that we create with the
partnerships.
Mrs. Capps. This is an aside on this. We are assuming that
there is an administration in place that wants to invest $100
million. An administration could theoretically say, ``Well, we
do not want to put in more than $25 million.'' So you might
then just not work very hard.
What safeguards are in this? Let me ask you.
Ms. Bomar. Yes.
Mrs. Capps. You are going to speak to your administration,
which has made that pledge, and I applaud you for that, but
this legislation is written for any administration. We hope no
one would be as stingy as I mentioned, but here is the follow-
up question: The challenge for you, as the administration,
then, is to raise $100 million a year, and you have talked
about the friends and so forth. But for the parks, if you get
the full $200 million a year, you have to make sure that
private sources contribute and invest. I want friends groups to
be involved, but I want you to encourage more investment from
private sources.
The devil is in the details. How are you going to
specifically raise the money? What steps will you take to
incentivize the donations? Are these steps outlined in the
administration's proposal?
Ms. Bomar. Yes. Let me come back again to the partnerships.
Again, our telephone and fax machine have been off the wall
with these proposals coming in from partners. Over 300 letters
that are committed. When we sent these requests out, to make
sure that we have a firm commitment that you have the funding
in place, that you want to be a partner, and there is a
project--you have worked with the part--so there is over $300
million in projects, and over my 17 years with the National
Park Service, that has been really going on, working with
partners, like the Pew, the Penn Foundation, many other
foundations.
In fact, 62 percent of these projects that have come in are
solely related to foundations, nonprofit groups, city, state,
government, some non-NGO's.
Mrs. Capps. I hear you say that. I guess I am a little
concerned with the lack of safeguards in the proposal by the
administration as a whole.
Here is a more challenging one perhaps, which also lurks.
We have seen these proposals, these ideas. Some of my
constituents with our Los Padres National Forest talk about the
Disney-fication, when recreational groups seek private funds,
and the sort of substantial change in the way the public land
appears to the visitor. It looks like a billboard. They are
concerned. I have seen what has happened in public schools with
the stadiums now that endorse, you know, well, this is just a
given.
When we start this process, I think we are going to be
really careful. Here is another hypothetical: What happens if a
private company--we have talked about Roto-Rooter today--wants
to donate $10 million for a visitors' center at Channel Islands
National Park? That is, as you know, the park in my district.
Ms. Bomar. Yes.
Mrs. Capps. Eventually, the new visitors' center, brought
to you by Roto-Rooter, is constructed. What safeguards would
have to be in place, and are these in your proposal, to ensure
that someone, like Roto-Rooter, is not making policy decisions
at the park.
Money sometimes is totally lack of strings, but it is not
always, and it is our job, I think, as the government, to make
sure that policy is driven by the public's interest in elected
officials setting policy who, hopefully, do not have any
ulterior motive and do not want to, you know, skew the policy
in a certain direction.
Friends can be friends. They can be altruistic friends, but
they can also be self-serving friends. Those safeguards, I
think, go, for me, to the heart of anything we want to put in
place.
Ms. Bomar. It is an excellent question, and I am glad that
you have brought it up. DO-21, ``Fundraising and
Negotiations''; we are absolutely going to be in conformance.
It is not to commercialize the parks. You will not see a golden
arch at any National Park. We will make sure that none of our
employees solicit donations.
For many years, I come back to philanthropy has been a big
part of the National Parks. Thirty National Parks were created
through philanthropy.
Mrs. Capps. Absolutely.
Ms. Bomar. But we will make sure that we stay absolutely
within conformance with DO-21. Donations are not to be used to
offset appropriated funds or to meet recurring operation
requirements, and employees will not solicit donations.
In DO-21, it clearly states how you can recognize donors.
That is done in a very tasteful matter. This is not about
commercializing our National Parks.
Mrs. Capps. I guess it goes to the difference between
rulemaking and standards, and I have to tip my interest on
behalf, and there is just a difference there. I appreciate your
saying all that you say, and I appreciate what you have done to
cultivate all of these wonderful friends that we have, and yet,
I think, in the final analysis, I do appreciate what our
Chairman and our Committee, overall Committee Chairman, have
struck as a----
Ms. Bomar. Thank you, Mrs. Capps, and also, to reemphasize,
all of fundraising and working with donations and partners, it
is all done through a Federal agreement. Agreements will
absolutely be in place. They are in place today, and I really
truly feel we have been very transparent and can all pass the
red-faced test about how ethical we have been in making sure
that these agreements are in place.
Mrs. Capps. Well, that speaks well to your directorship.
Thank you very much.
Ms. Bomar. Thank you.
Mr. Grijalva. Mr. Bishop?
Mr. Bishop. I am sorry. I am somewhat confused here. You
already can take donations now. Right?
Ms. Bomar. Yes, sir, we can.
Mr. Bishop. And you have these regulation whatever, 21,
whatever it is called.
Ms. Bomar. Yes. ``Fundraising and Donations.''
Mr. Bishop. So that prohibits you from commercializing the
stuff now.
Ms. Bomar. Absolutely.
Mr. Bishop. If a bill were passed that you actually got
matching funds, these regulations are still in place.
Ms. Bomar. Absolutely, they are in place, sir, yes.
Mr. Bishop. What you are trying to tell us, I guess, is if
you are willing to sell out the parks, you could sell out the
parks now. It is not going to be a difference.
Ms. Bomar. Absolutely. There is nothing different. These
funds will augment our appropriations. They are a supplement to
our appropriations. It is another way of getting projects
completed. Again, those agreements have always been in place.
They are absolutely very stringent about what we can do and
what we cannot do.
Mr. Bishop. All right. I told you I had eight questions,
total. That was number nine. I just added that one. I am sorry.
Ms. Bomar. All right.
Mr. Bishop. Let me go to a couple of the others. One of the
things we did not do in our bill that, I think, may have been a
mistake is in-kind donations. Do you have an opinion on whether
in-kind donations should be added to cash donations as well?
Ms. Bomar. Yes. There has been a lot of discussion about
in-kind donations. Our bill presently does not address that,
about having in-kind donations, and we certainly would like to
keep the dialogue going about in-kind donations. However, it is
the reporting to make sure that they are in conformance with
the IRS requirements. But we certainly would like to continue
dialogue about----
Mr. Bishop. It is something that could be done if we worked
through the details of how you----
Ms. Bomar. Yes, Mr. Bishop.
Mr. Bishop. OK. In the difference between the two bills,
there are a couple of things that I would just like a quick
reaction to.
One is in the bill that you actually asked for, you
specifically have a recreation component.
Ms. Bomar. Yes.
Mr. Bishop. It was not in the other version. Is that of
significance to you that that become one of the areas of
emphasis?
Ms. Bomar. Thank you. It is a very good question. I
appreciate that.
After we received the president's mandate, part of that
criteria was go out and seek comments from the American public.
It was clearly defined. We had 40 listening sessions throughout
America. The five goals that were established came from the
American public. The citizens were heard when we went through
that process.
Recreation, professional excellence, stewardship,
environmental leadership, and recreation were part of the goals
that clearly emerged through all of the dialogue that we had at
these listening sessions.
Mr. Bishop. You also mentioned, in your testimony, the idea
of flexibility. The one bill gives you flexibility of how you
spend the money; the other divides it up into percentages.
Ms. Bomar. Yes.
Mr. Bishop. I see. Let me skip that one because you
mentioned that in your testimony. You have covered it.
Ms. Bomar. Yes.
Mr. Bishop. Unless you really have a desire to say one more
word.
Ms. Bomar. No. Again, it really is a grassroots effort.
Those goals really were established. We would like flexibility,
so yes. Rather than putting percentages on the goals, I know
that stewardship on our administration's bill clearly includes
cultural resources, which is very important to us as well, as
well as natural resources.
Mr. Bishop. This is maybe an unfair question because we
have not talked directly about this at any given time, but one
of the concerns we have always had is that visitorship in the
so-called ``crown jewels'' of the park system is on a decline,
especially those amongst the certain demographic groups you are
after.
The two areas that seem to have had an increase are the
Mall in Philadelphia, both of which you were directly involved
in.
Ms. Bomar. Yes.
Mr. Bishop. How does your success in those particular
areas, how can that be transferred over to the rest of the park
system that is not having that same kind of success in
increasing its visitorship?
Ms. Bomar. Again, it is through solid, great partnerships,
but also, you know, we have had the success there by being
relevant, by making sure that our stories are relevant today.
When we went through the reports to the president, the goals
that we outlined, clearly we have to change: changing
demographics, migration, high-tech today.
I was successful, Mr. Bishop, because we were relevant. We
made sure that our staffing was relevant, that we were telling
relevant stories, and people felt welcomed, but much of that
was focused on really true, great partnerships with the
community, with tourism, with recreation. It takes a village to
raise a child, and it is the same in National Parks. It takes a
community working with those parks, working together in
tourism. We should be looking thematically across different
parks. How can larger Civil War sites help the smaller ones?
Mr. Bishop. I agree with you. That is probably not the
phrase I want to hear in the future, but I agree with you. Do
not give them any more ammunition than they already have here.
Let me just ask one last question, and I will get you off
of the hook here.
Ms. Bomar. Yes.
Mr. Bishop. Since one version talks about fees as a way of
raising the revenue, what effect would imposing additional fees
on concessionaires, for example, which is a commercial entity,
have on the National Park System?
Ms. Bomar. I am glad you brought up the fees. I was talking
to the congressman for just a moment from the Virgin Islands,
Donna Christensen, and we go through civic engagement, and many
have said, ``Mary, we cannot raise fees. The American public
have complained.'' There are only fees in 168 parks out of 391,
and the fee issue of raising fees; we have had outcry from the
public about raising some of those fees. So, yes, that is
probably not the wise way to go, as far as raising fees,
whether they are with concessions; it comes back to the
American public.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you. I appreciate your patience. I will
yield back. I am over time again, anyway.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much, Director. I think the
distinction that is being made is important to make: The issue
of increases of fees for visitors, and what the legislation,
3094, talks about is fees for commercial activities. Those are
two separate items. 3094 does not touch the issue of visitor
fees increase.
But, anyway, at some point, to submit, and not for now,
that out of the $68 million, the figure you gave of the private
donations that are coming into our park system now, because the
administration's legislation and my colleague's legislation
talks about a cash-only kind of match as we go forward.
Ms. Bomar. Yes.
Mr. Grijalva. Anticipating that, could you kind of, not for
now, break down for the Committee, and if you could submit to
it, that $69 million in terms of in-kind or cash only----
Ms. Bomar. Yes, I can. I can bring that to you, absolutely.
We can get those figures for you, sir.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. With that, let me thank you,
unless--Mr. Bishop, do you have any additional questions?
Ms. Bomar. I just want to say, I appreciate your time that
you have spent on this effort. I do feel that there is a great
excitement, and you probably want to ask if there are any other
questions, but there is a great excitement out in the National
Parks, with our staff. They are excited about coming to work,
to give good visitor service, and I truly feel that this really
was a grassroots. The National Park Service should
institutionalize going out to the American public and seeking
their ideas and input.
I just appreciate it, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Bishop. Thank
you for your time, for giving us the forum. It is nice that we
all dance together with the National Park Foundation and the
Centennial.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you for the fine work that you do, and
let me invite the next panel.
Ms. Bomar. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
[Pause.]
Mr. Grijalva. Let me welcome this panel. Thank you very
much for your patience, and I am looking forward to your
testimony.
Let me begin with Mr. Vin Cipolla, president and CEO,
National Park Foundation. Sir?
STATEMENT OF VIN CIPOLLA, PRESIDENT AND CEO,
NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION
Mr. Cipolla. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members
of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear
before you today. We commend the sponsors and this Committee
for their commitment to preparing our National Parks for the
challenges and opportunities of the next century.
My name is Vin Cipolla, and I am the president and CEO of
the National Park Foundation. The National Park Foundation is
the national charitable arm of the National Park Service,
chartered by Congress in 1967 to encourage private
philanthropic support for America's National Parks. Involvement
by a diverse charitable community deepens connections to and
understanding of both the history of the parks and how much
they mean for our future.
Since February, when the president focused the attention of
the Nation on the National Park Service Centennial in 2016,
there has been a lot of thoughtful dialogue, including the
proposal by Chairmen Rahall and Grijalva on how to ensure the
future of our National Parks.
As the national charitable partner for the parks, we think
it is key to continue the rich tradition in which the parks
were founded and have been sustained: public and private
interests working in tandem.
Both of the proposed bills recognize the importance of this
complementary approach. The National Park Centennial Challenge
Fund Act [H.R. 2959] seeks to raise up to $100 million each
year over a ten-year period from private donations and to match
those donations with Federal funding up to $100 million
annually.
The proposal introduced by Chairmen Rahall and Grijalva
[H.R. 3094] clearly anticipates private philanthropy as well.
These proposals continue the long history of private
philanthropy that has created our unequaled system of National
Parks.
More than 100 years ago, people from across this country
gathered to protect the places they loved and the places they
knew would matter long into the future. It is their spirit and
ideals on which the National Park System was founded. Together,
they had the vision to transform the natural treasures of our
country into the first National Parks so future generations
could enjoy these magnificent places and learn about our
nation's proud history. Thirty parks were directly created
through donations, as Director Bomar pointed out.
The future of philanthropic support is in both diversifying
the opportunity to experience National Parks and in
diversifying the opportunity to support our parks. The National
Park Foundation and friends groups, cooperating associations,
and others continue this legacy of public-private partnership.
Together, we are reinvigorating a movement for park
philanthropy to benefit all parks.
In the United States, charitable giving in 2005 exceeded
$260 billion, of which approximately $90 million went to causes
related to the National Park Service mission: education,
health, the arts, culture and humanities, and the environment.
The National Parks received only a very small portion of these
gifts. We can do better.
Our preliminary conversations with major donors and
philanthropic organizations surrounding the centennial have
been, indeed, very promising. We see great opportunities to
make the National Parks an important and prominent place for
individual charitable giving. In the last Fiscal Year, we, at
the National Park Foundation, have been able to increase our
number of individual donors by 40 percent.
Also, throughout its history, the National Park Foundation
has worked with many significant corporate partners. Their
support has enabled the National Park Service to enhance and
expand important programs in such areas as education,
preservation, community engagement, health, and wellness and
volunteerism.
Unilever, the longest-standing corporate partner of the
National Park Foundation, has been working with us for nearly
15 years and, through one of the many programs they fund, has
provided nearly 200 of our parks with 1,100 miles of recycled
lumber. This product has been used on the decking around Old
Faithful, the dry dock for the USS CONSTITUTION, and miles of
park trails and boardwalks.
For the last eight years, Ford Motor Company has helped
place Ph.D. students in parks across the system to help park
managers understand and find solutions to challenging
transportation issues.
American Airlines has helped us fund critical programs and
global conservation initiatives dealing with migratory birds.
Coca-Cola North America recently pledged several million
dollars to help parks across the system restore hiking trails
for visitors.
Having worked with the parks for such a long time and in
such significant ways, I can assure you that both the
Foundation and its partners understand and share the concern
that corporate support for parks not become confused with, and
not lead to, commercialization. We work carefully within
Director's Order 21 to ensure that corporate involvement
adheres to this guideline.
Today's media environment creates multiple opportunities
for donors and parks to work together in new and creative ways
that do not lead to the commercialization of parks, such as the
way we can use the Web to express a partnership and encourage
engagement.
This renewed interest in encouraging park philanthropy and
partnerships creates many opportunities.
The first is the opportunity to connect and strengthen the
fabric of support for parks on a national and local level.
The second is the opportunity to expand the dialogue around
park partnerships as richer conversations about parks lead to
incorporating best practices and innovation, allowing us to
bring new ideas and models to National Parks.
Third is the opportunity to better support the National
Park Service in its efforts to enhance important youth and
diversity programs system-wide.
We are glad to see the focus on children and diversity in
the proposed legislation. While charitable involvement of the
American people has helped preserve and protect our parks, it
has also connected children to our parks, something the Federal
government cannot do alone.
The National Park Foundation continues to expand and
support our own programs surrounding this initiative. We have
seen support for the Junior Ranger and WebRangers programs
increase over the last two years, and we continue to expand and
increase Electronic Field Trips where we connected 37 million
children in a simultaneous visit to our parks during the last
National Park Week.
We will continue to work to improve the relationship of
children to their National Parks, and we have a lot underway.
Additionally, the African-American Experience Fund is working
to connect people with National Parks that present African-
American history and culture.
We, at the National Park Foundation, believe there is much
more potential in philanthropy. We will be convening a National
Leadership Summit on Philanthropy at the University of Texas in
Austin on October 14-16 to help bring together charitable
leaders from across our nation who care about our parks.
The state of our parks at the Centennial Celebration----
Mr. Grijalva. If I may.
Mr. Cipolla. I am over----
Mr. Grijalva. Over.
Mr. Cipolla.--and I am at the end, as well, so thank you
very much. We applaud the effort to increase base funding of
the Park Service so it can carry out its mission more fully and
complement the activities of the charitable side. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cipolla follows:]
Statement of Vin Cipolla, President and CEO,
National Park Foundation
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today. We commend the sponsors and
this committee for their commitment to preparing our national parks for
the challenges and opportunities of the next century. My name is Vin
Cipolla and I am the President and CEO of the National Park Foundation.
The National Park Foundation is the national charitable arm of the
National Park Service, chartered by Congress in 1967 to encourage
private philanthropic support for America's national parks. Involvement
by a diverse charitable community deepens connections to an
understanding of both the history of the parks and how much they mean
for our future.
Since February, when the President focused the attention of the
nation on the National Park Service Centennial in 2016, there has been
a lot of thoughtful dialogue--including the proposal by Chairmen Rahall
and Grijalva--on how to ensure the future of our national parks. As the
national charitable partner for the parks, we think it is key to
continue the rich tradition in which the parks were founded and have
been sustained--public and private interests working in tandem.
Both of the proposed bills recognize the importance of this
complementary approach. The National Park Centennial Challenge Fund Act
(H.R. 2959) seeks to raise up to $100 million each year over a ten year
period from private donations and to match those donations with federal
funding up to $100 million annually. The proposal introduced by
Chairmen Rahall and Grijalva (H.R. 3094) clearly anticipates private
philanthropy as well. These proposals continue the long history of
private philanthropy that has created our unequalled system of national
parks.
More than one hundred years ago, people from across this country
gathered to protect the places they loved and the places they knew
would matter long into the future. It is their spirit and ideals on
which the National Park System was founded. Together, they had the
vision to transform the natural treasures of our country into the first
national parks so future generations could enjoy these magnificent
places and learn about our nation's proud history. Thirty parks were
directly created through donations.
Private philanthropy has traditionally been held in the hands of a
few individuals whose commitment is strong, consistent, and valuable.
We view the future success of private support not only in the capable
hands of Congress and the National Park Service, but also in the hands
of the 80 million plus national park visitors and enthusiasts. The
future of philanthropic support is in both diversifying the opportunity
to experience national parks, and in diversifying the opportunity to
support our parks.
The National Park Foundation and friends groups, cooperating
associations and others, continue this legacy of public private
partnership. Together, we are reinvigorating a movement for park
philanthropy to benefit all parks.
This new century presents wonderful opportunities for our national
parks, but also serious challenges. The parks exist in increasingly
complex environments with varied and often competing demands placed
upon them: the U.S. population is growing older and more diverse,
children are spending less time outdoors, and technology is bringing
rapid changes. The National Park Service and we as a nation are
challenged to respond.
We believe the American people, like the generations before, are
ready to embrace this challenge and provide the innovation, creativity,
and charitable support necessary to protect these places for the next
100 years and beyond. In the United States, charitable giving in 2005
exceeded $260 billion. Of which, approximately $90 billion went to
causes related to the National Park Service mission--education; health;
arts; culture and humanities; and the environment. The National Parks
received only a small portion of these gifts. We can do better. Our
preliminary conversations with major donors and philanthropic
organizations surrounding the Centennial have been very promising. We
see great opportunities to make the national parks an important and
prominent place for individual charitable giving. In the last fiscal
year, we've been able to increase our number of individual donors by
40%. We believe these gifts pay dividends in deepening not just the
financial, but also the emotional commitment that Americans have to
their parks.
Throughout its history, The National Park Foundation has worked
with many significant corporate partners. Their support has enabled the
National Park Service to enhance and expand important programs in such
areas as education, preservation, community engagement, health and
wellness, and volunteerism. Unilever, the longest-standing corporate
partner of the National Park Foundation, has been working with us for
nearly 15 years and through one of the many programs they fund has
provided nearly 200 of our parks with 11,000 miles of recycled lumber.
For the last eight years, Ford Motor Company has helped place PhD
students in parks across the system to help park managers understand
and find solutions to challenging transportation issues. American
Airlines has helped us fund critical programs and global conservation
initiatives dealing with migratory birds. Coca Cola North America
recently pledged several millions of dollars to help parks across the
system restore hiking trails for visitors.
Having worked with the parks for such a long time and in such
significant ways, I can assure you that both the Foundation and its
partners understand and share the concern that corporate support for
parks not become confused with and not lead to commercialization. We
will work carefully within Director's Order #21 to ensure that
corporate involvement adheres to this guideline. Over the last number
of years, we have looked at this issue far too conventionally. Today's
media environment creates multiple opportunities for donors and parks
to work together in new and creative ways that do not lead to the
commercialism of parks.
This renewed interest in encouraging park philanthropy and
partnerships creates many opportunities. First is the opportunity to
connect and strengthen the fabric of support for parks on a national
and local level. Our parks offer the best investments in the areas of
youth-enrichment, education, health, and volunteerism, yet
philanthropic potential on a grand scale and in line with contemporary
thresholds has not been realized. Federal funding offers incentives for
charitable partners to work collaboratively and creatively to develop
fundraising campaigns that affect the entire park system. The National
Park Foundation is prepared to take the necessary national leadership
role to make this a reality and is currently working with an outside
firm to examine the feasibility for creating a national philanthropic
campaign to support national parks for the next century.
Second is the opportunity to expand the dialogue around park
partnerships. A richer conversation about parks will lead to
incorporating best practices and innovation, especially at the state
and local levels, which allow us to bring new ideas and models to
national parks.
Third is the opportunity to support the National Park Service as it
works to enhance important youth and diversity programs system-wide.
The approaching Centennial encourages us to build relationships that
crosscut the full spectrum of American society. By working together to
address under-reached audiences in ways that create meaningful park
experiences, we ensure that all Americans feel connected to our shared
heritage and accept their responsibility as future stewards of the
national parks.
We are glad to see the focus on children and diversity in the
proposed legislation. While the charitable involvement of the American
people has helped preserve and protect our parks, a lot of charitable
activity today helps connect children to our parks--something the
federal government can't do alone. The National Park Foundation
continues to expand and support our own programs surrounding this
initiative. We have seen support for the Junior Ranger and WebRangers
programs at about $2.5 million over the last two years and continue to
expand and increase our Electronic Field Trips, connecting 37 million
children in a simultaneous visit to our parks during the last national
park week. We will continue to work to improve the relationship of
children to their national parks, and plan to work with private
charitable organizations promoting these programs. Additionally, the
African American Experience Fund is working to connect people with
national parks that present African American history and culture.
We at the National Park Foundation look forward to this century of
giving. We will be convening the first National Leadership Summit on
Philanthropy and Parks at the University of Texas in Austin on October
14-16 to bring together leaders from across our nation to shape
strategies, which will ensure that our national parks remain the
world's premier centers of learning, science, recreation, preservation,
and partnership.
The state of our parks at the Centennial Celebration in 2016 will
say a lot about our priorities as a nation. I applaud efforts to
increase base funding for the National Park Service so it can carry out
its mission more fully. Opportunities for philanthropy must be central
to any Centennial legislation and we are confident this can be
accomplished in a manner that allows our partners at the local level to
be successful and for programs at the national level to extend the
benefits of philanthropy to all parks. Philanthropy is critical to not
only leveraging the federal investment, but to creating new
opportunities for more of the public to relate to their parks and to
generate the creativity and innovation the National Park Service will
need in the coming century.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your ongoing support of national parks
and for allowing me the opportunity to speak about the important role
philanthropy plays in supporting the noble mission of the National Park
Service and in connecting all Americans to these very special places.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much, sir.
Mr. Cipolla. Thank you.
Mr. Grijalva. Let me turn now to Mr. Gary Kiedaisch,
president and CEO of the Coleman Company. Sir, your comments,
testimony. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF GARY KIEDAISCH, PRESIDENT AND CEO,
THE COLEMAN COMPANY, INC.
Mr. Kiedaisch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today and add my voice in support of the goals and key elements
of both bills before you today, bills that would establish
historic, bold, and visionary funding for the National Park
Service in the Centennial Celebration.
I am here today as an advocate for using the centennial as
a catalyst to build new partnerships between corporate America
and our National Parks, partnerships that will help restore and
preserve our national treasures; a partnership that will help
make our parks attractive and relevant to today's American
recreating public, including providing additional recreational
venues, such as better trails, better hiking trails, and
perhaps mountain biking trails, as was discussed earlier today
by our representative from Kansas; better destination camp
sites and better camp sites and better boat launches; a
partnership that will carry the message to the American public
that our National Parks are both treasures, learning places,
and a place to recreate for a day, a weekend, or a week.
I am fortunate that I was introduced to the great outdoors
by my father, a sportsman and a sporting goods retail store
owner. Unfortunately, we have unintentionally created an indoor
society. We have worked hard to provide our children with what
we did not have: autos, home entertainment, and the like. Too
many of us failed, however, to share with them what we did have
as kids. In doing so, we failed to introduce them to the great
outdoors.
Today, the average 18-year-old spends upwards of eight
hours a day plugged into a screen of some type. Childhood
diabetes and obesity is on the rise in America in epidemic
proportions, inactivity being a direct contributor to that
situation.
Visits to our National Parks are declining, and we are at
risk of accepting or creating public apathy for these treasured
resources. We need, together, to get Americans outdoors,
active, and recreating. I have spoken to large and diverse
audiences across America and have had the opportunity to change
lives by telling them, ``If you have never awoken on a crisp,
fall morning inside the warmth of a sleeping bag under the
protection of a tent next to a babbling brook, you have missed
one of life's greatest experiences, and if you have never
shared this experience with a child, you have missed one of
life's greatest opportunities and responsibilities.''
The Secretary of the Interior has presented to the
president and Congress a bold, visionary, and aggressive call
to action that will, indeed, get Americans outdoors and
revitalize our National Parks, but we must be aware that the
old adage, ``If you build it, they will come,'' no longer
applies in today's hyper marketplace. The word ``relevant''
really plays here importantly.
Our National Parks need to have venue offerings that
attract visitors and captures them for periods of time. This
last February, I visited Shenandoah National Park and learned
that their visits were down from two million to 1.1 million
visits, and I asked if they had mountain bike trails, and the
answer was no. You heard earlier testimony today to the
relevance of that and the importance of perhaps having mountain
bike trails, which are relevant to today's market.
We can, indeed, compete for the hearts and minds of young
Americans who are now effectively captured by the home-
entertainment electronics industries.
Enter a partnership with corporate America. The National
Park Service and the U.S. taxpayer do not need to go it alone.
Corporate America stands to benefit from a better-run, more
relevant park venue. Corporate America stands to benefit from a
healthier, more active recreating public. Our customers are the
same. The very same people who buy Coleman tents and lanterns
and sleeping bags are the people who visit our parks. I know
these people, and my company wants to work seamlessly with the
National Park Service to give them what they seek when they
visit a park: a great memory.
In fact, many people ask me, why is the Coleman brand such
a beloved brand, much like the National Park brand is a beloved
brand? It is because we give life experiences, and we make
memories.
This is a good opportunity for corporate America to
heighten their corporate citizenship by wearing a white hat and
partnering with the National Park Service to get Americans
active and outdoors.
I can give you many, many examples, and I hope we have time
in the questions and answers, of how we have done this without
commercializing the parks and how I experienced this real live
time while I served on the United States Olympic Committee.
There are examples of how the concessions in National Parks and
ski areas in our national forests are both examples of programs
which attract private capital to provide appropriate public
recreation services and opportunities.
Together, we need to market the benefits and communicate
the availability. We need to get people active, thus reducing
health care costs, which will attract insurance companies whose
actuaries will clearly recognize the benefit of partnering with
the National Parks and its initiatives to get people in the
outdoors.
In closing, I applaud the increase in investment in our
National Parks under both bills. They are both bold and
visionary and needed. House Bill 3094 proposes an assured
addition of $100 million, regardless of achieved matches. Thank
you. It is a good bill.
However, House Bill 2959 would provide up to that amount in
Federal funds, if matching funds were attracted, with the
possibility to increase annual funding to $200 million through
2016. I strongly support this and advocate that you go for the
higher target.
There are many examples of public-private partnerships that
respect each party's goals, objectives, and values. Under the
leadership of the Department of the Interior, the National Park
Service, and the many interested parties before you, I, today,
remain confident that we can leverage the Federal dollars,
create a lasting and sustainable partnership to increase park
visitation, and future generations of advocates to maintain
these treasured public assets. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kiedaisch follows:]
Statement of Gary A. Kiedaisch, President and CEO,
Tthe Coleman Company, Inc.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today to add my voice in support of
the goals and key elements of both H.R. 2959 and H.R. 3094, bills that
would establish funding for the National Parks Service Centennial
Celebration. I am here as an advocate for using the Centennial as a
catalyst for new partnerships between corporate America and America's
parks, partnerships which can be key forces in park revitalization and
re-engaging the public with the outdoors.
I'm a fortunate American because, as President and CEO of The
Coleman Company, my passion for the outdoors coincides with my
vocation. I frequently suggest to audiences, ``If you're never awakened
on a crisp fall morning inside the warmth of a sleeping bag under the
protection of a tent next to a babbling brook, you have missed one of
life's greatest experiences. And if you have never shared this
experience with a child, you have missed one of life's greatest
opportunities.'' But this experience I describe in reality depends upon
foot soldiers with the right skill sets, working cooperatively. We at
The Coleman Company, in concert with an army of partners in the outdoor
industry, in the retail trade and with organizations like the Boy
Scouts and public park agencies, have been cultivating that skill set
for more than a century.
Beginning in 1900, the role of The Coleman Company has been to lead
the charge in getting people outdoors. When you expose people to the
great outdoors, our founder said, you're introducing them to the
wonder, the healing powers and the joy of being close to nature. So
many others have echoed that sentiment, most notably President Theodore
Roosevelt. I am proud that The Coleman Company has championed this
message throughout its 100+ years. One of my predecessors, Sheldon
Coleman, came before this panel in the 1960's--as well as other bodies,
including the platform committees of both political parties--to urge
creation of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. He also championed
the expansion of the Dingell-Johnson Fund and creation of the National
Trails System and the National Scenic Byways Program, and served in a
leading capacity on the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors
side by side with the late and Honorable Mo Udall. Yet today the
messages of Teddy Roosevelt, and Sheldon Coleman, and Mo Udall, and of
many of you, are falling on deaf ears--or at least distracted ears.
Today, the average youth spends six and one-half hours every day
tied to television and computer screens. Today, nearly 20,000
additional American children are being diagnosed with diabetes
annually. Today, we face an obesity epidemic for all age groups,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and
especially among urban and suburban youth. Today we have millions of
youth diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and medicated to
control disruptions in classrooms. Today, we see unrelieved stress
leading to drug abuse, roadway rage and abuse of loved ones. Today, we
are grappling with the long-term healthcare costs of growing numbers of
inactive senior Americans.
And today, we know that regular doses of healthy active fun in the
outdoors are a remedy--a cost effective and medically effective
remedy--to these challenges that now jeopardize the quality of life for
millions, render many U.S. businesses uncompetitive and pose daunting
economic hardships for government agencies at the local, state and
national levels.
A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR PARTNERSHIPS
The National Park Service and other government entities should not
be the only foot soldiers in this campaign to re-engage the public with
the outdoors and harvest the physical, the mental and the spiritual
benefits. That has been increasingly the pattern over fifty years,
under Democratic and Republican leadership alike. And it has left us
with an underfunded system of parks and other public places and
declining visitations. It is time to be as bold as we were as a nation
one hundred years ago, as bold as we were fifty years ago. It is time
to invite the business community in as a partner to help provide the
places and the programs that serve societal needs.
The corporate world is a huge, untapped resource for both funding
the outdoor places and the message about the benefits of these places.
And it is at its best in getting messages out. In addition, business
has the power to make getting outdoors into a national priority. That
is a marketing challenge, the very skill set that business has in great
supply.
Engaging corporate America in this campaign will, without question,
broaden public support. It will also help tap into a national structure
for communicating the message from the local, to the regional, to the
national parks level using the same tried and true business practices
that have made this country's economy the strongest in the world.
At The Coleman Company, our business is making the outdoors more
accessible and more appealing to an ever more sedentary population. We
provide the tools and the information for people to get to the fun of
the outdoors faster and make the experience one that they'll want to
repeat over and over again. The mandate of our company--get people
outdoors, have fun and reap the ancillary physical and emotional
benefits of the outdoor lifestyle. And we're not alone. Corporate
America has gotten the outdoor message, has been preaching it in its
marketing messages and is ready to answer your call.
In partnership with the National Park Service, key corporations can
help make our National Parks relevant to today's Americans. Businesses
know the consumer pretty well. Knowing the customer is the difference
between success and failure. And it is important to remember that
consumer spending on recreation in America today is some $400 billion
annually and growing.
At Coleman, our insights into America's leisure wants are delivered
through the marketplace, and the success of our efforts is reflected in
the fact that most families visiting national parks arrive with one or
more of our products: a cooler or a lantern, a stove or a sleeping bag,
a tent or one of our fishing rods, a Coleman canoe or an inflatable
water tube or kayak.
But our parks are largely disconnected from feedback from the
marketplace.
Case in point--visits to Shenandoah National Park have been
declining significantly in recent years. One of several reasons--the
park hasn't added the infrastructure that people seek. Mountain biking,
one of the fastest growing categories in family outdoor activity, for
example, has been ignored despite available administrative roads and
underused trails. Corporate American knows how to fix a disconnect like
that by linking park offerings with consumer demand.
Forging this coalition is an opportunity for government to bring
together a broad cross-section of American business resources,
including representatives from a wide array of different sectors, each
with a vested interest and each with unique contributions.
Imagine recruiting executives from the country's most successful
entertainment companies, healthcare companies, travel companies,
outdoor companies and auto companies, as well as countless others, and
setting them to the task of repositioning the National Parks as
destinations, not just places to visit. I ran a four season Ski and
Golf resort and know, all too well, the painful difference. Marketing
is what drives business and marketing, along with park revitalization,
will be the driving force behind this campaign's success.
I recently learned that the average length of stay at many of our
national parks is equal to the time it takes to drive across them.
Think of if, visiting the natural wonders of Death Valley National
Park, an area roughly the size of the State of Connecticut, for only
three hours. What a waste. Want the solution? Ask business.
One of the critical missions of this initiative is to remind the
American public of their responsibility to be stewards of the land by
using and not abusing it. Business applauds this and, through effective
marketing, will make it possible for the parks to include stewardship
education. Coupled with the right park offerings, visits and length of
stay will increase. By identifying and funding new activities that will
attract today's consumer to the parks, participation rises and everyone
wins.
I am not simply touting real effective partnerships as an academic
exercise. The Coleman Company relies heavily on partners--partners like
the Continental Divide Trail Alliance and the Appalachian Mountain
Club, Wal*Mart and specialty sporting goods retailers. We combine
dollars and manpower and other assets to serve seamlessly those people
who seek positive memories of time in the Great Outdoors. And this is
the template that the National Park Service should pursue as it
approaches its Centennial and enters its second century.
Partnerships will help us focus on and overcome the barriers that
exist to connecting Americans with their lands--barriers like onerous
insurance requirements placed on non-profits and profits seeking to
help youth discover the fun of the outdoors at parks. In my discussions
on Capitol Hill and with Administration executives over the last year,
I have often referenced the model of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC)
as a way to meld public and private forces into a force for the public
good--in that case, equipping American youth to achieve greatness and
stand on podiums to receive medals in international competition. And
the USOC succeeds without commercializing sports, just as we need to
succeed without commercializing parks.
This Congress and this Administration are engaged in a dialogue
that demands a win/win. We need to transcend divisions, including
political divisions. And we need to open the doors to innovation. It is
time to look closely at innovative efforts underway within many state
park systems, including partnerships that replace investments of public
funds with private capital. It is for us to adopt lessons learned from
partnerships at Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts--a National
Park Service unit--and the Smithsonian. We need to learn and adopt the
best practices from partnerships like the Claude Moore Colonial Farm--a
unit of the National Park Service that serves the public without a NPS
staff.
RECOMMENDATIONS ON LEGISLATION
I opened my testimony by applauding both pieces of legislation
subject to today's hearing. It is easy to find elements of both bills
to support. Yet I urge the committee to look for a synthesis of these
bills complete with some new elements as its work product.
First, we applaud the increase in investments in our national parks
under both bills. H.R. 3094 proposes an assured addition of $100
million, regardless of achieved matches. H.R. 2959 would provide up to
that amount in federal funds--if matching funds were attracted. That
could boost annual funding to $200 million or more annually through
2016.
We strongly support the higher target and the requirement that the
agency solicit support which will leverage available federal funding at
least 1:1. This seems especially appropriate because we are talking
about a Centennial Fund not to cover normal operations and facilities,
but to fund excellence in the parks. This is truly an exciting
opportunity for individuals, non-profits and businesses to be invited
to the table to help define the programs that deliver this revitalized
outdoor experience and share the tab.
Practically, this also creates broad ownership in the Centennial
effort. For many of us who admire and support the Land and Water
Conservation Fund, the idea of a more engaged base of support is very,
very attractive. This provision could be essential in assuring that the
Centennial Fund will be fully funded and make it to 2016--perhaps
continuing long thereafter.
Let me also express strong support for a change to the legislative
proposals before you to capitalize on recent lessons. Both bills
envision a Centennial Fund. H.R. 2954 expressly calls for contributions
to this fund to create the matches needed for approved projects. Far
more preferable would be a fund from which matching grants could also
be made. A model for this would be the Southern Nevada Public Lands
Management Act, which, since 2000, has received nearly $3 billion from
the auction of surplus federal lands in Southern Nevada. It is used to
award grants for annual projects in land acquisition, capital projects
and environmental restoration. Typically, the projects it funds are
leveraged, but these matching funds do not need to be deposited into a
federal account and the projects can be achieved faster and often more
efficiently than through traditional federal procurement efforts. We
urge adoption of a similar model for the Centennial Fund, with project
selection vested in the Secretary of the Interior and with oversight
from a board created in the Centennial legislation.
I am also told that the goals we share must be resolved in
compliance with federal budgeting and appropriations guidelines. I live
well outside the Beltway and don't profess to understand PAYGO and
offsets. I appreciate that H.R. 3094 addresses this issue and commend
the commitment reflected to not work for a symbolic success--one that
will not deliver the results to the ground in national park units
across the nation. The support of America's business leaders for the
Centennial Initiative will be strong if the Fund is truly a mandatory
program through 2016, with a definite commitment of federal funds.
Finally, I need to comment on the language in H.R. 3094 regarding
project categories and categorical percentages. While some guidance is
needed, I strongly urge the Congress to avoid highly prescriptive
formulas that may force the National Park Service to ignore the public
and partner input into the Centennial initiative. Far better would be
regular Congressional oversight and consultation with the agency--
something H.R. 3094 already contemplates. My concern with the formulas
in H.R. 3094 is exacerbated because the legislation fails to include a
category of vital interest to The Coleman Company and all recreation
interests: needed investments in recreation infrastructure.
A visit to a national park should not be defined by time spent
looking through the windows of your personal vehicle or a park tram,
and it should not be focused on time spent in a visitor center.
America's parks need more and better trails, better campsites--
developed and backcountry--and better fishing piers and boat launches.
The Coleman Company's interest and support of the Centennial
initiative, and that of our partners, is focused on the recreation
infrastructure of the parks.
Additionally, I strongly support use of the Centennial Fund to go
beyond the physical aspects of parks. Attention to and investment in is
needed to such non-physical needs of the parks as marketing,
interpretation, events and outdoors activity training programs.
SUMMARY
As a lifelong outdoor advocate working in a company whose name is
synonymous with the outdoor lifestyle, I can think of nothing that
would affect positive change faster in the use of these national
treasures than to increase the number and diversity of interests
engaged in their revitalization.
The goals for this effort are clear. The benefits to the public are
also clear. All that remains, as we say in business, is to get the
right people on the bus, put them in the right seats, and decide where
the bus should go.
Today I ask you to include corporate America on the National Park
Service Centennial Celebration bus as a partner in this important
initiative. Its contributions will be many, its financial support will
be significant and the result will be a healthier, happier and more
outdoors oriented public. Together, we will make the National Park
Service Centennial Celebration into a lifestyle changing reality for
everyone.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much, sir, and let me now turn
to Tom Kiernan, president, National Parks Conservation
Association. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF TOM KIERNAN, PRESIDENT,
NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION
Mr. Kiernan. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman and
Congressman Bishop, I am Tom Kiernan, president of the National
Parks Conservation Association, and pleased to be here to
represent our 330,000 members nationwide who care deeply, as
you very much do as well, about our beloved National Parks. I
do have a written statement, which I would submit for the
record and would attempt to summarize right now.
First, let me congratulate you, Mr. Chairman, and Chairman
Rahall for your leadership in introducing H.R. 3094 and for
holding this very important hearing as you approach the recess.
Obviously, these are extraordinarily busy times for you.
I also would like to commend Mr. Bishop and Congressman
Young for introducing the equally important legislation
suggested by the Secretary, H.R. 2959.
Overall, NPCA strongly supports the effort contemplated by
these two bills, so long as this effort, first, is viewed as
part of a larger, comprehensive solution to restore the
National Parks by the 2016 centennial; second, if this effort
effectively encourages appropriate increases in philanthropy;
and, third, for this effort to be integrated into, and support
a vision for, the National Park System as a whole.
For reasons that I want to explain in just a moment, NPCA
prefers the approach taken in H.R. 3094, though with certain
modifications consistent with the intent, we think, of both
bills.
First, I would like to explain why these bills need to be
viewed as part of a broader solution for our National Parks.
Chronic funding shortfalls continue to be the most pervasive
threat to our National Parks. Based on our analysis over the
last many years, the annual funding shortfall for our National
Parks more than $800 million each year. As a result, many park
managers have had to reduce their workforces, have had to
reduce the hours that a visitors' center is open, have had to
close some visitors' centers, and have had to reduce the number
of programs and the number of ranger-led tours in the parks.
Given the significant $800 million annual funding
shortfall, I want to emphasize that the $100 million annual
Centennial Fund idea must be thought of as a part, a very
important part, but only a part of a concerted, comprehensive,
and multi-year effort to restore and adequately fund the
nation's parks by their centennial.
Toward this end, we are certainly pleased with the Fiscal
Year 2008 Interior appropriations bill that has passed the
House that makes unprecedented progress in reducing that annual
funding shortfall from $800 million down to roughly $600
million. The House bill also includes a $50 million funding
initiative for the Centennial Challenge as a way of bridging
over to this authorizing legislation hopefully being enacted.
In addition to thanking this Committee for your work on
park funding, I want to recognize again the co-chairs of the
National Parks Caucus, Congressmen Baird and Souder, for their
leadership. These proposed increases have also been catalyzed
by the thinking and leadership of the Secretary of the
Interior, Dirk Kempthorne, and Director Mary Bomar, and I want
to recognize their work on that issue.
I would like to now switch from talking about Federal
funding to philanthropy. From its inception, the National Park
System has benefitted greatly from the generosity of the
American people, and we see increasing philanthropy as an
integral and positive part of this initiative. But to
effectively encourage appropriate increases in philanthropy, we
would like to make three specific recommendations in regard to
the bills that you are considering.
First, the administration's bill, 2959, proposes to create
a required match program whereby Federal funds would match,
dollar-for-dollar, cash contributions from nonFederal sources.
We believe counting only cash contributed to the Federal
Treasury is too limiting.
By Park Service estimates, the largest share of private
contributions to the park system is in the form of in-kind
materials and services. We believe that while such cash
contributions are important, these in-kind contributions of
materials and services, including the related project-
management capabilities of the larger friends groups, should be
included in the match process as well.
Second, some accommodation needs to be made in the match
concept to ensure that parks with small or nonexistent friends
groups are also able to participate in the Centennial Challenge
program. Since H.R. 3094 does not include a formal, dollar-for-
dollar, match requirement but makes the philanthropic component
optional, it obviates these two problems that I just
summarized, and thus we prefer the approach taken in H.R. 3094.
However, we do recommend that 3094 be adjusted to give
additional priority to those projects and programs that have a
strong partnership component. Such an approach would encourage
the many friends groups, cooperating associations, individual
partners for being a part of this whole program.
Last, we would encourage that Section 4 of H.R. 3094 be
expanded to include a component explicitly on cultural
resources.
Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the
opportunity to testify, and we look forward to working with you
and here, obviously, to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kiernan follows:]
Statement of Thomas C. Kiernan, President,
National Parks Conservation Association
Mr. Chairman, and members of the subcommittee, I am Tom Kiernan,
president of the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). Since
1919, NPCA has been the leading independent voice of the American
people for protecting and enhancing our National Park System for
present and future generations. I am pleased to be here today on behalf
of our more than 330,000 members nationwide who visit and care deeply
about America's national parks.
Mr. Chairman, I cannot overemphasize how important introduction of
H.R. 3094 by you and Chairman Rahall is in terms of creating the
critical legislative momentum needed to enact legislation in time to
authorize a truly viable centennial program. We applaud and thank you
for your leadership in developing a thoughtful legislative proposal
that includes mandatory new spending on behalf of our national parks,
sets priorities for how those funds should be allocated and encourages
contributions from philanthropic sources as we ready the parks for
their second century.
I particularly appreciate that the subcommittee has chosen to hold
this important hearing on the proposed national parks centennial
legislation in this time frame with the press of so much other
important business before the Congress. Taking this step in the
legislative process now clearly demonstrates that you share our goal of
making national parks a national priority as the centennial of the
founding of the National Park Service and the unique and magnificent
park system the Park Service was created to manage and conserve
approaches in 2016. Time is certainly of the essence in launching an
ambitious, viable program to help repair and enhance the park system in
order for it to begin its second century in the best condition
possible, prepared for the challenges of the future. It is a task that
requires the Congress, the Administration, philanthropic groups,
conservationists, communities, and individual park advocates working
together for a common purpose--to harness American pride, patriotism
and vision to protect this precious national legacy. Holding this
hearing before the impending recess sends an important message to that
effect.
NPCA strongly supports the effort to create a special, dedicated
fund over and above amounts provided in the regular appropriations
process to address priority programmatic and project initiatives to
enhance the park system during the years leading up to the centennial.
We see this concept not only as an important source of money to pay for
important and worthy programs and projects for the parks, but as a way
to engage the American people in keeping their own heritage alive.
Let me emphasize at the outset, though, that this proposal alone
will not solve the problems and address all the long and short term
needs of the parks which have resulted from decades of funding
shortfalls during many administrations and Congresses. It must be
thought of as one part of a concerted, comprehensive, multi-faceted,
multi-year effort to restore and adequately fund the nation's parks.
Substantial increases in park funding, particularly for operations in
addition to this bill, sustained over many years will be needed to make
the parks whole.
Chronic funding shortfalls continue to be the most pervasive threat
to the national parks. Our analysis shows that the shortage of funding
for national parks has grown to more than $800 million every year. The
backlog of maintenance and preservation needs exceeds $7.8 billion
dollars, and the Park Service has a backlog of $1.9 billion in
acquiring inholdings located within park boundaries. Many park managers
have been forced to reduce their work forces, lower the number of
public education programs they are able to offer, shorten visitor
center hours or shutter visitor centers altogether, and deny requests
from school groups for ranger-led tours. In parks across the country,
interpretive displays and signage are outdated, brochures are in short
supply or non-existent and interpretive rangers are missing. In many
parks, nationally significant lands are subject to development threats.
Under these constraints, park managers struggle to engage and inspire
visitors, and protect natural and cultural resources.
A commitment for sustained funding increases is absolutely
necessary to make progress toward eliminating the annual $800 million
operating budget shortfall. We believe without a doubt that, armed with
the facts, the American people will agree that the protection and
enhancement of the superlative natural, cultural and historic symbols
of our shared American experience should indeed be a national priority,
particularly in these difficult and unsettling times when the meaning
of our heritage is so profound. These places remind us of who we are
and how we got here, as a people and as individuals with personal and
family connections to special park places.
We are very gratified, and frankly relieved that the administration
requested and the full House of Representatives and the Senate
Appropriations Committee have approved FY 2008 Interior appropriations
bills containing a significant first installment in the increases for
park operations that are so essential. It would mean, roughly, that the
$800 million operating shortfall would drop to $600 million for the
2008 fiscal year. It is a good start and one that needs to be enacted.
This increase needs to be sustained as the appropriations process moves
forward, and we respectfully solicit your help in achieving that goal.
I know that you, Mr. Chairman, and many members of this subcommittee,
have consistently supported increased funding for park operations in
the appropriations process, and I want to thank you for that.
I would be remiss if I did not also thank Representatives Souder
and Baird for the strong leadership they have consistently shown over
the past several years. This includes their introduction of the
National Park Centennial Act, and the extensive series of hearings Mr.
Souder conducted across the country on the future of the National Park
System. As co-chairs of the ever-growing House National Parks Caucus,
they have both demonstrated a significant and sustained commitment to
our national parks and have helped create the opportunity that is now
before us.
Nearly one year ago at Yellowstone National Park, Interior
Secretary Kempthorne announced an initiative to re-focus attention on
the national parks and their needs in anticipation of the 2016
centennial. One of the key elements of that initiative is the so-called
``centennial challenge,'' and how that concept is to be manifest in
legislation is, of course, the subject of today's hearing. But before I
discuss the legislation, let me say a word about Secretary Kempthorne.
Since his arrival, we have experienced a sea change in
receptiveness at the Interior Department to our entreaties about the
needs of the parks and the federal responsibility to address them.
Clearly, he shares our vision about the value of the National Park
System to the American experience, both now and in the future, and I
attribute the lion's share of this administration's newfound interest
in the national parks to his presence and his commitment to help the
parks on his watch. I thank him for his leadership in support of the
national parks.
Having an experienced director who has worked her way up through
the ranks of the Park Service has also been good for the parks. Let me
say for the record that it is a pleasure to work with Director Mary
Bomar.
While the central element of the effort to address the needs of the
National Park System during the years leading up to the 2016 centennial
must be focused on encouraging the federal government to meet its
fundamental stewardship responsibility in protecting and adequately
funding the national parks, much of the attention surrounding the
centennial initiative has been devoted to the idea of creating a
program to carry out selected signature or centennial projects and
programs. We heartily support this concept so long as the specific
projects and programs are integrated into a vision for the National
Park System as a whole and will take the parks to a higher standard of
excellence in preparation for their next century. As H.R. 3094
specifies, the program should consist of new money, and should not
result in reduced funding for other important park needs.
Forty years ago, when the Eisenhower administration launched
``Mission 66'', its commitment of $1 billion in preparation for the
50th anniversary of the National Park System, it did so in the context
of the development of the interstate highway system, with a vision very
much influenced by that endeavor. The $1 billion initiative that
President Eisenhower launched and Presidents Kennedy and Johnson
continued is worth some $7 billion in today's dollars. Although that
investment was devoted to a smaller national park system serving fewer
visitors, it was tremendously important. In hindsight, however, it also
resulted in what is now acknowledged to have been too heavy an
investment in infrastructure projects, some of which needed to be
reworked in later years. Accordingly, the centennial challenge must
incorporate a strong set of criteria for project selection that will
build on the most beneficial aspects of the Mission 66 experience, meet
genuine park system needs, and avoid a repeat of past mistakes. It
should articulate a vision and define priorities based upon the
mandates of the National Park Service Organic Act and its mission. It
must contribute to a compelling case that the Park Service will be
better equipped to restore natural and cultural treasures, to protect
park resources, to serve park visitors, to enhance park science, to
engage the full diversity of our nation in the parks, and better
connect them to schools and universities. It is essential that the Park
Service focus as well on how it needs to evolve in order to fulfill its
mission in the next century and to integrate the parks into the lives
of more Americans and keep them relevant to the communities in which we
live. If that occurs, Congress can be fully justified in making a ten-
year commitment to enhanced park funding.
From its inception, the National Park System has benefited greatly
from the generosity of the American people, who have contributed many
millions of dollars in support of their parks in order to assure a
measure of excellence in the condition of park resources and the
quality of park programs for visitors. According to the Park Service,
in 2005, the combined value of contributed services, aid and funding to
national parks through cooperating associations, volunteers and friends
groups, as well as the National Parks Foundation was approximately $241
million. One of the truly exciting things about the centennial program
and project concept is its potential to increase the level of
philanthropic support for the park system. We see that as an integral
and positive part of the initiative, not just incidental to it.
For its part, the Administration proposes to leverage additional
philanthropic activity by creating a required match program whereby
federal funds would be made available equal to amounts contributed by
non-federal sources, up to $100 million per year. That is to say, if
only $20 million dollars is raised privately under the program in a
year, the federal government would contribute only $20 million. The
``challenge'', therefore, would be to raise at least $100 million in
philanthropy every year to ensure that the full $100 million in federal
dollars could be released for centennial projects and programs.
As is so often the case, the devil is in the details.
The administration's bill, introduced in the House by
Representative Bishop and Representative Young as H.R. 2959, requires
that non-federal contributions be made in cash and paid directly into
the Treasury in order to qualify for the federal match.
What we have learned from the various parks friends groups and
other charitable organizations with whom we have developed close
relationships over many years is that counting only cash contributions
which are paid into the treasury is too limiting. In fact, by far the
largest share of contributions to the park system is in the form of in
kind materials and services. For example, in 2005, friends groups
donated $61 million - $8.5 million in cash and $52.5 in non-cash
contributions, according to Park Service estimates. It is important to
note that non-cash contributions often take the form of turnkey
facilities such as museums and visitor centers, materials such as the
steel used for the restoration at Yosemite Falls, and other projects
providing direct monetary value to benefit a specific park. Because
such friends groups can often achieve market efficiencies through
project management the Park Service cannot, such in kind contributions
often result in substantial cost savings. This should be maintained.
Under the match proposal, parks with particularly active or
successful friends groups likely would be disproportionately advantaged
since projects or programs they support would have a greater chance of
being funded. Today, there are 391 units in the National Park System.
There are some 175 friends groups. Some serve more than one park, but
many if not most units have no such groups. Some accommodation needs to
be made in the match concept to assure that parks without active,
successful friends groups are not disadvantaged or forgotten.
Finally, requiring the matching funds to be channeled through the
treasury could actually be detrimental to the goal of increasing
charitable contributions. Not only does it foreclose giving credit for
in-kind or other non-cash contributions, but high-end donors in
particular understand that financial gifts made directly to the
government do not earn interest but that gifts though intermediary non-
profit groups do. Many of those donors also fear that their
contributions will not be used as they intend if they write a check to
the federal treasury.
The Grijalva/Rahall centennial bill (H.R.3094) would also create a
centennial fund to be used for selected projects and programs, but it
makes the philanthropic component optional rather than mandatory. By
doing so, it obviates several challenges with which we have been
struggling since the Secretary took the initiative to propose the
centennial challenge concept. For example, by using existing
partnership authority, H.R. 3094 avoids the need to create new
bureaucratic mechanisms that would be needed to make a philanthropic
match requirement work. It ensures, for instance, that parks without
active philanthropic partners will receive needed assistance in
preparation for the centennial, while enabling friends groups and their
national park partners to be as creative as possible in developing
additional project or program proposals using the potential federal
monetary commitment to leverage additional philanthropic activity.
Without the requirement of a match, the bill avoids the need to develop
a more encompassing and realistic match definition or to debate the
inclusion of appropriate in kind contributions. By using existing
partnership authority, it eliminates the need to address whether
philanthropists would have to write checks directly to the treasury.
This being said, it will be absolutely critical for the Park
Service and its partners to work together to maximize the potential for
using this program to attract additional philanthropic support.
Section 5 of H.R. 3094 on partnerships clearly acknowledges that
the Secretary may accept donations for any centennial project. Indeed,
it provides sufficient flexibility to enable the Park Service to submit
proposals to Congress, the vast majority of which would include a match
component. It merely prohibits the administration from withholding
funds from parks based on the existence or lack of a non-federal match.
Experience shows that park philanthropies generally follow a philosophy
of adding value. If the private sector sees itself as supplanting
rather than supplementing the federal responsibility to fund the
national parks, philanthropy retreats since no added benefit is
evident. Potential donors are in general unwilling to pay for things
they perceive their tax dollars should already be covering. By the same
token, if potential donors recognize an increase in federal government
priority for the national parks and an improved federal commitment to
adequately funding core park operations, their motivation to add value,
including specific park improvements and programs will be invigorated.
When coupled with sustained increases in funding for park operations,
creation of the national park centennial fund clearly demonstrates the
kind of increased federal attention that can lead to expanded
charitable giving for the park system.
One useful clarification relates to the use of unobligated funds.
We suggest making it explicit that the availability of unobligated
funds for projects in the Fiscal Years 2009 through 2018 as set out in
Section 4(b) is not intended to be limited by fiscal year. That is to
say, amounts in the fund that remain unspent should be carried over
from year to year, not returned to the treasury.
H.R. 3094 also explicitly addresses the concern we have expressed
that amounts spent from the centennial fund on selected projects must
be new money, not money taken out of other park programs or budgets or
offset against existing appropriations levels. Section 7 on maintenance
of effort makes it explicit that money from the fund shall supplement
and not replace other annual park service expenditures. The section
goes on to direct the Park Service to maintain adequate, permanent-
staffing levels, not replacing permanent staff with non-permanent
employees hired to carry out projects. That is also very important.
We are also pleased that Section 6 of the bill specifically directs
that actions of Park Service employees with regard to any project shall
be governed by Director's Order #21. Having that directive in statutory
language is an additional safeguard against any potential for over
commercialization of the park system that might be created by
participation in centennial projects by private entities.
Ever since the idea of creating a dedicated fund for signature or
centennial projects and programs was first raised, we have argued that
the development of an objective selection process that is guided by
clear standards for judging and prioritizing projects is essential if
the program is to be politically credible and viable. We believe great
care must be taken to ensure that proposals are evaluated objectively
and for the value they bring not only to individual parks, but also to
the future of the entire park system. By specifically setting out the
categories of issues and goals the centennial projects must address and
outlining a process for their selection, H.R. 3094 not only provides
the program with clarity and stability for its duration, but also
increases its political credibility with the Congress. It will also
require Congressional discipline in reviewing Park Service proposals to
ensure that system needs are being met.
The six categories for centennial projects and programs set out in
the bill--Education, Diversity, Supporting Park Professionals,
Environmental Leadership, Natural Resource Protection, and Construction
are generally in keeping with our own thinking and recommendations, and
are basically consistent with categories outlined by the Interior
Department in its Report to the President in May. Clearly, they lay a
foundation for implementing centennial projects and programs that are
truly meaningful and which will contribute to the goal of preparing the
National Park System for its next century.
There are a couple of points about specific categories I would like
to mention.
First, while the ``Natural Resource Protection Initiative''
[Section 4(b)(5)] is extremely important, cultural resource needs are
not sufficiently addressed in the bill. Each of the 391 units in the
National Park System contains significant cultural resources that the
Park Service is charged with preserving for present and future
generations. More than just bricks and mortar historic structures,
cultural resources also include archeology, culturally significant
landscapes, ethnographic resources, and museum collections. These
valuable resources are not renewable; they cannot be researched or
interpreted for future generations if they are lost forever through
neglect. The job of putting the National Park System in its best
possible condition in time for the centennial would be incomplete if
the historic and other cultural sites under the Park Service's care are
overlooked. Therefore, we strongly suggest that section 4 of the bill
be expanded to include the protection of cultural resources as well.
I also want to call attention to the category titled, ``Supporting
Park Professionals'' [Section 4(b)(3)], which we consider to be very
important. One of the most acute complications the Park Service has
faced as funding for the parks has failed to keep up with need has been
the ability of the agency to fully train its staff on critical emerging
skills and issues. This is particularly problematic with the number of
retirements the Park Service has been experiencing. It is our
understanding the Park Service now has the smallest budget for training
per employee of and of the federal resource management agencies. While
many Park Service staff are well trained and experienced in many
important areas, park managers also need to be trained to handle the
complicated financial, political and managerial responsibilities needed
to run an increasingly complex park system, and uphold Park Service
management policies. I commend you for recognizing that need in your
bill.
Finally, let me say that while the bill's formulation of requiring
spending in each category to be allocated in specific percentages seems
reasonable in terms of preventing problems such as those encountered in
Mission 66 with too much emphasis being placed on brick-and-mortar
projects, somewhat more flexibility may be warranted. For example,
there might be categories wherein a spending percentage ceiling is
required and others that should have a spending floor in order to
achieve the desired diverse mix of centennial projects and programs.
Requiring adherence to a strict percentage formula for the allocation
of funds each year for each category may mean worthy and timely
initiatives are forced out of the running without adequate
consideration because their relative cost does not fit into the
percentage formula.
Again, Mr. Chairman, let me commend you and all the members of the
Subcommittee, for your interest in taking substantive action to ensure
that our national parks are ready to meet the challenges of their
second century. The lead up to the centennial presents an extraordinary
opportunity to evaluate and prepare to meet these challenges and to
reach the park system's full potential as one of our country's premier
resources. Our sleeves are rolled up and we are ready and willing to
work with you to perfect this important legislation and see it enacted
into law as soon as possible. The national parks should be a national
priority. By 2016, the entire National Park System should be a model
for the world of American excellence and innovation, grounded in
protecting the natural and cultural heritage we hold so dear.
I am happy to respond to any questions you might have.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much.
The final witness, Mr. Bill Wade, Chair of the Executive
Council, Coalition of National Park Service Retirees. Welcome
and thank you.
STATEMENT OF BILL WADE, CHAIR, EXECUTIVE COUNCIL, COALITION OF
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE RETIREES
Mr. Wade. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Bishop. I will add my thanks to you for holding this hearing
and for inviting us to make our views known.
I am the Chair of the Executive Council of the Coalition of
National Park Service Retirees, which now consists of 600
individuals, all former employees of the National Park Service.
Together, we bring to this hearing over 17,000 years of
accumulated experience.
We strongly support H.R. 3094, the National Park Centennial
Fund Act. We believe this bill is much better than the Bush
administration's proposed Centennial Initiative to increase NPS
funding over the next 10 years that is incorporated in H.R.
2529, and we applaud the efforts of Chairman Rahall and
Congressman Grijalva for their vision and efforts.
Because we think this is a much better bill, I will confine
my comments largely to that, and in my written testimony, I
have provided some specific suggestions and recommendations
that we think would enhance the bill. But for purposes of my
comments here today, I would like to focus on a couple of
specific issues.
First of all, we support and applaud the bill's intent to
create a dedicated funding source for the Centennial Fund for
each fiscal year, from 2008 through 2017, a notable difference
from the Bush administration's proposal in H.R. 2529.
Additionally, we appreciate the identification of the
National Park Centennial Initiatives specified in the program
allocation section of the bill and especially the emphasis
prescribed in subsection [d] for the ``Education in Parks
Centennial Initiative.'' We think that education in the parks
is one of those programs that has taken a very large hit over
the last few years.
However, we believe that this section glaringly omits a
Cultural Resource Program Centennial Initiative. It is
important to reflect that over 60 percent of the 391 units of
the National Park System were set aside by Congress and the
president to preserve our nation's cultural heritage resources.
Moreover, 100 percent of all National Park Service areas have
cultural resource elements found in them that require
management and sometimes protection consistent with the law and
the mission of the National Park Service.
The National Park Service cultural heritage
responsibilities are fully equal in status and stature to the
National Park Service's natural science and conservation
mandates and need to be properly recognized as such.
The National Park Service leads the Nation and works with
citizens, sister Federal agencies, and local state and tribal
governments to preserve the nation's heritage through such
well-known programs as the National Heritage Areas, the
National Register of Historic Places, Natural and National
Historic Landmarks, Historic American Buildings Survey, and
through a number of Federal historic tax credits programs that
provide a wide variety of granting and assistance programs.
All of these cultural heritage programs must not be
precluded from consideration for receiving support through the
Centennial Fund, nor should the protection of the nation's
cultural heritage be so narrowly construed that it represents
only old historic buildings.
Assuming that the Line Item Construction program will cover
many of the majority of the work required in cultural resource
management neglects the reality that maintenance of historic
structures is only one small aspect, although a costly one, of
what is required under the law to care for the cultural
resources that the NPS is responsible for.
I would also like to comment, just briefly, on the
partnership element. While we strongly believe in the concept
of philanthropic support to the National Parks, and we note the
huge values and benefits accrued to the National Park System
since its inception, we have been very skeptical of the
administration's proposed efforts to provide additional funding
through a matching provision in the proposed legislation.
Given what we have all witnessed in the past decade or so
relative to the increase in greed in the corporate sector and
declining ethical behaviors in both corporate and government
officials, it is hard not to be suspicious about the motives of
some giving organizations, and I am not trying to cast broad
aspersions here, but, nonetheless, there is an incentive, both
on the commercial side and on the part of park managers
sometimes, to make up for appropriations that are not really
there that cause us some concern. We would urge some very
serious caution in how that is administered and how it has
moved forward.
That pretty much concludes my comments here, Mr. Chairman.
Again, thank you for inviting us. I have submitted my written
statement for the record, and I would be happy to answer any
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wade follows:]
Statement of John W. ``Bill'' Wade, Chair, Executive Council,
Coalition of National Park Service Retirees
Mr. Chairman and other distinguished Members of the Subcommittee,
thank you for holding this hearing and thank you for inviting me to
express my views, and the views of our Coalition of National Park
Service Retirees on the important topic of managing our nation's
national parks. I retired just over ten years ago from the National
Park Service after a 32-year career, including serving the last nine
years of that career as the Superintendent of Shenandoah National Park.
I am now the Chair of the Executive Council of the Coalition of
National Park Service Retirees.
The Coalition now consists of 600 individuals, all former employees
of the National Park Service, with more joining us almost daily.
Together we bring to this hearing over 17,000 years of accumulated
experience. Many of us were senior leaders and many received awards for
stewardship of our country's natural and cultural resources. As
rangers, executives, park managers, biologists, historians,
interpreters, planners and specialists in other disciplines, we devoted
our professional lives to maintaining and protecting the National Parks
for the benefit of all Americans--those now living and those yet to be
born. In our personal lives we come from a broad spectrum of political
affiliations and we count among our members seven former Directors or
Deputy Directors of the National Park Service, over twenty-five former
Regional Directors or Deputy Regional Directors, over thirty former
Associate or Assistant Directors and over one hundred and thirty former
Park Superintendents or Assistant Superintendents.
We strongly support H.R. 3094, the ``National Park Centennial Fund
Act.'' We believe this Bill is much better than the Bush
Administration's proposed Centennial Initiative to increase NPS funding
over the next 10 years that is incorporated in H.R. 2529. We applaud
the efforts of Chairman Rahall and Chairman Grijalva for their vision
and efforts.
Because we think it is a much better Bill, I will confine my
comments to H.R. 3094. We offer the following thoughts on Sections of
that Bill that might need attention or refinement.
Section 3: National Park Centennial Fund
We support and applaud this Bill's intent to create a dedicated
funding source for the Centennial Fund for each fiscal year from 2008
through 2017, a notable difference from the Bush Administration's
proposal included in H.R. 2959. While we strongly believe in the
concept of philanthropic support to National Parks, and note the huge
values and benefits accrued to the National Park System since its
inception, we have been very skeptical of the Administration's proposed
efforts to generate additional funding by including a matching
provision in the proposed legislation. Given what we've all witnessed
over the past decade or so relative to the increase in greed in the
corporate sector and declining ethical behaviors by both corporate and
government officials, it is hard not to be suspicious about the motives
of the ``giving'' organizations--especially commercial and some
special-interest organizations--and the quid pro quo expected from, and
sometimes provided by the recipient organizations. When coupled with
the increased pressures placed on park managers to take advantage of
the incentives offered by private money to offset declining budgets, we
are very concerned about keeping national parks public and national.
Section 4: Program Allocation
Developing the list of proposals as prescribed in this section is
guaranteed to further stress an already cumbersome and lengthy project
development and review process prescribed for the NPS, unless short but
feasible deadlines are specified. As an example, review and approval of
projects, authorized by the Fee Demonstration Program are frequently
locked in years of review and approval through the mandated Development
Advisory Board process. This leaves important fee money sitting in
accounts, often for several years, awaiting programmatic approval and
contributing to the perception that the fee money is not being
effectively applied to projects in accordance with promises that have
been made. Adding another $100,000,000 to the annual process of project
review and approval will challenge the system even more severely and
could result in increasing years between nomination of the project and
completion of it. We believe that careful project development and
review is a critical component of a successful project. Congress has
made its intentions clear that the NPS must exercise its expertise and
due diligence to also assure funds are carefully spent. We know that
Congress wants to see results, and the parks need results--during the
birthday decade of the National Park Service, not the decade after it!
But, Congress must also accommodate its expectations of project
accomplishment with the Service's capacity to efficiently conduct the
required project oversight. It is our opinion, and that of many
national park professionals, that the current system and capacity of
the NPS to carry out increased project review and approvals of an
additional $100 million dollar program is compromised.
A ``Cultural Resource Program Centennial Initiative'' is Needed
We appreciate the identification of the ``National Park Centennial
Initiatives specified in subsection (b) of this Section, and especially
the emphasis prescribed in subsection (d) for the ``Education in Parks
Centennial Initiative.'' However, we believe this Section glaringly
omits a ``Cultural Resource Program Centennial Initiative.'' It is
important to reflect that over 60% of the three hundred and ninety-one
units of the national park system were set aside by Congress and
presidents to preserve our nation's cultural heritage resources.
Moreover, 100% of all our national park areas have cultural resource
elements found in them that require management, and sometimes
protection, consistent with law and the mission of the National Park
Service.
National Park Service cultural heritage responsibilities are fully
equal in status and stature to the National Park Service's natural
science and conservation mandates and need to be properly recognized as
such. Our National Park System tells the full American story from the
First Americans, to the landing of Christopher Columbus to recent sites
of the civil rights struggles. The NPS preserves for the American
public the site of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in
the New World, most of the major battle sites of the American
Revolution and the Civil War, the homes of many presidents, sites
associated with the Alaska Gold Rush, Japanese internment camps during
World War II, and the story of the struggle for equality for women. The
NPS holds all these in trust for the American people. These places, and
the unsurpassed museum collections associated with them, tell the
authentic, real American story spanning thousands of years. They are
the best American History classrooms in existence. They are authentic
places in an increasingly inauthentic world.
The National Park Service leads our nation and works with citizens,
sister federal agencies, and local, State, and tribal governments to
preserve the nation's heritage through such well known programs as
National Heritage Areas, the National Register of Historic Places,
National Natural and Historic Landmarks, Historic American Buildings
Survey and through a federal historic tax credits program and a wide
variety of granting and assistance programs that touch every state and
thousands of local and tribal governments each year.
All of these cultural heritage programs, in parks and external to
parks, must not be precluded from consideration of receiving support
through the Centennial Fund. Nor should the protection of our nation's
cultural heritage be so narrowly construed that it represents only
``old historic buildings.'' Assuming that the Line Item Construction
program will cover the majority of work required in cultural resource
management neglects the reality that maintenance of historic structures
is only one small aspect (although a costly one) of what is required
under law to care for the cultural resources the NPS is responsible
for. Even these historic structures will not fare well in direct
competition within the same category with high-dollar priorities such
as new visitor centers and needed infrastructure projects.
There is evidence that cultural resources program management in the
NPS has suffered serious problems and has declined in effectiveness
over the past several years. To ignore the 115,000,000 objects, 67,000
archeological sites and 26,000 historic structures managed by the NPS
by not according them the same level of importance in the Centennial
Fund as the natural resources managed by the NPS is likely to compound
the already serious problems.
It is essential that a Cultural Resource Management component be
added to the initiatives proposed in this legislation. Similarly, the
distribution of funds for these initiatives proposed in this section
would need to be adjusted accordingly to reflect the addition of a
Cultural Resource Management Initiative certainly as equitable as the
other 10% Initiative Allocations. In subsection (d), we suggest
reducing the allocation to the ``Line Item Construction Program'' to
20% to allow a ``Cultural Resources Protection Centennial Initiative''
to be added with an allocation of 10%.
``Diversity in Parks Centennial Initiative''
We believe the language in the ``Diversity in Parks Centennial
Initiative'' might benefit from some refinement. For instance, the
present language in 2(B)(ii) requires that each diversity proposal
shall be designed ``to make'' NPS employees ``and'' visitors to System
units ``reflect the diversity of the population'' of the U.S. This is a
very stringent test if every proposal has to meet both, and to ``make''
that result possible ignores local and regional demographics in favor
of national demographics that, in fact, may not be representative at
all. The report itself might benefit from having a FACA-exempt advisory
committee.
``Environmental Leadership Centennial Initiative''
We note somewhat of the same problem with the ``Environmental
Leadership Centennial Initiative.'' It also requires that each proposal
must ``reduce harmful emissions, conserve energy and water and reduce
solid waste production...'' What about proposals that meet only one or
two of these criteria, but not all?
``Line Item Construction''
We agree that ``Line Item Construction'' proposals should be
consistent with approved park planning documents. However, we again
alert you to the backlog of just getting ``administrative approvals in
place before or during the fiscal year for which funds are sought''
(see previous comments). Excluding environmental compliance and project
review and approval from funding consideration neglects the reality
that most of any project's effort is ``up-front'' in planning, design,
environmental and cultural compliance, and project review--all of which
is constrained by time and funding.
Frankly, we would not be disturbed if even smaller amounts of this
``extra'' Centennial money were to go to bricks and mortar, and even
more of it to creating and imbedding new operating habits geared toward
resource protection, communication of park values, relating to emerging
population dynamics, and providing quality lifelong learning for
employees thereby continuously raising professional standards.
Section 5: Partnerships
There is a long and rich tradition of philanthropic and non-profit
partnership in managing and protecting national parks--as long as the
history of the National Park Service itself. Clarification is needed to
better articulate the values that a constructive philanthropic effort
can bring to the table in support of this legislation. While this
legislation rightly focuses on assuring a dedicated funding source for
the Fund, it does little to seriously encourage philanthropic and
Foundation efforts that can offer wonderful and powerful additive
``margins of excellence'' to the NPS. We believe the ``No Contingency''
clause is positive by not precluding projects simply because the
originating park does not have a ``cost-share partner.'' However,
should the proposal have such a partner and be able to meet all the
criteria and provide the ``margin of excellence'' a philanthropic
partner can provide, we believe it should strengthen consideration of
the proposal and offer dramatic proof of what federal and private
investment can bring to our parks. We urge the Committee to include in
this legislation an expectation that all bona fide philanthropic and
other non-profit partners, including the National Park Foundation,
friends groups of all sizes and capabilities and the complete range of
cooperating associations and educational and programmatic non-profit
partners, be equally able to contribute to the long term benefit of the
parks in our society. Doing so will reinforce the goal of using the
Centennial decade as a way to prepare the national parks and the
National Park Service for its second century to be as valuable to the
nation and the world as its first century has been. Again, we make the
point that philanthropic partnership must not replace inherent federal
responsibility of managing and funding our National Park System, but
can offer a meaningful and deep valuable addition to the federal
effort, and can serve to further connect Americans to their national
parks and the heritage they preserve for all of us, our children and
grandchildren.
Section 6: Maintenance of Effort
We appreciate the language in this Section that the Fund ``shall
supplement rather than replace annual expenditures by the NPS....''
However, we recommend that the same language be applied to the
Congressional Appropriations process and to the Administration Budget
process where language is frequently inserted to take back what has
been given, or to assess costs against an appropriation, or to offset
one appropriation with another. As you know, in practical effect this
may be determined as much by the degree to which Appropriations
Committee members support the intent as by the wording of the
legislation. We recommend extraordinary steps be taken to obtain the
understanding and support of Appropriations Committee members for the
intent behind the legislation, and we offer our assistance in doing so.
Summary
In closing, we believe that this legislation represents an
important step forward toward trying to solve the funding problems of
our National Park System. The chronic under-funding of the National
Park Service has been well-documented by the National Parks
Conservation Association (NPCA), the Coalition of National Park
Retirees, and the NPS itself. A decade ago, the National Park Service
prepared studies of its present abilities to manage the natural and
cultural resources entrusted to it. The reports determined that it
employed only 25% of the staff needed to provide professional attention
to natural resources and only 22% of the staff needed to care for its
cultural resources! Practically speaking, this means that the national
parks have been operating on only two-thirds the funding required to
preserve, research, and interpret to the visiting public their
collection of incomparable resources. Importantly, a decade later the
Business Plans undertaken in our park units have identified the same
types of shortfalls. Finally, the NPS has been struggling for years to
address the so-called ``maintenance backlog,'' the funding required to
attend to the deferred maintenance of visitor centers and other
administrative buildings, roads and trails, housing, water and
wastewater systems, as well as archeological sites and monuments. The
National Park Service estimates its backlog at $8 billion. By any
measure, the $2.4 billion in President Bush's 2008 budget proposal,
while generous when compared with recent NPS budgets, will not make
much of a dent in this monumental shortfall.
The National Park Service should not only be the leading natural
and cultural heritage preservation agency in the country, it should set
the ``gold standard'' for the preservation of natural and cultural
resources throughout the country and the world. The Centennial of the
National Park Service presents the nation with an opportunity to attend
properly to the needs of an agency that preserves reminders of who we
are as a people and where we want to go as a community.
ALMOST A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, just before the creation of the
National Park Service, the British ambassador to the United States,
James Bryce, spoke to the American Civic Association on the subject of
national parks and their importance to society. With great simplicity,
he acknowledged the obligation to ``carefully guard what we have got.''
``We are the trustees for the future,'' he charged. ``We are not here
for ourselves alone. All these gifts were not given to us to be used by
one generation, or with the thought of one generation only before our
minds. We are the heirs of those who have gone before, and charged with
the duty we owe to those who come after....''
As this country begins to think about the Centennial of the
National Park Service, it is appropriate that we have a serious
conversation about parks and their value to our society, and the role
we want parks and the National Park Service to play in the future. What
is our obligation, as the trustees of these magnificent places, to our
children and their children? The upcoming Centennial provides an
opportunity to think creatively about the kind of National Park Service
we want for the next century and envision systemic changes for its
betterment and ours.
We believe this legislation will be one of the many decisions and
actions that must be taken during this Centennial to assure an
appropriate future for our National Park System. We look forward to
working with all partners to assure a bright future.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Let me thank all of the panel in
its entirety. Let me begin with Mr. Cipolla.
Given the experience you have raising money for our park
system in the private sector, we are coming upon the hundredth
anniversary, this important anniversary, plus a renewed
commitment, on the part of Congress and the administration, to
our park system, which we are talking about additional funding
as part of that renewed commitment.
Do you think these two factors, the funding equation that
we are talking about plus the anniversary, are going to provide
you with enough leverage to be able to actively and
successfully raise money in the private sector as we approach
these dates?
Mr. Cipolla. We do appear to be in an environment of more
momentum for National Park philanthropy. Certainly, the
conversation around 2016, a lot of the work that is being done
in the Landscaper Friends groups, friends groups, of which
there are 160 across the country, are coming into their own.
They are maturing as charitable organizations. They are doing
better work each and every year. The National Park Foundation,
as well, has been investing and is maturing as an organization
to do better work.
So I do think that we are entering a very promising era for
park philanthropy. The leverage of matching money, and matching
money, of course, is very common in charitable work, the
leverage of matching money, as a tool, would further encourage
and accelerate charitable giving as well.
Mr. Grijalva. The matching requirement, you feel, is
absolutely necessary.
Mr. Cipolla. Well, charitable giving is increasing now to
the National Parks and, I think, will continue to do so.
Matching money, again, which is very, very common, will
accelerate giving. It just will. To have that kind of leverage
and the awareness around the potential of Federal funds to
complement charitable dollars will have an impact. Giving will
increase without it, but it will go faster with it.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Mr. Kiedaisch, thank you very
much. Going back to the mountain bike example that you gave
relative to the relevance of what our parks need to be doing in
the future, usually those management plans, as to hiking trail,
equestrian, mountain bike, those are management resource
decisions that are made at that unit.
So my question is, there is no implication in your comments
that the private sector should have some role in those resource
decisions or in the process of environmental compliance.
Mr. Kiedaisch. No, absolutely not. In fact, it is very
important that those decisions are made in the neighborhood by
the park because there will be different opportunities with
different venues that should be appropriate.
Mr. Grijalva. Is the Coleman Company presently a donor to
the National Park Service?
Mr. Kiedaisch. Not presently, sir. We are donors to many
others. One example would be the Appalachian Mountain Club. We
made a commitment to fully fund their Trails 2010 project,
which is to rebuild the trails the Appalachian Mountain Club is
responsible for, for the trail from Connecticut to Maine, and,
indeed, we have done that.
Relative to the concern about rulemaking and standards and
commercializing the parks, you will not find a Coleman placard
anywhere, you will not find a press release anywhere to that,
and, in fact----
Mr. Grijalva. That is because we are all carrying them into
the park.
Mr. Kiedaisch. They are on their backpacks, yes. Mr.
Chairman, there you are correct, and there is where the
partnership works. The rising tide will help pay this back to
the corporation.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much. I am sure Mr. Cipolla
will give you his card, as he actively recruits donors as we
approach the centennial. Thank you.
Mr. Kiernan, we have heard a couple of times that
visitation is flat or declining over the last decade. Speak to
us about what is impacting this trend and the factors involved
in it and some of the things that are being talked about:
education, outreach, professional development. Would they, or
would they not, help begin the reversal of that trend?
Mr. Kiernan. Let me back up for one moment. It is our
understanding that visitation is variable among the different
parks. By that, I mean, some parks have seen significant
increases over the years. Some have been flat and some
declining.
So one observation is there are very different reasons
among different parks as to why the visitation may be
declining, which, from our viewpoint, then means the strategy
for enhancing visitation in those different parks is likely
very different based on the park. So that is one observation.
We would submit that a significant part of it has been the
long-term funding, operating, funding shortfalls in the parks,
where the parks have had to either cut back on the programming,
cut back on the ranger-led tours. All of that matters to kids,
families coming into the park. If they do not have the
activities where a ranger is able to teach them, inspire them,
take them for a walk, likely their visit will be shorter to the
park, or they will not return.
So we think funding is a problem. Clearly, in some of those
parks where the facilities have not been kept up, where the
bathrooms have not been as clean as they should be, that has
been a detriment to some folks coming. We do think, as you, I
believe, said, that increasing the operating budget so that the
park personnel are better trained, have the resources they need
to provide the educational experience; that is all part of a
multidimensional solution in enhancing visitation. We do see
this 10-year window leading up to the centennial and this whole
philanthropic dimension as all part of the solution.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much. Let me acknowledge
something you said and also Mr. Wade said, and that is about
cultural resource protection being part and parcel. I think
that that is an excellent observation and something that we
will look at very, very carefully. I appreciate it.
Mr. Wade, you mentioned that the National Park Service has
difficulty meeting its responsibilities, especially around the
environmental-compliance process, I think, before a project can
go forward or be put into effect.
The centennial bill, which would pump significant amounts
of new resources into the process; is that going to help or
hurt the current situation?
Mr. Wade. Well, it is one of those things that we are
concerned about, Mr. Chairman, because we know of examples
right now where, with the ongoing construction funding that has
been provided, sometimes as meager as it is over the last few
years, there are still examples where, you know, approvals get
bogged down in both the compliance and the priority setting
within the National Park Service and all of those sorts of
things.
Now, to come along and add another dimension of funding,
either through the increase that you propose or through the
matching or both, is just going to simply add a tremendous
amount of workload there that I think certainly the National
Park Service is aware of, but I think the Congress and the
Committee needs to be aware of also.
There may need to be some provisions thought about--I do
not have the answer specifically--in the legislation that would
at least recognize that, if not try to figure out some
mechanisms by which that can be enhanced without compromising
the environmental compliance and some of those things.
Mr. Grijalva. Let me turn to Mr. Bishop for any questions
he may have. Sir?
Mr. Bishop. Thank you. Mr. Cipolla--did I pronounce that
properly, or at least close enough for government work?--when
you reach out to the philanthropic community for donations,
what challenges do you face that other nonprofits would not?
Mr. Cipolla. Certainly that we are raising money for
projects for assets, for places, that receive Federal support.
So the charitable community wants to understand that its
dollars are really being used in an appropriate way--we
sometimes refer to it as ``margin of excellence''--where their
dollars and commitments are bringing value to the parks in
addition to the Federal government's responsibility to those
parks.
Mr. Bishop. OK. Thank you. Mr. Kiedaisch--is that right?
Mr. Kiedaisch. That is correct.
Mr. Bishop. OK. What is being done in state park systems
that could be replicated in the National Park System?
Mr. Kiedaisch. That is a great question. In the State of
Connecticut, the director of parks and recreation there
actually initiated a program where people go into a library,
their local library, and check out a card that will give them
access to the state parks, and they increased visitation
tremendously. While that was state government doing that, that
is a good example of how the private sector can be the
communication and distribution vehicle.
For example, Wal-Mart reaches 92 percent of all American
households. A kiosk inside their store communicating the
benefits and reasons why people should be visiting these parks
and building the stepping stones, from the couch to the back
yard to the state park to the National Parks, is doable there.
You can reach different consumer segments by the different
channels of retail. An REI could be a good example of reaching
more avid mountain climbers that would get access to the parks
and communicate that way as well.
Mr. Bishop. Why is it important for the public to have
ownership in the centennial effort?
Mr. Kiedaisch. I think it is important always to engage the
public in these public properties in order for them to have
stewardship and pride in it. If we do not engage them, they do
not become part of it, and they will not protect it.
It also is important to engage corporate America because
they are going to benefit from it, and, as I said in my
testimony and in my written testimony, I do not believe that
the American taxpayers, the Federal government, should have to
go this alone.
If you go to the insurance industries and say, ``What does
it mean to you if we can reduce childhood diabetes by one
percent?'' Their actuaries will give you a number very fast,
and they will be very willing to support whatever initiative
would increase activity of young adults and children to reduce
that onset of diabetes.
Mr. Bishop. I have talked about individual contributions.
That would be probably the same effect and not have the same
desire to put ``Coleman'' all over everything to do it.
Mr. Kiedaisch. No. Actually, in my experience, I served on
the United States Ski Team Foundation for eight years. We
actually put estate planning in, and it allowed people to
donate, in memory of themselves and their family, to support
various programs, and it was overfunded every single year. In
fact, we raised, for the U.S. Ski Team, upwards of $25 million
a year, and the parties interested in the ski team are for
smaller than the audience that we have at hand here for the
National Parks.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you. One last question for you. You
discussed the situation of your visitation to Shenandoah
National Park. From a business perspective, how do the problems
like that reverberate and damage visitation throughout the
entire park system?
Mr. Kiedaisch. Well, this would come from my experience in
running a resort. I ran Stowe Ski Resort for eight years, and
the skier visit was flat for many, many years, and until the
ski resorts changed their venues and brought services that the
consumers were looking for--better dining or snowboard parks
and music festivals in the summertime--the venues were going
dry on the vine.
So the importance here is that you need to make sure that
the venue is relevant to today's consumer. I am not suggesting
turning them upside down. They need to preserve what the
original heritage was of these parks.
Mountain biking is a great example. It is compatible in
these parks. We have vast acreage, and we can build trails that
would be compatible for that and have alternative trails for
equestrian as well. If we do not have those venues, we will not
attract the young people, and visitation will continue to go
down, in my belief.
Mr. Bishop. I know that is consistent with what Director
Bomar was talking about in her testimony as well, and her
success rate she had in those areas for which she had direct
control before becoming director of the entire Park Service.
Mr. Kiernan, I just have a question about the disclosure
statement that you sent to us. I realize that you noted that,
in the last three years, you have received grants from the
Interior Department. Have you any pending lawsuit or lawsuits
in the last three years with the Interior Department?
Mr. Kiernan. I would need to check with staff. Off the top
of my head, I am not sure. So we will check with staff and get
back to you.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you. Mr. Wade, I will give you one last
question, and then I am done. What commercial fees do you think
should be raised to offset?
Mr. Wade. Congressman Bishop, I do not really know. I will
admit that I have not personally looked into the variety of
fees that are out there. I do certainly believe that to include
concessions in that mix is going to turn out to be a problem,
in the sense that any raises in concession fees are going to be
turned right back around in terms of costs to the visitors, and
that, then, in turn, is likely to work against the visitation
issue that you and others have brought up.
When it gets into the other commercial fees that are
involved in the other bureaus within the Department, I would
have to do some homework to answer your question specifically
because I just do not know about all of those.
Mr. Bishop. All right. Thank you. I will yield back.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much, gentlemen. I appreciate
your testimony. It was very informative, and as we go through
this process, your ideas and your comments will be welcomed.
Thank you very much, and the meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:56 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]