Bomar's Boondoggle

It is just one hundred and ten days before the election, but the National Park Service is working overtime to waste tax dollars. National Park Service Director Mary Bomar is requiring everyone one of her cash-strapped park superintendents to attend a summit on increasing the capacity of National Parks.

The numbers are impressive. Four hundred and seventy-nine officials, including thirty-two from headquarters, are meeting at the Snowbird resort in Utah. Each attendee must pay their own way from their own budget. Travel alone runs around $479,000. The stay at Snowbird piles up an additional $154,000 using government summer per diem rates for the area.

For two-days, attendees heard inspirational presentations from outside speakers and discussed the changing nature of park attendance. No one was bold enough to mention that Bomar’s “Core Operations” (see my February 15, 2008 blog – “National Treasures”) has gutted park operations or that its official intent has been to eliminate or dramatically reduce public programs in each park. The workshops on “increasing capacity” were also a joke as Bomar and her predecessor, Fran Mainella, have presided over a strategic crippling of Park Service capacity.

The official media releases from the summit offer a cheery tableau of unity and rekindling of team spirit. The last release talks about an “emotional closing”, including putting together a time capsule to pass on to a new generation of leaders. Bomar even waxed poetic about parks being special places. The final component of this “Potemkin village” was screening excerpts of PBS’s new series on National Parks. Instead of forcing park professionals to attend this taxpayer-funded swan song for Bush operatives, the money should have been spent on saving our history. We don’t need new propaganda-inspired time capsules. We need real resources to reverse seven years of wanton disregard for our heritage.

It is a sad commentary on how the Bush Administration has so decimated the Park Service, and so demoralized its ranks, that the careerist attendees were afraid to use the summit to launch a full-scale rebellion against these years of abuse. There needs to be a full accounting for the years of neglect and under-funding that have occurred under Bush and his henchmen. Thankfully, the Interior’s Department Inspector General is beginning to probe into how years of mismanagement have destroyed national treasures and are placing many more items at risk. We can only hope the next President takes decisive action to erase and reverse Bush’s shameful legacy.

Inside Baseball

There are daily reminders why Americans hold their Congress in such low regard. Today’s example comes from a “dust-up” between Representative Nick Rahall (D-WV) and the Secretary of Interior. It is all outlined in the June 19 issue of The Washington Post.

The National Park Foundation decided to hold a reception celebrating National Parks. Unilever underwrote the festivities. The “dust-up” occurred when the announced venue was the Capitol Hill Club, the national Republican club situated across from the Cannon House Office Building.

On April 21, Rahall wrote Interior Secretary Kirk Kempthorne decrying the partisan venue. National Park Director, Mary Bomar, responded to Rahall on May 30, defending the location.

This is the kind of “inside baseball” that fills an average day in our nation’s Capital. Minor slights over protocol can derail major policy initiatives. Personal feuds can sink compromises. Egos get in the way of the peoples’ business.

The case of Rep. Rahall, taking the time to engage over a reception’s venue, and the media’s reporting, gives us a glimpse into a strange parallel universe where such things matter.

Over the last four years the Bush Administration has been gutting the National Park Service under the guise of a management review called “Core Operations” (see my February 15, 2008 blog – “National Treasures"). Entire park units have been closed, major education programs have been curtailed, and priceless national treasures have been put at risk. Yet, not one hearing or public letter from Rep. Rahall on the wanton and fundamental destruction of one of the major agencies under his committee's jurisdiction.

This is one more reason why there is so much disdain for Congress. Real things happen, that affect real Americans, and nothing is said or done. The priority and zeal is for making an issue out of the trivial. The only value of these minor issues is to placate the ego of some official or provide an opportunity for some pedantic partisan cheap shot. Shame on Congress, for wallowing in non-issues to the detriment of those that really matter. Shame on The Washington Post, for covering such stories while ignoring the real world.

National Treasures

I do not understand why the Bush Administration hates the National Park Service (NPS).

Over the last seven years the Bush Administration has under funded park operations by over $600 million a year. They have also created a $5 billion backlog in deferred maintenance. They have also reorganized in ways designed to hamper land acquisition and derail private partnerships and donations. These actions have ground construction and land acquisition to a virtual halt. The President’s FY 2009 Budget identifies $351 million in unobligated NPS construction funds and $185 million in unobligated land acquisition funds. These NPS funds are found on pages 649-650 of the President’s budget appendix (pdf pages 53-54). http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2009/pdf/appendix/int.pdf

However, the most heinous Administration actions strike at the fundamental survival of the National Park System. The Bush Administration has been secretly shutting down park operations and undermining our park system through a program called “Core Operations”.

“Core Operations” is mandating that every national park reduce its current operations by at least twenty percent over the next five years. In addition, each park is being told that they will have to absorb all cost increases related to inflation, personnel, and benefits within these reduced budgets. “Core Operations” has already resulted in wholesale terminations of public programs, firings and forced transfers of personnel, and the closing some park units. All this is being done without public knowledge or input. In fact, this program’s guidelines specifically ban public input and prevents park managers from considering customer and stakeholder interests.

The first signs of this resource starvation have recently surfaced in a report from the Inspector General of the Department of Interior. That report disclosed how the National Park Police are being plagued by low moral, poor leadership, and bad organization. Most importantly, the report sounds the alarm that our national monuments are at risk http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02/06/travel/14_50_482_4_08.txt.

The Administration’s reaction to this report, and other reality checks, is denial and punitive efforts to silence its critics. Theresa Chambers learned what happens when career officials speak out about what is really happening. In 2004, Ms. Chambers, as the Chief of the U.S. Park Police, spoke out about the Bush Administration’s neglect and its impact on our national parks and monuments. Her concern for our nation’s treasures earned her a rapid demotion.

The Park Service is not always the most efficient or effective at preserving our national treasures and providing public programs. We all remember the $1 million spent in 1988 on an “environmentally friendly” outhouse in Glacier National Park http://www.jldr.com/oh1mill.html and the $330,000 spent in 1997 on an outhouse along the Appalachian Trail that did not have any running water http://www.theplumber.com/outhouse.html. But such fiascos do not justify the current systematic undermining and dismantling of the agency protecting our national treasures.

If the Bush Administration is right about our being in a global struggle against radical Islam then it should be of paramount importance that we preserve and protect the icons that define our nation. During the Christmas season the Bush White House made a big show of promoting the Park Service. The official Christmas tree featured park ornaments and the family’s dogs became junior Park Rangers in the annual Bush Christmas video. There is clearly a disconnect between these symbolic acts and the Bush administration’s own jihad against our national treasures.

This assault on the Park Service comes at a pivotal time in America. We are facing a major crisis in our civic culture. We are victims of our own success. Today we can watch 100 different television stations and visit millions of websites. This means we are no longer obtaining information in any common format or source. We are rapidly losing the collective experience and collective memory that are the foundation of a civic culture. We no longer have a common frame of reference that defines us as Americans and as a nation.

The collapse of civic culture has ended more civilizations than invasions and disease. This is not about immigration or diversity. It is about how we maintain our public values and institutions when people forget who we are and how our system works. In West Virginia public high schools civics is now an elective. Guides at the U.S. Capitol have to explain federalism and the three branches of government to US tourists and school groups.

The basic principles of our civic culture, and the history that created it, must be taught as a central part of preparing the next generation. One way to preserve our civic culture is to support the stewards of our collective memory – the 388 units of our national park system. This fundamental concept seems to be lost on President Bush, Secretary Kempthorne, and Park Director Bomar. We may have to wait until the next President before there is a clear commitment to preserving our past in order to assure our future.