[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                      NATIONAL PARK SERVICE'S DEFERRED 
                            MAINTENANCE BACKLOG:
                         PERSPECTIVES FROM THE GOVERNMENT 
                               ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
                             AND THE INSPECTOR GENERAL

=======================================================================

                        JOINT OVERSIGHT HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

             SUBCOMMITTEES ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
                           AND FEDERAL LANDS

                                 OF THE

                     COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                      Wednesday, January 10, 2024

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-87

                               __________

       Printed for the use of the Committee on Natural Resources
       
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        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
                                   or
          Committee address: http://naturalresources.house.gov
          
                              __________

                   U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
54-552 PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2024                    
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------              

                     COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES

                     BRUCE WESTERMAN, AR, Chairman
                    DOUG LAMBORN, CO, Vice Chairman
                  RAUL M. GRIJALVA, AZ, Ranking Member

Doug Lamborn, CO			Grace F. Napolitano, CA
Robert J. Wittman, VA			Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, 	
Tom McClintock, CA			    CNMI
Paul Gosar, AZ				Jared Huffman, CA
Garret Graves, LA			Ruben Gallego, AZ
Aumua Amata C. Radewagen, AS		Joe Neguse, CO
Doug LaMalfa, CA			Mike Levin, CA
Daniel Webster, FL			Katie Porter, CA
Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, PR		Teresa Leger Fernandez, NM
Russ Fulcher, ID			Melanie A. Stansbury, NM
Pete Stauber, MN			Mary Sattler Peltola, AK
John R. Curtis, UT			Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, NY
Tom Tiffany, WI				Kevin Mullin, CA
Jerry Carl, AL				Val T. Hoyle, OR
Matt Rosendale, MT			Sydney Kamlager-Dove, CA
Lauren Boebert, CO			Seth Magaziner, RI
Cliff Bentz, OR				Nydia M. Velazquez, NY
Jen Kiggans, VA				Ed Case, HI
Jim Moylan, GU				Debbie Dingell, MI
Wesley P. Hunt, TX			Susie Lee, NV
Mike Collins, GA
Anna Paulina Luna, FL
John Duarte, CA
Harriet M. Hageman, WY


                    Vivian Moeglein, Staff Director
                      Tom Connally, Chief Counsel
                 Lora Snyder, Democratic Staff Director
                   http://naturalresources.house.gov
                                 ------                                

              SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

                        PAUL GOSAR, AZ, Chairman
                      MIKE COLLINS, GA, Vice Chair
                MELANIE A. STANSBURY, NM, Ranking Member

Matt Rosendale, MT                   Ed Case, HI
Wesley P. Hunt, TX                   Ruben Gallego, AZ
Mike Collins, GA                     Susie Lee, NV
Anna Paulina Luna, FL                Raul M. Grijalva, AZ, ex officio
Bruce Westerman, AR, ex officio

                     SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL LANDS

                       TOM TIFFANY, WI, Chairman
                     JOHN R. CURTIS, UT, Vice Chair
                     JOE NEGUSE, CO, Ranking Member

Doug Lamborn, CO                     Katie Porter, CA
Tom McClintock, CA                   Sydney Kamlager-Dove, CA
Russ Fulcher, ID                     Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, 
Pete Stauber, MN                         CNMI
John R. Curtis, UT                   Mike Levin, CA
Cliff Bentz, OR                      Teresa Leger Fernandez, NM
Jen Kiggans, VA                      Mary Sattler Peltola, AK
Jim Moylan, GU                       Raul M. Grijalva, AZ, ex officio
Bruce Westerman, AR, ex officio
                                
                                
                                CONTENTS

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

Hearing held on Wednesday, January 10, 2024......................     1

Statement of Members:

    Tiffany, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Wisconsin.........................................     2
    Stansbury, Hon. Melanie A., a Representative in Congress from 
      the State of New Mexico....................................     3
    Neguse, Hon. Joe, a Representative in Congress from the State 
      of Colorado................................................     5
    Westerman, Hon. Bruce, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Arkansas..........................................     6

Statement of Witnesses:

    Greenblatt, Hon. Mark, Inspector General, Department of the 
      Interior, Washington, DC...................................     8
        Prepared statement of....................................    10
        Questions submitted for the record.......................    17

    Johnson, Cardell, Director, Natural Resources and 
      Environment, Government Accountability Office, Washington, 
      DC.........................................................    19
        Prepared statement of....................................    20
        Questions submitted for the record.......................    25

Additional Materials Submitted for the Record:

    Submissions for the Record by Representative Gosar

        National Parks Conservation Association, Statement for 
          the Record.............................................    49
                                     


 
   OVERSIGHT HEARING ON NATIONAL PARK SERVICE'S DEFERRED MAINTENANCE
    BACKLOG: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
                       AND THE INSPECTOR GENERAL

                              ----------                              


                      Wednesday, January 10, 2024

                     U.S. House of Representatives

               Joint Hearing between the Subcommittees on

                      Oversight and Investigations

                           and Federal Lands

                     Committee on Natural Resources

                             Washington, DC

                              ----------                              

    The Subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 10:19 a.m. in 
Room 1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Tom Tiffany 
[Chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal Lands] presiding.
    Present from Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations: 
Representatives Rosendale, Hunt, Collins, Luna; Stansbury, 
Case, and Lee.
    Present from Subcommittee on Federal Lands: Representatives 
Tiffany, Lamborn, Fulcher, Stauber; Neguse, Leger Fernandez, 
and Peltola.
    Also present: Representatives Bergman and Maloy.

    Mr. Tiffany. The Subcommittees on Federal Lands and 
Oversight and Investigations will come to order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a 
recess of the Subcommittees at any time.
    The Subcommittees are meeting today to hear testimony on 
the National Park Service's deferred maintenance backlog: 
perspectives from the Government Accountability Office and the 
Inspector General.
    I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Michigan, 
Mr. Bergman, and the gentlewoman from Utah, Ms. Maloy, be 
allowed to participate in today's hearing from the dais.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    Under Committee Rule 4(f), any oral opening statements at 
hearings are limited to the Chairmen and the Ranking Minority 
Members of the Subcommittees. I therefore ask unanimous consent 
that all other Members' opening statements be made part of the 
hearing record if they are submitted in accordance with 
Committee Rule 3(o).
    Without objection, so ordered.
    I will now recognize myself for an opening statement.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. TOM TIFFANY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 
                  FROM THE STATE OF WISCONSIN

    Mr. Tiffany. I would like to welcome everyone to the 
Subcommittee on Federal Lands' first hearing of 2024, and the 
Committee's first joint Subcommittee hearing of this Congress. 
I can think of no better way to start out the year than by 
holding a hearing that highlights the need to rein in out-of-
control agency spending, and keep this Administration 
accountable for the responsible stewardship of taxpayer 
dollars.
    We are holding this hearing today because, as Members of 
Congress, we have no greater responsibility than ensuring that 
taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately. And as Americans, we 
all enjoy our national parks and want to ensure that they are 
left in better condition so our children and grandchildren can 
experience them as we did.
    Four years ago the National Park Service had a total 
deferred maintenance backlog of nearly $13 billion. Since then, 
that backlog has increased by nearly $10 billion to more than 
$22 billion. This increase occurred despite billions of dollars 
of taxpayer investment to improve and maintain our parks 
through the Great American Outdoors Act. You heard that 
correctly, folks. Despite spending billions of dollars to 
reduce the deferred maintenance backlogs at our national parks, 
those backlogs increased dramatically. Many Americans, 
including myself, who expected to see the wide-ranging effects 
of the Great American Outdoors Act, have been left 
disappointed.
    When we visit our national parks we still see too many 
closed trails, leaky roofs in visitor centers, potholes in 
parking lots, and decrepit bathroom facilities. In my district, 
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore has received some funding 
through the Great American Outdoors Act this past year. But 
more than 73 percent of Apostle Islands' backlog remains 
unaddressed after 4 years of the Great American Outdoors Act.
    The Federal Lands Subcommittee has made it a priority this 
Congress to conduct vigorous oversight of the Great American 
Outdoors Act to get to the root of this problem so that we can 
right the ship and start seeing the improvements we all want to 
see in our national parks, including the Apostle Islands. To 
that end, we have invited the Honorable Mark Greenblatt from 
the Department of the Interior's Office of Inspector General, 
and Mr. Cardell Johnson from the Government Accountability 
Office. Both the Office of Inspector General and Government 
Accountability Office are independent watchdogs that have 
recently released reports on the National Park Service's 
deferred maintenance backlog that contains shocking and 
disturbing evidence of mismanagement.
    According to the Inspector General report, the data that 
the National Park Service uses to track its deferred 
maintenance is inaccurate and unreliable. This is hardly 
surprising, considering the Inspector General also found that 
the National Park Service inappropriately added a blanket 35 
percent markup to its deferred maintenance total without any 
proper justification. If this was the private sector, and a 
company inflated its profits by 35 percent without proper 
documentation, its CEO would go to jail. Yet, in the Federal 
Government this is being treated as business as usual.
    I am also deeply concerned with findings that the National 
Park Service is not adequately monitoring completed deferred 
maintenance projects, particularly projects that immediately 
affect the health, life, and safety of members of the public. 
There are simply too many instances of the National Park 
Service failing to address these critical work orders or 
putting temporary fixes in place that do nothing but let the 
problem fester for years while the backlog rises.
    In total, the Inspector General found evidence that the 
National Park Service backlog is being over-inflated by just 
over $4 billion--that is billion, with a B--through a 
combination of markups and completed deferred maintenance 
projects that are still on the books. Although the National 
Park Service is undergoing the process of updating its 
methodology for calculating its deferred maintenance, as 
referenced in the Government Accountability Office report 
released earlier this week, the Committee has outstanding 
concerns that this alone will not bring the transparency needed 
for an issue as important as this one.
    I want to thank both Mr. Greenblatt and Mr. Johnson for 
joining the Subcommittees today and discussing the important 
findings your organizations have uncovered. I look forward to 
hearing your testimony.
    I will now recognize the Ranking Member, Ms. Stansbury, for 
her opening statement.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. MELANIE A. STANSBURY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
             CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO

    Ms. Stansbury. Wonderful. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Happy 
New Year to everyone. It is wonderful to be here and to have 
this joint hearing.
    As we all know, every year hundreds of millions of people 
visit our national parks seeking refuge, adventure, connection 
with the outdoors, and for cultural practices. The most recent 
data show that our national parks received 312 million visitors 
in 2022, which was up 15 million over the previous year, across 
hundreds of parks across the United States. And keeping up with 
these visitor experiences requires a lot of infrastructure. We 
are talking about thousands of buildings, roads, trails, and 
hundreds of thousands of employees and volunteers who help to 
maintain them.
    Managing and maintaining our park system is not a simple 
task, as we will hear here today. Much of the infrastructure 
for the Park Service was developed between the 1930s and the 
1960s, which means, as visitation grows, many of these assets 
are aging and require maintenance and upkeep. It also means 
that we have to repair everything from major roads and bridges 
to moldy buildings to, yes, even toilets.
    At the same time, we are taking on new opportunities to 
invest in sustainability, accessibility, and facing the 
challenges of climate change. And as we know, this last year 
was the hottest year on record. Like any agency, National Park 
Service needs consistent funding to meet the demands of 
visitation, to ensure safety, and to address these challenges 
and opportunities. But the Park Service has struggled for 
decades with underfunding and personnel shortages, which has 
led to this long list of what we call deferred maintenance.
    I am very proud of this Committee and that it came together 
today in a bipartisan manner and in 2020 to ultimately pass the 
Great American Outdoors Act, which we are going to call GAOA 
today. GAOA provided land management agencies a major funding 
infusion for maintenance needs and aging infrastructure, 
including almost $6.5 billion for the Park Service. And I think 
it is worth noting that this law was worked on for many years--
in fact, many decades--to provide that permanent funding on a 
bipartisan basis, and was ultimately signed into law by the 
former President Trump. This sort of achievement is what our 
constituents sent us here to do, but there is no denying that 
there are significant challenges, and we cannot continue to 
address this decades-long issue without increased investment.
    Still, 3 years later, the Park Service is making good use 
of the funding, though I think we will hear today that it is 
slower than expected. Critical projects that were previously 
out of reach are underway. For example, nine of the most 
treacherous miles of the iconic Going-to-the-Sun Road in 
Glacier National Park, which is used by visitors from all over 
the world, is being rehabilitated and a vital bridge is being 
replaced; sewage treatment systems in the heavily-visited 
Canyon and Grand Villages in Yellowstone National Park are 
being repaired and replaced; in my home state of New Mexico, 
the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge is having a major revamp, 
which is very crucial to this huge bird flyway and refuge in 
our state; and our Speaker of the House Johnson's own neck of 
the woods in Louisiana, the Cane River Creole National Historic 
Park is also seeing the replacement of critical infrastructure.
    To date, GAOA has leveraged $1.8 billion in average GDP 
contributions and supported over 17,000 jobs each year. As more 
major projects are completed and smaller projects continue to 
be checked off the list, it sounds like we will see deferred 
maintenance estimates start to come down in the Fiscal Years 
2025 and 2026. But in the meantime, we have our Inspector 
General and GAO Office here today to share findings that they 
have prepared investigating how the Park Service is managing 
deferred maintenance and making use of these resources.
    The Inspector General's report found room for improvement 
for how the Park Service is estimating its deferred maintenance 
costs, as was referred to by the Chairman, and the GAO looked 
at how the National Park Service prioritizes its deferred 
maintenance projects using this funding, and found that the 
Park Service followed all six leading practices for addressing 
deferred maintenance, including properly prioritizing projects 
with health and safety requirements. Both reports found 
deferred maintenance is still growing and also found room for 
improvement.
    But generally speaking, I applaud the Park Service for the 
work that they are doing, and I understand that there are other 
reasons that have slowed the completion of projects, and look 
forward to hearing the testimony today before the Subcommittee 
to better understand how we can support this Park Service in 
making the best use of these resources.
    With that, I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Ranking Member Stansbury. I will 
now recognize the Ranking Minority Member of the Federal Lands 
Subcommittee, Mr. Neguse, for an opening statement.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOE NEGUSE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 
                   FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO

    Mr. Neguse. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany. Thank you to 
Ranking Member Stansbury for her leadership. And it is good to 
see all of my colleagues.
    I will say I would be remiss before providing some opening 
remarks if I didn't recognize my good friend from Colorado on 
his recent announcement regarding his retirement from this 
august body. Notwithstanding our disagreements in the past, it 
has been a real privilege to serve with him over the course of 
these last several years, and I am grateful to him for his 18 
years of service to the state of Colorado, a state that I know 
he deeply loves and cares for.
    So, congratulations to you, Mr. Lamborn.
    It is a very important discussion today that we will be 
having, and I am grateful to the witnesses, of course the 
office of Inspector General, and to the leadership of the 
Subcommittees in question for putting this together.
    Last April, the Federal Land Subcommittee hosted a similar 
hearing to review the implementation of GAOA, a significant 
bipartisan achievement to invest in the maintenance and 
conservation of our national parks and public lands that we 
passed in 2020, and I certainly couldn't agree more with my 
colleague from New Mexico as she articulated the many benefits 
of GAOA, and the way in which the large-scale investments are 
supporting the ever-growing popularity of parks and public 
lands across the nation.
    I certainly agree that oversight of this program's 
implementation is and should be a priority. Last year, in the 
hearing that we conducted we heard how the National Park 
Service is utilizing investments from the Legacy Restoration 
Fund to address a wide range of critical and priority deferred 
maintenance projects across our cherished national parks. We 
are seeing the benefits of those projects all over the country: 
Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas, which I know our 
Chairman is very familiar with, to Glacier Bay National Park in 
Alaska, of course, as well, and everywhere in between.
    In my home state of Colorado, just for example, there are 
approximately $401 million in deferred maintenance at our 
national parks, but we are excited to see a $32 million 
investment from GAOA within Rocky Mountain National Park, which 
is in my district, to invest in the Moraine Park Campground, 
the largest campground in the park. This particular project 
would rehabilitate the campground's water infrastructure, and 
will also improve accessibility by refurbishing roads, parking 
infrastructure, and campsite amenities. And it is a prime 
example, in my view, of how the National Park Service is 
selecting projects that enhance their core mission, while also 
increasing visitor safety and sustaining the visitation sites 
into the future. So, I am certainly grateful with respect to 
that particular project at Rocky Mount National Park and to the 
NPS' work more broadly.
    It also is just as important to keep perspective. My 
understanding is that the National Park Service has the second 
largest number of physical assets of any Federal agency in our 
government, second only to the Department of Defense. And in 
comparison, the DOD has a deferred maintenance backlog of 
approximately $137 billion, nearly four times the amount of the 
NPS. Of course, to me, that emphasizes the need for focused and 
direct investment in routine and annual maintenance so that the 
Federal land management agencies can continue to protect 
existing and future parcels of Federal land, hire more staff, 
and undertake more projects that benefit all Americans.
    The increased cost of deferred maintenance being reported 
by the NPS should also signal the need for sustained and 
increased funding for the Park Service to address those needs, 
rather than, I will say regrettably, the $433 million in budget 
cuts that have been proposed by my Republican colleagues. I 
know that the Park Service is actively taking measures to 
implement a number of responses to the OIG's important report, 
and I suspect we will hear more about that today.
    But, again, I am grateful to the folks at the OIG, folks at 
NPS for the work that they are doing and, again, to the 
leadership of this Committee for hosting this important 
hearing. And I look forward to hearing more about the 
recommendations and a path forward.
    With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Ranking Member Neguse. I will now 
recognize the Chairman of the Full Committee, Mr. Westerman, 
for an opening statement.

  STATEMENT OF THE HON. BRUCE WESTERMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
              CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARKANSAS

    Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany, and thank you 
to the witnesses for being here today. I think it is very 
appropriate that the first hearing of 2024 for the Natural 
Resources Committee is one that is of great importance not only 
to my district and Arkansas, but to our nation as a whole.
    I believe everybody in this room shares a common goal. We 
all want to improve our parks and leave them in better 
condition than how we found them. It is important to me as a 
conservationist, and it is important to me as somebody who grew 
up around one of our true crown jewels, as Mr. Neguse 
mentioned, Hot Springs National Park. But after reading the 
recently-released reports from the Inspector General and 
Government Accountability Office, it is clear that we need to 
face the reality that the Park Service is falling short of this 
goal, even with the groundbreaking, and I would say landmark, 
legislation through the Great American Outdoors Act.
    I am often referred to as the forester in Congress, but I 
am also an engineer, and I spent over 20 years doing 
engineering projects. And in the world of engineering and 
project management and implementation, there is this model of 
the three-legged stool and its scope, budget, and schedule. And 
to have a successful project, you want those three legs of the 
stool the same length. You want them in balance. And if one leg 
of the stool gets out of balance, it affects everything else.
    For example, if you don't have the scope defined, it is 
impossible to produce an accurate budget. If you shorten the 
schedule, you drive the budget up. And sometimes to make the 
schedule shorter, you have to shorten the budget or shorten the 
scope. Or if you lengthen the scope, it makes the schedule 
longer. So, there is a fine balance, trying to get those three 
legs of the stool in the right place.
    And as I look at the reports, in the simplest terms, it 
appears that the Park Service is failing to keep the three legs 
of the stool in balance. It seems clear that the Park Service 
never really understood the real scope of the problem, despite 
reassurances to myself and to other lawmakers during the 
consideration of the Great American Outdoors Act that this 
legislation would be crucial in reducing the backlog. That is 
why we have seen dramatic increases in the total backlog from 
roughly $12.7 billion when the Great American Outdoors Act was 
first passed to more than $22 billion today.
    I would say probably the most worrying part of this three-
legged stool is the second leg, and that is the budget. I was 
stunned to find out that the Park Service is inflating its 
backlog by 35 percent, or roughly $3.7 billion, with absolutely 
no justification. Prior to the Great American Outdoors Act 
passing, I conducted visits to parks and talked to Park Service 
folks at the highest level, and I was shocked to find out the 
price tag they were using on some of these projects, which 
seemed very inflated at the time, and again, this was before 
the GAOA was even passed several years ago.
    There is no question that the cost to the taxpayer for 
these projects has risen astronomically, and the agency needs 
to provide more thorough and transparent justifications to the 
Inspector General, to this Committee, and to the American 
taxpayer about why that is the case.
    And finally, the third leg of the stool, the schedule. As 
you know, as Chairman of the Committee, I get to tour a lot of 
parks all over the country, and I have been disappointed in the 
lack of progress that I have seen in reducing the deferred 
maintenance backlog. My constituents feel the same, and I know 
there are projects on the books. But again, as these schedules 
extend out, the cost continues to go up. I constantly hear 
feedback about rundown bathrooms, horrible parking lots, and 
closed trails.
    I thought the Inspector General's report highlighting the 
critical health, life, and safety work orders that were behind 
schedule was unbelievable. These work orders should be in the 
agency's top priority, and instead many of these projects that 
directly affect visitor and public safety are going neglected 
and unaddressed for years at a time.
    Even when the National Park Service does stay on schedule, 
the agency still fails to properly update the data, resulting 
in thousands of completed work orders totaling $364 million 
that are still on the books as open deferred maintenance 
projects. For those of you keeping track, that brings us to the 
end of the three-legged stool, which is not looking very 
balanced at the moment.
    I hope that through this hearing and through the work of 
the Committee and working with the Park Service, we can get the 
stool in balance because, again, I believe all of us have the 
same goal to see our parks in as best shape as they can be, and 
to see positive results from the Great American Outdoors Act 
implementation.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Chairman Westerman. We will now 
move on to our witness panel.
    Let me remind the witnesses that under Committee Rules, you 
must limit your oral statements to 5 minutes, but your entire 
statement will appear in the hearing record.
    To begin your testimony, please press the ``on'' button on 
the microphone.
    We use timing lights. When you begin, the light will turn 
green. At the end of 5 minutes, the light will turn red, and I 
will ask you to please complete your statement.
    First, I would like to introduce the Honorable Mark 
Greenblatt, Inspector General at the Department of the 
Interior.
    Inspector General Greenblatt, you are recognized for 5 
minutes.

   STATEMENT OF THE HON. MARK GREENBLATT, INSPECTOR GENERAL, 
           DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, WASHINGTON, DC

    Mr. Greenblatt. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany, Chairman 
Gosar, Ranking Member Neguse, Ranking Member Stansbury, members 
of the Subcommittees. Thank you for the opportunity to appear 
before you today.
    The topic of the hearing today, deferred maintenance in our 
National Parks System, may sound bureaucratic or mundane, but 
it is quite the contrary. When critical maintenance on NPS 
assets such as buildings, trails, campsites--when that is 
delayed, it can make those assets unsafe or unusable. Deferring 
maintenance can also significantly increase the costs 
associated with conducting the necessary repairs, thereby 
driving up the expense on the American taxpayer.
    Managing deferred maintenance has been a long-standing 
challenge for the NPS. In fact, my office has reported on those 
concerns as far back as 1999, and we have called deferred 
maintenance a major management challenge for the Department 
every year since 2017. GAO has likewise referenced Interior's 
deferred maintenance problem on its high risk list since 2003.
    As you know, in 2020, Congress passed the Great American 
Outdoors Act, authorizing $1.3 billion per fiscal year from 
2021 to 2025 to reduce deferred maintenance in national parks.
    Because of the influx of funding from GAOA, my office 
performed an evaluation to determine how the National Park 
Service identifies and manages deferred maintenance. Our review 
covered Fiscal Years 2016 through 2021, during which the 
deferred maintenance estimate increased by more than $12 
billion. While NPS has stated that it is currently in the 
process of updating its process for identifying and estimating 
deferred maintenance, at the time of our evaluation NPS 
primarily calculated deferred maintenance by totaling the 
estimated costs from all open deferred maintenance work orders 
at the end of each fiscal year.
    We found, however, that the work order data being used for 
the basis of this calculation were inaccurate and unreliable. 
On the one hand, NPS understated deferred maintenance estimates 
because it had not categorized work orders that were years old 
as deferred maintenance. During our review, we found 214,000 
open work orders that were 3 years or older, totaling $2.6 
billion by NPS' calculation. On the other hand, NPS overstated 
deferred maintenance estimates because it did not consistently 
close deferred maintenance work orders once the work had been 
completed. We found more than 3,600 open deferred maintenance 
work orders that remained open after the work was completed, 
totaling up to $364 million by NPS' estimates.
    Between the $2.6 billion in understatements and the $364 
million in overstatements, we identified roughly $3 billion in 
work orders that appear to be classified inaccurately. This 
means that a significant percentage of NPS' deferred 
maintenance estimate at the time was unreliable and inaccurate.
    Worse, these data quality weaknesses were compounded by the 
NPS' application of a blanket 35 percent markup on all open 
deferred maintenance work orders in Fiscal Year 2021. We have 
multiple concerns with this markup. For example, NPS could not 
provide us with an adequate justification demonstrating why 35 
percent as a markup was valid, or why it was appropriate to 
apply that percentage across the entire portfolio of deferred 
maintenance projects. When you have a significantly inaccurate 
estimate bolstered by a 35 percent across-the-board markup, one 
could argue that the prior estimates were akin to a house of 
cards built upon a house of cards.
    As I mentioned earlier, NPS told us that they had begun 
implementing a new asset condition assessment process in Fiscal 
Year 2022 to estimate deferred maintenance. NPS officials told 
us that this new process would allow it to produce modeled 
deferred maintenance estimates based on asset condition and 
current replacement value. That is, once the new process is 
fully implemented, it is our understanding that NPS will no 
longer base its estimates on work orders, although the work 
orders will still be used for tracking the actual completion of 
the deferred maintenance process.
    We acknowledge NPS' efforts to make improvements, but it is 
important to note that these changes appear designed to improve 
NPS' estimating of the amount of deferred maintenance. Once 
fully implemented, however, NPS will still be at risk of not 
effectively managing its deferred maintenance if it does not 
implement internal controls to ensure that the work orders are 
closed and conditions assessments are updated as deferred 
maintenance projects are completed.
    I can't comment on the new process, as we have not yet 
reviewed it, so I don't know whether the process will be 
effective in estimating its deferred maintenance. What I do 
know is that our review establishes that the process NPS used 
for managing deferred maintenance in years in the past appears 
to have been unreliable and inaccurate. And if past is 
prologue, NPS must ensure the accuracy and reliability of its 
data, and we all must remain vigilant about overseeing these 
deferred maintenance processes to protect the American taxpayer 
and our national treasures in the NPS system.
    Thank you, and I welcome your questions.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Greenblatt follows:]
Prepared Statement of the Hon. Mark Lee Greenblatt, Inspector General, 
                    U.S. Department of the Interior

    Chairman Tiffany, Chairman Gosar, Ranking Member Neguse, Ranking 
Member Stansbury, and Members of the Subcommittees, thank you for 
giving me the opportunity to discuss the National Park Service's (NPS') 
deferred maintenance and in particular, our office's September 2023 
evaluation report, The National Park Service Faces Challenges in 
Managing Its Deferred Maintenance. As you know, inspectors general have 
a direct reporting relationship to Congress. My office and I take this 
obligation seriously, and we appreciate your continued support for our 
independent and objective oversight.
    According to the information that we received, when prioritizing 
its financial resources eachyear, the NPS assesses the condition of its 
infrastructure and calculates how much it would cost to address needed 
repairs. As of September 2021, the NPS reported that it had accumulated 
more than $23 billion in deferred maintenance--which the NPS considers 
as maintenance that has not been completed on schedule and is delayed 
for a future period. We evaluated how the NPS identified and managed 
deferred maintenance; specifically, we reviewed how NPS identified and 
managed deferred maintenance at 15 of its 397 parks for FY 2020.\1\ We 
considered the time period of FY 2016 through FY 2021.
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    \1\ A full list of the parks we reviewed is included as an appendix 
to this testimony.
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    In short, we found that, during the period of our evaluation, the 
NPS was unable to effectively identify and manage its deferred 
maintenance, in large part due to inaccurate and unreliable data. 
Furthermore, the NPS applied a blanket 35-percent markup to its FY 2021 
deferred maintenance, which resulted in a $3.7 billion increase to the 
estimated costs of the NPS' deferred maintenance in just one year. We 
found, however, that there was insufficient documentation demonstrating 
that the amount of the markup was reasonable. We also found that the 
NPS' broad application of the markup may lead to inaccurate estimates 
depending on whether work is completed by staff or contractors. In 
addition to data challenges, we found delayed response times for 
addressing critical Health, Life, and Safety (HLS) work orders. We made 
eight recommendations to address these issues.

                               Background

    The NPS' mission is ``to conserve the natural and cultural 
resources of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and 
inspiration of this and future generations.'' The NPS manages 
approximately 400 park units--commonly referred to as ``parks''--that 
include more than 75,000 assets. For deferred maintenance purposes, the 
NPS defines an asset as real or personal property that it tracks and 
manages as a distinct and identifiable entity. Assets may be physical 
structures or groupings of structures, land features, or other tangible 
property with a specific service or function. Examples include 
buildings, roads, bridges, campgrounds, marinas, and sewage treatment 
plants.
NPS Deferred Maintenance

    The NPS relies on discretionary appropriations, allocations from 
the U.S. Department of Transportation, park entrance and concession 
fees, donations, and other funding sources to repair and maintain its 
more than 75,000 assets. Maintenance refers to day-to-day repair 
activities and planned work required to preserve facilities in such a 
condition that they may be used for their designated purpose over an 
intended service life. Under the NPS' policies and procedures, deferred 
maintenance is considered a subset of the NPS' asset maintenance. As 
noted previously, the NPS defines deferred maintenance as 
``[m]aintenance that was not performed when it should have been or was 
scheduled to be and which, therefore, is put off or delayed.'' Delayed 
or deferred maintenance can affect visitor experiences at parks due to 
building or bridge closures, trail limitations, and facility disrepair. 
In addition, deferring maintenance may result in significantly higher 
maintenance and operating costs or, in some cases, premature asset 
replacement.
    To address this problem and its effect on NPS resources, Congress 
enacted the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA).\2\ GAOA was signed into 
law on August 4, 2020, and it authorized up to $1.9 billion per fiscal 
year from 2021 to 2025 to reduce deferred maintenance on public lands 
and at Indian schools through the National Parks and Public Land Legacy 
Restoration Fund (LRF).\3\ The LRF is intended to ensure the safety of 
staff and the increasing number of visitors to the U.S. Department of 
the Interior's (DOI's) public lands by providing dedicated funding to 
address the growing amount of deferred maintenance. Under GAOA, the NPS 
will receive up to $1.3 billion per fiscal year for 5 years (FY 2021 
through FY 2025) to reduce or eliminate its deferred maintenance. In 
addition, the Inflation Reduction Act \4\ authorizes up to $200 million 
to the NPS for priority deferred maintenance projects through FY 2026.
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    \2\ Pub. L. No. 116-152.
    \3\ In March 2022, we published an inspection of the Department of 
the Interior's implementation of GAOA, The U.S. Department of the 
Interior Needs a Strategy To Coordinate Implementation of the Great 
American Outdoors Act. We determined that the Department did not 
develop a strategy to maximize the GAOA's impact and that the 
Department did not develop best management practices for deferred 
maintenance projects. We made two recommendations to the Department 
intended to help the Department fulfill GAOA's intent to reduce 
deferred maintenance. We consider both recommendations closed.
    \4\ Pub. L. No. 117-169.
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    At the time of our review, the NPS calculated and reported its 
deferred maintenance using the total of the estimated costs from open 
deferred maintenance work orders at the end of each fiscal year. As of 
FY 2021, the NPS estimated deferred maintenance of $23.7 billion. 
Although its number of assets has not increased, the estimated cost of 
the NPS' deferred maintenance has risen more than $12 billion from FY 
2016 through FY 2021 (see Figure 1).

   Figure 1: Reported NPS Deferred Maintenance Increase FYs 2016-2021

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    The NPS reported that contributing factors to the increasing 
deferred maintenance included aging infrastructure, heavy visitor use, 
and insufficient funding to keep pace with repair needs. The NPS also 
reported that the FY 2021 increase was due, in part, to a change in how 
it estimated deferred maintenance costs. Specifically, the NPS added a 
blanket 35 percent markup to its estimated deferred maintenance. In FY 
2021, the NPS calculated approximately $20 billion in deferred 
maintenance, which was an increase of approximately $5.2 billion in 
deferred maintenance. The addition of the 35-percent markup to the $20 
billion increased the NPS' FY 2021 deferred maintenance by another $3.7 
billion, resulting in an $8.8 billion increase over FY 2020.
    The NPS uses asset categories to track and report its 75,000 
assets. Figure 2 shows these asset categories for the NPS' FY 2020 
deferred maintenance estimates.

        Figure 2: FY 2020 Deferred Maintenance by Asset Category

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NPS Asset Management Roles and Responsibilities

    The NPS has three levels of responsibility for facility management 
regarding deferred maintenance: Park Facility Management, Regional 
Facility Management, and the Washington Support Office. In addition, 
the NPS GAOA Program Office provides GAOA-specific support.
    The Park Facility Management staff have the greatest responsibility 
for addressing deferred maintenance. At the time of our evaluation, the 
park staff used the NPS' Facility Management Software System (FMSS) to 
ensure asset condition assessments were completed; they also created 
maintenance repair work orders, assigned work order status, and added 
cost estimates. The NPS used the FMSS to identify, manage, and track 
all park maintenance repairs, including deferred maintenance. Park 
staff used the Cost Estimating Software System to generate cost 
estimates, which they could either export to the FMSS or enter directly 
in a work order.\5\
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    \5\ Work orders are the source documents for maintenance repairs 
for all park assets such as trails, visitor centers, and campgrounds, 
as well as water systems and roads. The NPS uses 10 categories for its 
facility maintenance work orders, including deferred maintenance. 
Separately, the NPS also uses the Health, Life, and Safety (HLS) 
classification, which is identified in the NPS' Business Practices: 
Risk Assessment Codes, to identify issues that need immediate 
attention--for example, an unsafe building.
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    Park staff were also responsible for determining when a maintenance 
or repair work order became deferred maintenance as well as for 
classifying and documenting work orders with HLS maintenance issues in 
the FMSS. For example, if park staff determined that a building was 
unsafe, it was their responsibility to create a new work order to 
quickly mitigate the HLS concern.
    We were told that park staff may complete the maintenance 
identified in work orders depending on park staff availability, 
expertise, or direct park funding. Otherwise, during the annual 
budgeting process, park staff prioritized work orders that could be 
completed in-house or bundled work orders (which can include those 
classified as deferred maintenance) into projects that needed 
contractor technical expertise or additional funding resources. The 
bundled work orders were sent to the NPS Regional Facility Management 
staff for prioritization and funding authorization. When the 
maintenance or repair has been completed, the park staff are 
responsible for updating and closing each work order in the FMSS.
    Regional Facility Management staff determine funding eligibility 
and prioritize project submissions for all parks within the respective 
region. The Washington Support Office prioritizes and reviews projects 
across the NPS and allocates funding to each region; it also provides 
guidance and oversight for all NPS facility maintenance. Finally, the 
NPS GAOA Program Office provides additional program management 
oversight and guidance for current and future projects funded through 
the LRF. This office was established in FY 2021 and works with the 
Washington Support Office to prioritize and then submit projects for 
LRF funding. The DOI's GAOA Program Management Office then approves the 
LRF funding for these projects.
    Once a project is approved and funded, the work is either completed 
by park personnel or through a contract. At that point, the NPS should 
close the project and work order.

                         Results of Evaluation

The NPS' Deferred Maintenance Data Was Inaccurate and Unreliable

    We found that the NPS did not have the quality information 
necessary to make informed decisions and that, instead, its deferred 
maintenance data were inaccurate and unreliable.\6\ Specifically, the 
NPS did not consistently identify, enter, and classify deferred 
maintenance work orders or verify their accuracy--which in some cases 
understated and in others overstated its deferred maintenance 
estimates.
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    \6\ The U.S. Government Accountability Office's (GAO's) internal 
control standards state that management must have quality information 
to make informed decisions to evaluate its performance in achieving its 
objectives. GAO characterizes quality information as information that 
is current, complete, and accurate.
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The NPS Did Not Consistently Identify, Enter, and Classify Deferred 
        Maintenance Work Orders
    We found inconsistencies in how the NPS identified its deferred 
maintenance needs, entered its deferred maintenance work orders, and 
classified existing work orders as deferred maintenance in the FMSS. 
Some work orders that were years old were not categorized as deferred 
maintenance, thereby underestimating the amount of needed deferred 
maintenance. At the 15 parks we reviewed, we identified approximately 
26,000 open work orders with estimated costs of $371 million that were 
3 years or older but that had not been classified as deferred 
maintenance. These work orders included necessary repairs for NPS 
employee housing assets, such as repairing broken smoke alarms, 
rehabilitating kitchens, replacing heaters and roofs, repairing leaks, 
and providing exit signs.
    When we expanded our analysis across all NPS parks, we identified a 
total of approximately 214,000 work orders that were 3 years or older 
that were not classified as deferred maintenance--this amounted to a 
total of $2.6 billion that was not included in the NPS' deferred 
maintenance calculations.
    We found that park personnel had varying practices relating to when 
to identify and enter deferred maintenance work orders or classify 
existing work orders as deferred maintenance. For example, some would 
classify existing work orders as deferred maintenance based on the life 
cycle of the assets or if the work orders were delayed. Others would 
classify existing work orders as deferred maintenance after the work 
order had been open for one year.
    These varying practices mean that the NPS has not fully defined, 
and so cannot accurately account for, the parks' deferred maintenance 
needs. The NPS' policies and procedures do not provide guidance on when 
park personnel should identify, enter, and classify work orders as 
deferred maintenance in the FMSS. Inconsistently identifying, entering, 
and classifying deferred maintenance work orders and failing to verify 
their status in the FMSS leads to inaccurate deferred maintenance 
estimates, which results in an incomplete picture of the NPS' deferred 
maintenance needs. Without reliable data, the NPS cannot make informed 
decisions to manage its deferred maintenance.
The NPS Did Not Consistently Verify the Accuracy and Completeness of 
        FMSS Data
    The NPS also did not consistently verify the accuracy and 
completeness of FMSS data regarding deferred maintenance work orders 
(e.g., work order status, cost estimates, and duplicate work orders) 
due to inconsistent monitoring at all levels. We found that the NPS did 
not consistently close deferred maintenance work orders in the FMSS 
after the work was completed even though changing the work order status 
to closed is the final step in the work order process. For the 15 parks 
we reviewed, we identified 580 open deferred maintenance work orders 
that included a ``finished date'' entered in the FMSS, suggesting that 
the work had been completed and that these work orders should have been 
closed. Because the work order status was not updated to ``closed,'' 
the estimated cost for deferred maintenance in the work orders was 
included in the NPS total deferred maintenance estimate. These work 
orders, if closed in the system, would lower the NPS' deferred 
maintenance estimate by approximately $86 million.
    When we expanded our analysis across all NPS parks, we identified a 
total of 3,667 open deferred maintenance work orders with a ``finished 
date'' entered in the FMSS. These work orders, if closed in the system, 
would lower the NPS' deferred maintenance cost estimate by up to $364 
million.
    The NPS does not have a monitoring mechanism to ensure the accuracy 
and completeness of its FMSS data. Failing to monitor the FMSS data 
consistently across the NPS results in inaccurate and incomplete 
deferred maintenance reporting, and it also means that inconsistencies 
from different park practices are built into the system. Without 
reliable data, the NPS cannot make informed decisions on how to manage 
its deferred maintenance, improve program effectiveness and 
accountability, and potentially enhance decision making.
The NPS' Data Quality Weaknesses Are Amplified by Its Application of a 
        Blanket Markup
    We found that the NPS added $3.7 billion to its initial deferred 
maintenance estimate in FY 2021 without a methodology to support this 
approach. It did so based on the year-end deferred maintenance balance 
that included each asset's deferred maintenance cost estimates for each 
asset, which were the basis for the NPS' deferred maintenance estimate 
calculation. The initial FY 2021 deferred maintenance calculation 
included in the balance was $20 billion; however, the NPS then added a 
blanket 35-percent markup, which increased the FY 2021 deferred 
maintenance estimate to $23.7 billion.\7\
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    \7\ The increase from $20 billion to $23.7 billion was the result 
of a 35-percent markup applied to all work orders except transportation 
deferred maintenance work orders (paved and unpaved road asset 
categories, including bridges). The Federal Highway Administration 
already included a 35-percent project execution cost markup in those 
work order estimates.
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    According to an October 5, 2021, internal NPS memorandum, Changes 
to National Park Service Deferred Maintenance Reporting for Fiscal Year 
2021, the NPS started adding 35 percent to deferred maintenance cost 
estimates for all assets reported to both the Federal Real Property 
Profile and the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB).
    We identified two major concerns with the assumptions used in NPS' 
approach, which call into question the validity of applying a 35-
percent project execution cost to all deferred maintenance work orders. 
First, the NPS could not provide supporting documentation demonstrating 
the validity of the 35-percent project execution add-on for all NPS 
deferred maintenance work orders. We note that the percentage conforms 
with what the Federal Highway Administration uses for public road and 
bridge projects. Although this may be appropriate for some NPS deferred 
maintenance projects, adding such a significant amount to the overall 
balance without a methodology can lead to inaccurate cost estimates.
    Second, the NPS applied this markup to all deferred maintenance 
included in the FY 2021 FMSS data with the assumption that all work 
would be completed by contractors. We learned, however, that NPS staff 
at multiple parks complete some work orders instead of contractors.
    The NPS added this blanket 35-percent markup to all work orders 
instead of individually revising its deferred maintenance work order 
cost estimates to accurately reflect the work that would be completed 
by contractors or NPS staff. This occurred because the NPS does not 
have processes or procedures in place to identify work orders that will 
be completed by NPS staff or contractors. Further, the NPS' Park 
Facility Management Division told us that it could not determine if 
work had been or would be completed by NPS staff using the information 
available in the FMSS.
    As a result, the NPS did not accurately estimate the cost of its 
deferred maintenance. This issue is further complicated by the data 
reliability issues discussed above--that is, the blanket markup is 
being layered on top of information that is already unreliable. This 
markup accordingly contributes to an inaccurate deferred maintenance 
figure, which may affect internal and external stakeholders alike. 
Without addressing both the underlying data inaccuracies and the 
appropriateness of the blanket markup, the NPS cannot make informed 
decisions to manage its deferred maintenance.
The NPS Did Not Consistently Monitor, Complete, and Close Open Critical 
        Health, Life, and Safety Work Orders

    The NPS identifies five classifications \8\ for HLS work orders and 
establishes timelines for their completion. Specifically, it defines 
``critical'' HLS work orders as those that pose ``immediate danger to 
life, health, property, or infrastructure.'' According to the NPS 
guidance, work orders with this classification require immediate action 
to correct the issue or, if full remediation is not possible, 
implementation of an interim control measure to reduce the risk to an 
acceptable level until full remediation can be completed. For example, 
if an HLS work order identifies that a trail bridge used primarily for 
hiking and camping needs to be replaced, an interim control measure 
would be to close the bridge and temporarily relocate the trail until 
the NPS could replace the bridge.
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    \8\ The five classifications and their required response times are 
(1) critical--immediate, (2) serious--15 days, (3) moderate--12 months, 
(4) minor--2 years, and (5) negligible--5 years.
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    For the 15 parks we reviewed, we identified timeliness concerns for 
29 open critical HLS work orders. Although all 29 open critical work 
orders had interim control measures in place, we found two were 
duplicate and 12 had been open for more than 5 years.
    For example, five open work orders designated as ``critical'' were 
related to mold in buildings. In these instances, NPS staff officially 
closed the buildings in 2014 as an interim control measure rather than 
immediately fix the issue, even though the staff designated the work 
orders as emergency maintenance. While an interim control measure 
mitigated the immediate risk, it did not address the original hazard. 
In addition, in these cases, the NPS was not able to use multiple 
buildings for their intended purpose--including visitor lodging, a 
coffee shop, a camp store, and a restaurant--for more than 5 years. 
Both the coffee shop and lodging were initially closed in 2010 when the 
NPS could not find concessionaires to run the properties. During the 
initial closures, the buildings began to deteriorate. When the NPS 
inspected the buildings in January 2014, it found mold. At that time, 
the NPS wrote an interim control measure work order to officially close 
the buildings; however, this resulted in larger deferred maintenance 
issues because the work order to remediate the mold was not immediately 
addressed. The coffee shop recently reopened after a long-term effort 
to raise nearly $1 million with nonprofit and community funding 
support, which included more than $250,000 for mold remediation.
    We also noted that, even when NPS staff implemented an interim 
control measure instead of correcting the issue, staff may not have 
implemented those measures within the required response times. For 
example, the FMSS showed that nine of the 29 open work orders had 
interim control measures that were not listed as completed for more 
than 5 months.
    The NPS told us that all 29 critical HLS work order delays occurred 
because it does not have sufficient guidance for monitoring or 
verifying the ongoing status of HLS work orders. The applicable NPS 
guidance includes a requirement to ``Review and Update Assessment of 
Hazards Periodically.'' The guidance, however, does not define how 
often staff should conduct reviews beyond ``periodically.''
    Without clear guidance on interim control measure timeliness and 
HLS work order closure expectations, as well as policies establishing 
processes to ensure compliance by monitoring those time frames, the NPS 
cannot ensure that it will timely complete HLS work orders or interim 
control measures to ensure the safety of both the public and NPS 
employees.

      Office of Inspector General Recommendations and NPS Response

    We made eight recommendations to help the NPS increase its 
effectiveness in identifying and managing its deferred maintenance. We 
recommend that the NPS:

  1.  Develop and implement policies and procedures that define the 
            circumstances and time frame in which to enter work orders 
            into its maintenance software system (e.g., the Facility 
            Management Software System).

  2.  Update current policies and procedures to clarify when to 
            classify existing work orders as deferred maintenance in 
            its maintenance software system (e.g., the Facility 
            Management Software System).

  3.  Identify and update deferred maintenance data in its maintenance 
            software system (e.g., the Facility Management Software 
            System) to ensure all data are accurate and complete.

  4.  Develop and implement a monitoring mechanism for deferred 
            maintenance data in its maintenance software system (e.g., 
            the Facility Management Software System) to routinely 
            verify that deferred maintenance data are accurate and 
            complete. This monitoring mechanism should define the roles 
            and responsibilities for each facility management level.

  5.  Develop and implement policies and procedures that provide 
            guidance for appropriately estimating the cost of 
            maintenance projects.

  6.  Include accurate estimates for all existing and future work 
            orders based on the guidance developed under Recommendation 
            5.

  7.  Verify that existing Health, Life, and Safety work orders address 
            the original hazard, are completed, and are closed.

  8.  Develop and implement an oversight mechanism that monitors 
            Health, Life, and Safety work orders to verify the original 
            hazards are addressed and completed within the required 
            time frames.

    Based on the NPS's response and our analysis of that response, six 
recommendations are resolved, and two recommendations are unresolved. 
In particular, Recommendation 5 and Recommendation 6 are considered 
unresolved. Although the NPS stated that it concurred with these 
recommendations, we did not agree that the NPS' description of the 
actions it intended to take would address the concerns to which these 
recommendations were directed.
    More generally, with respect to the issues set forth in our report, 
the NPS stated that it began implementing a new methodology for 
estimating deferred maintenance using ``parametric condition 
assessments,'' a methodology based on visual assessments of conditions. 
The NPS stated that the new methodology removes the need to enter work 
orders for the purpose of estimating deferred maintenance because, once 
the new methodology is fully implemented, work orders will be created 
within the FMSS only when a project is funded. Based on the information 
we have received to date, it does not appear that this new methodology, 
on its own, addresses the ongoing risk that the assessments may not be 
updated as deferred maintenance work is completed. Therefore, we 
believe that the NPS still faces risks in managing overdue maintenance 
and repairs if it does not develop and implement a process to ensure 
that data within the FMSS are accurate and complete. It is our belief 
that, even after implementation of the revised estimation approach, the 
NPS will need to address a number of potential concerns relating to its 
deferred maintenance projects.
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    \9\ We judgmentally selected these parks based on their total 
number of assets, arriving at 5 of its 249 parks with 1 to 99 assets, 5 
of its 111 parks with 100 to 499 assets, and 5 of its 37 parks with 500 
or more assets. We also ensured that each of the NPS' seven regions was 
represented by at least one park.
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           Appendix: FY 2020 NPS Parks Reviewed 9
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                                __
                                 

   Questions Submitted for the Record to Mark Greenblatt, Inspector 
                General, U.S. Department of the Interior
             Questions Submitted by Representative Grijalva
    Question 1. Based on the OIG's findings in its September 2023 
report on the National Park Service's (NPS) deferred maintenance 
management, please explain the primary reasons that NPS deferred 
maintenance costs have increased since Fiscal Year 2021.

    Answer. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) has not independently 
evaluated the root causes of deferred maintenance. In our September 
2023 report, we found that the National Park Service (NPS) was unable 
to effectively identify and manage its deferred maintenance due to 
inaccurate and unreliable data. Even though its identified number of 
assets remained relatively constant, the NPS' deferred maintenance cost 
estimate has continuously increased from $11.3 billion in Fiscal Year 
(FY) 2016 to $20 billion in FY 2021. Our review determined that the NPS 
did not consistently identify, enter, and classify deferred maintenance 
work orders or verify their accuracy--which in some cases understated 
and in others overstated its deferred maintenance estimates.
    For example, during our review of San Juan National Historic Site, 
we found that, between FYs 2015 and 2016, the NPS canceled all deferred 
maintenance work orders at the park that were more than 10 years old. 
As a result, the park's deferred maintenance decreased from $330 
million in FY 2015 to $18 million in FY 2016. This led to 
underestimated reporting of the park's deferred maintenance cost 
estimates for several fiscal years. As the park reentered the work 
orders with updated cost estimates, its deferred maintenance costs 
appeared to significantly increase through FY 2020.
    Overall, the NPS has cited multiple factors that contributed to 
this increase, including aging infrastructure, heavy visitor use, 
growing construction costs, insufficient funding to keep pace with 
repair needs, change in how deferred maintenance costs are estimated, 
and the application of a blanket 35-percent markup. We found that there 
was not sufficient documentation demonstrating whether the amount of 
the markup was reasonable.

    Question 2. The OIG's 2023 report notes that NPS is in the process 
of implementing a new assessment method that is expected to address 
many of the OIG's recommendations. Does the OIG have any reason to 
think this new methodology will be less accurate than the methods that 
were in place when the OIG started its audit?

    Answer. Given that the OIG has not evaluated the new methodology 
being implemented by the NPS, we do not have a basis to opine on its 
accuracy.

    Question 3. Will the 35 percent markup result in an overestimate or 
an underestimate of the size of NPS's deferred maintenance?

    Answer. We could not determine with certainty whether the blanket 
35-percent markup overstated or understated NPS' deferred maintenance 
overall. As we note in the report itself, the markup may overstate 
deferred maintenance in instances where the work will be performed by 
park service staff. For example, during our review, we learned that NPS 
staff at multiple parks complete some work orders instead of 
contractors. For example, the New River Gorge National Park and 
Preserve had its NPS staff replace roofs for 13 buildings at an 
approximate cost of $265,000 during FY 2020. Had the NPS applied the 
35-percent markup to these work orders, the cost--and consequently, the 
deferred maintenance--would have been overestimated by approximately 
$93,000.
    Conversely, the markup could potentially understate project 
management costs for certain contracted work. While the NPS 
acknowledged that this 35 percent markup likely overstates deferred 
maintenance in some cases and underestimates it in others, it stated 
that 35 percent is a good representation across the deferred 
maintenance portfolio because it is an overall average estimate of 
markup. However, NPS was unable to provide the OIG an analysis 
demonstrating that the overstated and understated estimates would 
average to 35 percent or that 35 percent was a reasonable amount to 
mark up the portfolio. Although adding a markup may be appropriate for 
some NPS deferred maintenance projects, adding such a significant 
amount to the overall balance without an appropriate methodology can 
lead to inaccurate cost estimates.

    Question 4. Considering the substantial deferred maintenance list 
at NPS, the multi-year process for completing critical maintenance 
projects, and the ongoing funding shortfall for routine maintenance, is 
it reasonable to assume that deferred maintenance will continue to grow 
in the immediate future, regardless of any accounting changes 
implemented by NPS or additional funding from the Great American 
Outdoors Act?

    Answer. OIG's work did not examine this issue and so we cannot 
opine on the reasonableness of this assumption. However, we note that 
the NPS may be able to provide information on this topic.

    Question 5. The Republican-passed Interior Appropriations bill 
includes a decrease of $433 million or 12.5 percent to the National 
Park Service and a 52 percent cut to the construction account. Would a 
cut like this worsen or improve the Park Service's deferred 
maintenance? Would repeated cuts in successive years worsen or improve 
the Park Service's deferred maintenance?

    Answer. The OIG has not conducted an independent analysis of the 
NPS' budget request or funding needs and therefore we do not have a 
basis to address this question.

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you, Inspector General Greenblatt. I 
would like to now introduce Mr. Cardell Johnson, Director of 
Natural Resources and Environment for the Government 
Accountability Office.
    Mr. Johnson, you have 5 minutes.

 STATEMENT OF CARDELL JOHNSON, DIRECTOR, NATURAL RESOURCES AND 
 ENVIRONMENT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE, WASHINGTON, DC

    Mr. Johnson. Thank you. Chairmen Tiffany and Gosar, Ranking 
Members Stansbury and Neguse, and members of the Subcommittee, 
good morning and thank you for the opportunity to testify on 
this important topic.
    GAO's recent oversight work identified six challenges that 
Federal land management agencies and the Bureau of Indian 
Education face in reducing the maintenance backlog.
    Properly maintaining assets such as campgrounds, trails, 
schools, and drinking water infrastructure on our public lands 
is vital for public recreation, our economy, and the 
preservation of important historical and cultural resources.
    My statement today will focus on data management 
challenges, because changes in how the agencies manage their 
data contributed to the sharp increase that we saw in deferred 
maintenance over the last 4 years. And then I will also 
highlight the positive impact that the Legacy Restoration Fund 
is having on addressing data management and other challenges.
    So, the first step to reducing maintenance backlog is to 
have good data. This includes a consistent and transparent 
approach for determining total deferred maintenance. It also 
includes instituting robust quality controls to ensure that 
data is accurate and complete. Prior to Congress establishing 
the Legacy Restoration Fund in 2020, the agencies did not 
collect complete information. They cited a limited funding as 
the primary reason for why they didn't dedicate enough 
resources to this task.
    And until August 2023, Interior agencies used different 
definitions of ``deferred maintenance.''
    Furthermore, the Department of the Interior in particular 
lacked robust quality controls and information systems used to 
manage assets. As a result, deferred maintenance was under-
reported by $821 million at one agency. Interior first 
discovered this inaccuracy while responding to our data 
requests. The Department then took immediate action to 
strengthen quality controls.
    So, the bottom line that I am getting to here is that 
incomplete data, inconsistent approaches, and the lack of 
robust quality controls resulted in inaccurate reporting, and 
ultimately affected decisions of which deferred maintenance 
projects to fund. Correcting these practices contributed to the 
sharp increase in deferred maintenance that we see today.
    Despite the increase in the maintenance backlog, the Legacy 
Restoration Fund is having a positive impact. Our analysis 
describes a few ways in which the fund is helping agencies 
address long-standing challenges. First, the fund has fostered 
a cultural change toward maintaining better data on deferred 
maintenance because there is additional funding available.
    Second, guaranteed funding for 5 years has allowed agencies 
to better plan to reduce challenges such as uncertainty and 
inflation.
    And then lastly, the fund has given agencies the ability to 
maintain, train, and expand internal maintenance teams, and 
this has resulted in some agencies being able to tackle smaller 
projects more quickly and at a lower cost to the taxpayers.
    In conclusion, continued attention on the data management 
challenges outlined here today will position agencies to 
communicate their resource needs and better guide strategic 
decision-making. Also, as agencies continue to tackle the 
maintenance backlog, they may need support from Congress.
    Should Congress consider reauthorizing the Legacy 
Restoration Fund, there may be opportunities to enhance the 
fund's effectiveness at addressing ongoing challenges to 
reducing deferred maintenance. Doing so may go a long way to 
ensure that our iconic national parks and wilderness areas are 
available for the public to enjoy for generations to come, and 
that schools maintained by the Bureau of Indian Education are 
in good condition to meet the students' needs.
    This concludes my statement, and I am happy to take 
questions. Thank you.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:]
 Prepared Statement of Cardell D. Johnson, Director, Natural Resources 
         and Environment, U.S. Government Accountability Office

    Chairmen Gosar and Tiffany, Ranking Members Neguse and Stansbury, 
and Members of the Subcommittees:
    Thank you for the opportunity to discuss our work on deferred 
maintenance and the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration 
Fund (LRF). The federal government manages public lands and other 
assets such as buildings and roads that require billions of dollars to 
maintain and operate annually. The land management agencies--Bureau of 
Land Management (BLM), U.S. Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service 
(FWS), and National Park Service (NPS)--and the Bureau of Indian 
Education (BIE) carry out this work.\1\ These agencies have reported 
tens of billions of dollars in deferred maintenance--maintenance and 
repairs to assets that were not performed when they should have been, 
or were scheduled and then delayed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The Department of the Interior oversees three of the four land 
management agencies that receive funding from the LRF--BLM, FWS, and 
NPS--as well as BIE. The U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees the 
Forest Service, the remaining land management agency.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As we and others have reported, deferred maintenance can have 
negative consequences, including limiting the agencies' ability to 
carry out their missions and reducing assets' value and life span.\2\ 
Properly maintaining our public lands and their supporting 
infrastructure helps ensure that recreational areas are available for 
the public to enjoy. In 2020, the Great American Outdoors Act 
established, among other things, the LRF to provide additional funding 
to address deferred maintenance during fiscal years 2021 through 
2025.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ GAO, Federal Real Property: Agencies Attribute Substantial 
Increases in Reported Deferred Maintenance to Multiple Factors, GAO-23-
106124 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 28, 2022).
    \3\ Pub. L. No. 116-152, Sec. 2(a), 134 Stat. 682, 682-685 (2020) 
(codified at 54 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 200401-200402).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Our January 2024 report and my statement today describe (1) how the 
amounts and compositions of deferred maintenance at each of the five 
agencies changed from fiscal year 2019 through 2022; (2) how these 
agencies selected projects for LRF funding and the extent to which the 
selection approaches followed leading practices for managing deferred 
maintenance; and (3) challenges the agencies reported facing in 
reducing deferred maintenance and how the LRF program design helps to 
address some challenges.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\ GAO, Deferred Maintenance: Agencies Generally Followed Leading 
Practices in Selections but Faced Challenges, GAO-24-106495 
(Washington, D.C.: Jan. 8, 2024).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For our January 2024 report, we analyzed agency data on deferred 
maintenance per year and per agency for fiscal years 2019 through 2022, 
the most recent year available at the time of our report.\5\ We 
determined that the data were sufficiently reliable for the purpose of 
describing general trends in the agencies' recorded deferred 
maintenance. We also reviewed agency documentation and interviewed 
agency officials about how their agencies prioritized LRF projects. We 
compared information about agency efforts with six leading practices 
derived from research by the National Research Council, which we 
identified in January 2014.\6\ These practices are recognized as 
effective strategies for managing deferred maintenance. Our January 
2024 report provides a more detailed description of our methodology. 
Our work was performed in accordance with generally accepted government 
auditing standards.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ Departments report department-wide deferred maintenance through 
their annual financial reports. However, we used data from agency asset 
management databases in our January 2024 report and this statement 
because these data allowed us to report on individual agencies' 
deferred maintenance.
    \6\ GAO, Federal Real Property: Improved Transparency Could Help 
Efforts to Manage Agencies' Maintenance and Repair Backlogs, GAO-14-188 
(Washington, D.C.: Jan. 23, 2014).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reported Deferred Maintenance Increased for the Agencies, in Part Due 
        to Changes in Approaches for Estimation

    Reported deferred maintenance increased for all five agencies from 
fiscal year 2019 through 2022, according to our analysis of agency 
data.\7\ NPS and BLM had the largest increases, while BIE, Forest 
Service, and FWS experienced smaller increases.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\ This is consistent with government-wide increases in deferred 
maintenance over the past 5 years. GAO-23-106124.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Different types of assets accounted for the bulk of each agency's 
deferred maintenance in fiscal year 2022. Roads and other 
transportation assets accounted for most deferred maintenance for BLM 
and Forest Service. Schools accounted for most deferred maintenance for 
BIE; recreational and visitor experience assets for NPS; and water 
infrastructure and utilities for FWS. The most deferred maintenance was 
in California, Oregon, and Arizona in fiscal year 2022, according to 
our analysis (see fig. 1).

Figure 1: Total Reported Deferred Maintenance for All Five Agencies, by 
                        State, Fiscal Year 2022

[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


    Agency officials at NPS and BLM attributed some of their 
increases to changes in data management.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\ BIE's, FWS's, and Forest Service's deferred maintenance did not 
increase significantly over this same period. Forest Service officials 
said they are in the process of changing the way the agency calculates 
deferred maintenance for roads by increasing the miles of road sampled 
and moving toward looking at 3 years of data. However, Forest Service 
officials stated these changes did not play a role in changes to the 
agency's deferred maintenance.

     NPS. NPS changed its approach to determining total 
            deferred maintenance in fiscal year 2022. Specifically, it 
            began using a modeling method for non-transportation 
            assets.\9\ This change allowed NPS to more consistently 
            develop and track deferred maintenance data for these 
            assets in its data system, according to NPS officials. 
            Additionally, in fiscal year 2021, NPS added a 35 percent 
            markup to deferred maintenance estimates for non-
            transportation assets to account for project execution 
            costs, such as design, construction management, and 
            compliance. NPS's previous assessment methodology only 
            considered construction costs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\ Deferred maintenance estimates for the agency's transportation 
assets are based on assessments and modeling conducted by the Federal 
Highway Administration, according to NPS officials.

     BLM. Starting in 2018, BLM began implementing a modeling 
            methodology for assessing deferred maintenance on roads. 
            Under its previous method, BLM did not have the resources 
            to perform all the required assessments and corresponding 
            data entry, and many assessments were not completed. 
            Therefore, condition data were inaccurate, according to BLM 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
            officials.

    Agency officials also said deferred maintenance increased in part 
because inflation drove up costs to address deferred maintenance. From 
October 2019 through September 2023, the construction material price 
index increased 42 percent, according to our analysis of Federal 
Reserve data.
    Additionally, agency officials said increases were due in part to 
agency staff putting in more effort to log all deferred maintenance 
because of the increased funding available from the LRF. The officials 
told us that when funding was limited, there was not an emphasis on 
logging complete data on all deferred maintenance needs because so much 
of it would not be funded. As a result, they did not dedicate many 
resources to inputting data. The LRF's creation led the agencies to 
reevaluate their asset management approach and fostered a cultural 
change toward maintaining better data on deferred maintenance, 
according to agency officials.
    Interior and some of its agencies recently took some action to 
address issues with how the agencies managed their deferred maintenance 
data. In particular, Interior had incomplete and inaccurate data on 
deferred maintenance for BIE and FWS for fiscal years 2019 and 2020. 
However, the agencies have implemented additional quality control 
measures, such as hiring a new employee to ensure they have adequate 
oversight and quality control over future reporting and implementing 
quarterly review of the data to prevent future errors.
    Additionally, Interior agencies previously used different 
interpretations for the definition of deferred maintenance. Interior 
established a comprehensive policy in August 2023 that standardized a 
definition for deferred maintenance for its agencies to use. This 
policy will help ensure Interior has more complete and accurate 
information on deferred maintenance to guide its resource allocation 
decisions, according to our analysis of the policy.
Agencies' Processes to Select Deferred Maintenance Projects for LRF 
        Funding Generally Followed Leading Practices

    All five agencies generally considered similar factors in their 
processes for selecting LRF projects.\10\ For example:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\ Interior's agencies prioritized some of these factors based on 
a department-wide plan that established high-level goals and objectives 
for the LRF investment strategy. For more information see U.S. 
Department of the Interior, Great American Outdoors Act National Parks 
and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund Strategic Plan (Oct. 21, 2022).

     Amount of deferred maintenance addressed. All five 
            agencies' processes for selecting LRF projects included 
            considering projects that addressed the most deferred 
            maintenance possible, according to agency documentation and 
            interviews with agency officials. The four land management 
            agencies set quantifiable objectives related to the amount 
            of deferred maintenance that a project addressed. For 
            example, Forest Service aimed to reduce deferred 
            maintenance by 75 cents for every LRF dollar spent, and BLM 
            by at least one dollar for every LRF dollar spent.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\ Some projects may address a lower amount of deferred 
maintenance than the actual cost of the project. For example, deferred 
maintenance estimates may not include some project development costs 
such as those related to environmental approvals, planning 
requirements, or design costs. See our January 2024 report for more 
information. GAO-24-106495.

     Cost and scope of project. All five agencies' processes to 
            select projects considered prioritizing projects with high 
            costs and large scopes. Such large projects were generally 
            too costly to fund using annual appropriations. For 
            example, BIE had a project in 2021 to consolidate education 
            programs housed in multiple buildings into a single 
            facility at a high school in the Navajo Nation. The project 
            cost estimate was approximately $70.9 million, which would 
            have amounted to most of the agency's annual non-LRF 
            funding of $95.3 million for facility improvement and 
            repair in fiscal year 2021.\12\ Projects that have large 
            scopes may be more cost-effective because they may reduce 
            overhead costs, such as contract administration. These 
            large projects can also create longer term improvements by 
            thoroughly addressing maintenance issues rather than 
            performing minimal work that will then need additional 
            maintenance soon thereafter, according to agency officials.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\ BIE's fiscal year 2021 education construction appropriation 
was approximately $264.3 million. The explanatory statement 
accompanying the appropriations act directed approximately $95.3 
million of that appropriation for facility improvement and repair. Pub. 
L. No. 116-260, 134 Stat. 1182, 1493 (2020); 166 Cong. Rec. H8311, 
H8536 (Dec. 21, 2020).

    Agencies also considered relevance to core mission, visitation to 
site, and speed of implementation. See our January 2024 report for 
further discussion of these factors.\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\ GAO-24-106495.

    Our review of the agencies' processes for selecting LRF projects 
also found that they generally followed all six of the selected leading 
practices for managing deferred maintenance.\14\ For example:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \14\ In January 2014, we identified leading practices, derived from 
the National Research Council, for effective strategies for managing 
deferred maintenance. For more information on our methodology for 
developing these leading practices, see GAO, Federal Real Property: 
Improved Transparency Could Help Efforts to Manage Agencies' 
Maintenance and Repair Backlogs, GAO-14-188 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 23, 
2014). Our January 2024 report contains more information on the leading 
practices and how agency actions followed those practices.

     Identify the primary methods to be used for delivering 
            maintenance and repair activities. The agencies generally 
            have multiple methods available to address their deferred 
            maintenance activities while implementing LRF projects. 
            These methods were identified in agency documentation and 
            included using outside contractors, partnerships, flexible 
            contract vehicles, and internal maintenance staff to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
            conduct maintenance activities.

     Identify the types of risks posed by lack of timely 
            investment. Agencies' processes to select LRF projects 
            identified risks of not addressing deferred maintenance in 
            a timely manner. For example, they selected LRF projects 
            that addressed identified risks such as threats to health 
            and safety, which are prioritized as part of the agencies' 
            core missions. For example, as part of its weighted 
            evaluation process for project selection BLM considered 
            whether a project would address safety issues.

     Identify types of facilities or specific buildings (i.e., 
            assets) that are mission critical and mission supportive. 
            Agencies' processes to select LRF projects included 
            identifying assets that are mission critical and generally 
            prioritizing projects that address deferred maintenance for 
            these assets. For example, according to Forest Service 
            documentation, the agency's process assesses, selects, and 
            approves potential decommissioning projects based on 
            standardized factors, including how critical the asset is 
            to the agency's mission.

Agencies Reported Facing Several Challenges to Reducing Deferred 
        Maintenance, and the LRF Program Design Helps to Address 
        Certain Challenges

    Officials from the five agencies reported facing several challenges 
to reducing deferred maintenance. For example, agencies face challenges 
related to construction supply chain issues and inflation, according to 
officials at all five agencies. Recently, due to COVID-19, a shortage 
of materials necessary for construction has contributed to project 
delays and higher-than-expected construction bids. Remote project 
locations, extreme weather conditions, and limited contractor capacity 
and competition have also made it difficult to address deferred 
maintenance needs, according to agency officials.
    In addition to general challenges related to reducing deferred 
maintenance, agencies also face challenges specifically related to the 
LRF. According to officials at the four land management agencies, the 
short-term nature of the LRF can create challenges with hiring. The LRF 
is designed as a 5-year program through 2025; however, construction 
projects to address deferred maintenance may take longer. Therefore, 
agencies could face difficult decisions on whether to hire (1) an 
employee to serve a 5-year term that might end during the project, or 
(2) a permanent employee they might not be able to justify in their 
budgets after the LRF funding ends.

    However, some aspects of the LRF program design have helped with 
challenges related to project uncertainty and inflation. For example:

     Agency officials told us having the LRF funding specified 
            for 5 years allows them to know in advance that they will 
            have steady funding, compared with having less predictable 
            surges of annual funding. As a result, agencies can plan 
            better for the coming years, according to agency officials.

     The LRF funding does not expire or need to be spent in a 
            particular time frame. This assists agencies because 
            projects generally take place over a long time frame.

     The agencies' ability to use the LRF funds to maintain, 
            train, and expand internal maintenance teams have helped 
            NPS and FWS tackle smaller projects more quickly and at a 
            lower cost than through contracted work, according to 
            agency documents.

    Another benefit of the LRF's program design is the inclusion of 
contingency funds. Since fiscal year 2022, the explanatory statements 
accompanying the five agencies' annual appropriations acts have 
included an amount for contingency funds for each agency.\15\ The 
agencies can use these contingency funds for any project funded by the 
LRF that experienced a funding deficiency due to unforeseen cost 
overruns if certain requirements are met.\16\ These contingency funds 
allow agencies more flexibility to deal with inflation and other 
challenges and address deferred maintenance, according to agency 
officials.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\ See Pub. L. No. 117-103, div. G, tit. IV, Sec. 431(c), 136 
Stat. 49, 417-18; 168 Cong. Rec. H2477, H2538 (Mar. 9, 2022); Pub. L. 
No. 117-328, div. G, tit. IV, Sec. 431(c), 136 Stat. 4459, 4828-29 
(2022); 168 Cong. Rec. S8553, S8716-S8717 (Dec. 20, 2022).
    \16\ For example, the contingency funds may only be used if there 
is a risk to project completion resulting from unforeseen cost 
overruns. In addition, the contingency funds can only be used for costs 
of adjustments and changes within the original scope of effort for 
projects funded by the LRF. Pub. L. No. 117-103, div. G, tit. IV, 
Sec. 431(c)(1), (2), 136 Stat. 49, 417-18; Pub. L. No. 117-328, div. G, 
tit. IV, Sec. 431(c)(1), (2), 136 Stat. 4459, 4828-29 (2022).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In closing, while facing some challenges in managing deferred 
maintenance, the five agencies have generally followed leading 
practices for doing so. In addition, the LRF has resulted in benefits. 
For example, the additional funding from the LRF has helped foster a 
cultural change toward maintaining better data on deferred maintenance. 
Continued attention to these issues will position agencies to more 
effectively communicate resource needs. It will also help provide 
Congress and the public with a clear picture of the anticipated costs 
to address deferred maintenance in the future and support critical 
government functions.
    Further, the LRF funding has allowed the agencies to tackle 
projects too large to address using annual appropriations. NPS and FWS 
used the funding for internal maintenance teams to tackle small 
projects more quickly and at a lower cost than through contracted work. 
The LRF's 5-year term can create challenges with hiring employees to 
assist in construction projects that might take longer than 5 years. 
However, the LRF funds do not expire, which can help with these long 
projects. Contingency funds have also helped agencies adjust quickly to 
unforeseen cost overruns and deal with challenges, such as inflation.

                                 *****

This testimony was submitted as an official GAO Report, titled 
``DEFERRED MAINTENANCE--Agencies' Project Selection and Challenges.'' 
The original document can be found at:

https://www.gao.gov/assets/d24107234.pdf

                                 ______
                                 

   Questions Submitted for the Record to Cardell Johnson, Director, 
  Natural Resources and Environment, Government Accountability Office
             Questions Submitted by Representative Grijalva
    Question 1. Based on the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) 
findings in its January 2024 report, please explain the primary reasons 
that the National Parks Service's (NPS) deferred maintenance costs have 
increased since Fiscal Year 2021.

    Answer. Agency officials at the National Park Service (NPS) 
attributed some of the increases in deferred maintenance to changes in 
data management. Specifically, NPS changed its approach to determining 
total deferred maintenance in fiscal year 2022. Previously, NPS 
conducted comprehensive in-person assessments of its assets. In 2022, 
the agency began using a modeling method for non-transportation assets, 
where staff conduct rapid visual assessments of assets to model 
deferred maintenance. This change allowed NPS to more consistently 
develop and track deferred maintenance data for these assets in its 
data system, according to NPS officials. Additionally, in fiscal year 
2021, NPS added a 35 percent markup to deferred maintenance estimates 
for non-transportation assets to account for project execution costs 
(such as design, construction management, compliance, and project 
management). NPS's previous assessment methodology only considered 
construction costs.
    NPS officials also said deferred maintenance increased in part 
because inflation drove up costs to address deferred maintenance. From 
October 2019 through September 2023, the construction material price 
index increased 42 percent, according to our analysis of Federal 
Reserve data. Additionally, NPS officials said increases were due in 
part to agency staff putting in more effort to log all deferred 
maintenance because of the increased funding available from the 
National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund (LRF). Agency 
officials told us that when funding was limited, there was not an 
emphasis on logging complete data on all deferred maintenance needs 
because so much of it would not be funded. As a result, they did not 
dedicate many resources to inputting data. The LRF's creation led the 
agencies to reevaluate their asset management approach and fostered a 
cultural change toward maintaining better data on deferred maintenance, 
according to agency officials.

    Question 2. GAO's January 2024 report notes that NPS recently 
applied a 35 percent markup to deferred maintenance projects to account 
for additional project execution costs (e.g., design, construction 
management, compliance, and project management), partly explaining the 
increased valuation for deferred maintenance. Is there precedent for 
similar changes in accounting methodology within other federal agencies 
that resulted in substantial changes in estimated deferred maintenance 
and repair costs?

    Answer. We have previously reported that similar changes in 
methodology for other agencies resulted in substantial changes in 
estimated deferred maintenance. For example, State Department officials 
said their deferred maintenance estimates increased from $96 million in 
fiscal year 2019 to $3 billion in fiscal year 2020 as a result of 
adopting a new methodology for determining its deferred maintenance.\1\ 
The State Department introduced parametric modeling to supplement data 
collected through its annual condition assessments. This model 
estimates the extent building systems have deteriorated over time and 
the estimated costs for replacement, if needed, based on the ages and 
expected useful life of individual systems.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ GAO, Overseas Real Property: Prioritizing Key Assets and 
Developing a Plan Could Help State Manage Its Estimated $3 Billion 
Maintenance Backlog, GAO-21-497 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 15, 2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As another example, Department of Energy officials have said that 
the main cause of an increase of about 35 percent in its estimated 
deferred maintenance from fiscal year 2018 through fiscal year 2019 was 
a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) initiative designed 
to improve the quality of its data on its assets.\2\ NNSA began using a 
new software application and updated information to calculate deferred 
maintenance for its buildings. Officials said this new method led to 
about a $2 billion increase over previous calculations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ GAO, Federal Real Property: Agencies Attribute Substantial 
Increases in Reported Deferred Maintenance to Multiple Factors, GAO-23-
106124 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 28, 2022).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Question 3. Has the Government Accountability Office encountered 
any evidence to suggest that the National Park Service has been 
negligent or has failed to follow leading practices in its management 
of deferred maintenance?

    Answer. Our January 2024 report evaluated NPS's processes for 
selecting deferred maintenance projects for LRF funding and found that 
they generally followed all six of the selected leading practices for 
managing deferred maintenance.\3\ This review focused on processes for 
selecting LRF projects in particular and excluded three leading 
practices for managing deferred maintenance more generally.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ GAO, Deferred Maintenance: Agencies Generally Followed Leading 
Practices in Selections but Faced Challenges, GAO-24-106495 
(Washington, D.C.: Jan. 8, 2024).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Other recent GAO work on government-wide deferred maintenance 
examined two of those leading practices which were excluded from our 
January 2024 report, specifically that agencies (1) structure budgets 
to separately identify funding to address maintenance and repair and 
deferred maintenance backlogs and (2) employ models for predicting 
outcome of investments, analyzing trade-offs, and optimizing among 
competing investments.\4\ That report found that Department of the 
Interior budget documents identified funding for maintenance but did 
not identify funding for addressing deferred maintenance backlogs 
separately or plans that include time frames for addressing backlogs. 
In addition, the report found that Interior officials were unaware of 
the agency using models to predict the outcomes of its investments.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\ GAO, Federal Real Property: Agencies Should Provide More 
Information About Increases in Deferred Maintenance and Repair, GAO-24-
105485 (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 16, 2023).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In response to our findings, the officials observed that it may be 
difficult to quantify in advance how much deferred maintenance costs 
from prior estimates would be addressed by the amount of funding they 
request; and the amount of funding spent on a project would not 
necessarily correlate to the amount of deferred maintenance addressed. 
In addition, Interior officials said that, while they recognized the 
value of such models, Interior agencies did not need complex models to 
understand that funding levels are insufficient and would lead to 
increased deferred maintenance. Further, they said that trade-offs 
between projects are analyzed during project prioritization at the 
local, regional, and headquarters levels.

    Question 4. The Republican-passed Interior Appropriations bill 
includes a decrease of $433 million or 12.5 percent to the National 
Park Service and a 52 percent cut to the construction account. Would a 
cut like this worsen or improve the Park Service's deferred 
maintenance? Would repeated cuts in successive years worsen or improve 
the Park Service's deferred maintenance?

    Answer. When available funding does not cover the cost of all 
needed annual and preventative maintenance, maintenance and repairs are 
not performed when they should be and must be delayed. This can result 
in an increase in deferred maintenance.

    Question 5. How does the availability of confirmed, guaranteed 
funding for planning and executing maintenance projects as opposed to 
relying on the fluctuations of the annual appropriations process 
benefit an agency's ability to manage deferred maintenance?

    Answer. Officials told us having the LRF funding specified for 5 
years allows them to know in advance that they will have steady 
funding, compared with having less predictable surges of annual 
funding. As a result, agencies can plan better for the coming years, 
according to agency officials.

                                 ______
                                 

    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you very much, Mr. Johnson. We are now 
going to recognize Members for 5 minutes for questions, and I 
am going to open the questioning up today.
    Mr. Greenblatt, you described it as a house of cards on a 
house of cards. Could you give us a little more in-depth 
explanation of why you say that?
    Mr. Greenblatt. Sure. This was based on the old model using 
work orders, and then you have the 35 percent markup tacked on 
top of the work orders. Our concern is that our review 
established that the work order data was inaccurate and 
unreliable. So, that is one house of cards. And then, when you 
add on the 35 percent on top of that, we are concerned that 
that is another house of cards built on top of that. It is an 
unstable foundation, and then they are adding an across-the-
board markup on top of that.
    I will note that they have asserted to us that they are 
moving away from that over the last couple of years. The final 
implementation of moving away from that process is underway now 
and should be done, according to the NPS, this fiscal year. But 
the estimates that have been used for years, the estimates that 
were driving GAOA, appear to have been, as I said, a house of 
cards built upon a house of cards.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Greenblatt, where did this 35 percent 
markup come from? Have you been able to ascertain that in your 
investigation?
    Mr. Greenblatt. According to the NPS, this is based on the 
Federal Highway Administration, they apparently apply a 35 
percent markup on theirs.
    Now what it is, according to NPS, is that before they would 
look at just the actual costs of, say, construction for a 
particular project. And now they are adding on additional 
costs, those sort of peripheral costs or ancillary costs such 
as compliance, such as project management, other items which 
may be legitimate, and now they said they weren't including 
them in the past. In 2021, they elected to include those in. 
And to do so, they effectuated this 35 percent markup, which 
comes from the Federal Highway Administration.
    We have a number of concerns about that. It is not 
necessarily that there shouldn't be additional costs 
incorporated. That may be completely valid. Our concern was on 
a couple of different ways looking at this. One was, is the 35 
percent number in and of itself appropriate?
    Two, does it apply across the board? There may be different 
types of projects that warrant different types of markups, 
either none or, perhaps even arguably, more than 35 percent, 
depending on the project.
    The third thing is these are all based on the assumption 
that these jobs will be done by contractors, and there is some 
subset, an appreciable subset of deferred maintenance projects 
that will be done in house, and therefore wouldn't warrant that 
markup.
    So, those are the nature of our concerns about the markup, 
and that is why we questioned that over the course of our 
review.
    Mr. Tiffany. Did you ever get an answer or a 
rationalization of why 35 percent? Have you gotten a good 
answer?
    Mr. Greenblatt. We don't believe it was adequately 
justified. What I understand is that they have referred to the 
FHFA amount, and DOI adjusted a policy to include the 
incorporation of some of these costs. We don't feel like the 
justification that NPS used for the 35 percent number across 
the board was adequate, frankly. It wasn't sophisticated enough 
and wasn't nuanced enough to give a fair representation.
    Mr. Tiffany. Should this Committee have full confidence in 
the National Park Service going forward dealing with this 
issue?
    Mr. Greenblatt. That is a call for you all to make. We are 
looking at the numbers that they were putting forward.
    I would say it is incumbent on the Park Service to get the 
numbers right. And for us, meaning me in my office, GAO, and 
the Members in this room right here right now, to exercise 
oversight because, as you are looking at the GAOA 
reauthorization in the next year or so, this is going to be 
critical to understand the magnitude of the issues at play.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Johnson, it seems to be much different 
conclusions between the Inspector General and GAO. Why is there 
such a discrepancy?
    Mr. Johnson. Well, there isn't a discrepancy. I think a lot 
of what we found in our work, very similar findings. We point 
out the 35 percent markup in our report, as well. We have also 
identified the same data management challenges as the IG 
report.
    In regards to the 35 percent markup, we agree with our 
accountability colleagues here that it needs to be transparent, 
that they need to justify and document that. We do also believe 
that trying to estimate project execution costs is a best 
practice, but it is also a best practice to make sure that you 
are transparent, and that it is justified and documented.
    Mr. Tiffany. In your opinion, should this Committee have 
full confidence that the National Park Service is going to turn 
around this really big problem?
    Mr. Johnson. The National Park Service has been given a lot 
of resources over the years to address this particular issue, 
and I think the work that we have done here--it is looking like 
that they are following a lot of the leading practices, but 
they have to remain consistent and diligent with what they are 
doing.
    It is one thing to fold the leading practices into your 
policies, but you actually have to apply them every day.
    Mr. Tiffany. Thank you for your answers. Next, I would like 
to recognize the gentleman from Hawaii, Mr. Case, for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Case. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think we can all agree on 
this Committee, or at least most of us, with the vast majority 
of Americans that our goal here is to strengthen and improve 
our national parks throughout our country. I have two of the 
best national parks--along with everybody else--Hawaii 
Volcanoes National Park and Haleakala. So, if the intent of 
this hearing is to do that, I commend our Majority colleagues 
for holding it.
    But I am having trouble trying to sort through to determine 
what the real issue is that we are trying to solve here, so 
that is the nature of my questions. And I would make a couple 
of observations up front.
    I think the first observation is that the reason we are 
talking about deferred maintenance is because we deferred it to 
start with, and that is a result of chronic underfunding of the 
National Park Service over a long, long period of time, through 
multiple administrations, in Congresses of simply not keeping 
up with maintenance to start with, No. 1.
    No. 2, that is a function of the appropriations decisions 
that this body makes in terms of maintaining our national 
parks, and I would note that we have a choice to make even this 
year where, and I speak as a member, together with Ms. Lee 
here, of the Appropriations Committee, serving on this 
particular committee, where we have seen in the Department of 
the Interior budget put forward by my Majority colleagues from 
Fiscal Year 2023 to Fiscal Year 2024, 2024 being their budget, 
a reduction of about 13 percent in the National Park Service 
overall, and a 52 percent proposed cut in the National Park 
Service construction budget.
    So, we can talk here about deferred maintenance, but we are 
only repeating the problem by our appropriations decisions. So, 
to me, that is the big picture here, is how much money are we 
putting in to maintaining the parks to start with, and how much 
money are we putting in every year to getting after the 
deferred maintenance.
    Now, I think we also almost all agree that the Great 
American Outdoors Act was a great development, despite the fact 
that some members of this Committee voted against it. And we 
are trying to make that work. So, let's focus in on the exact 
issue that we are talking about here.
    I think we are all trying to get after the deferred 
maintenance. We are trying to determine whether the National 
Park Service can do it better. I think we are having some 
disagreement over the extent to which it is doing a good job 
from that perspective. I welcome the oversight there. But let 
me ask you this direct question.
    Why is the estimate of deferred maintenance, which we are 
focusing on in this hearing--we are saying basically the 
National Park Service did or didn't or is or isn't utilizing 
the right techniques to estimate deferred maintenance, but that 
is only really relevant, isn't it, if you are trying to get to 
a prioritization of your deferred maintenance projects and an 
overall budget? You still have to bid it out.
    You talked about how many of these jobs are done in the 
private sector. I mean, they are bid at some point. I hope they 
are bid competitively. And then you also talked about how the 
projects are, in fact, in some cases, done internally. But in 
that case there is an end game cost. I mean, in other words, 
the cost is not the estimate. Or is it?
    So, the question is, why is it so relevant that we are 
focusing in particular, and I have no problem in making sure 
that we have good estimates. I am just trying to figure out 
whether we are solving the actual problem here, which is 
deferred maintenance.
    Mr. Greenblatt. Yes, I would agree that the core issue 
should be on the work being done. The estimates are important 
for decision-making, though. Critical, as I said, as you are 
going into the GAOA reauthorization, that getting those numbers 
right, or at least a reasonable approximation of those numbers, 
is important. But yes, we also focused on the use of the work 
orders, whether they have implemented the internal controls in 
order to drive that system to where it is an effective way to 
identify and manage the necessary work.
    Mr. Case. OK, so we are in agreement that cost, at the end 
of the day, is relevant. Have we studied whether cost is 
actually matching estimates?
    Are they actually, at the end of the day, getting the 
estimates right in terms of the actual cost?
    Mr. Greenblatt. Well, that is the problem. They are 
shifting to this new process.
    Under the old process, we have significant concerns that 
no, the process was not identifying the costs right. The 
systems that were being used under the work order mentality was 
deeply flawed, and that is what I think we found. Now, whether 
the new system cures that or not, it really depends on their 
internal controls and whether they are maintaining the system 
to account for whatever work is being done.
    Mr. Case. OK. And then I think, finally, as my time runs 
out, a question which is more rhetorical at this point is, OK, 
well, then are these issues that we are dealing with, are they 
fixable administratively, or do they take a statutory fix, 
which is all about your GAOA reauthorization process?
    So, I will just leave it there. I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I would now like to 
recognize the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Lamborn, for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the 
witnesses for being here. Thank you to the Chairmen for holding 
this important hearing. Thank you to the Ranking Members for 
their bipartisan support of this important issue.
    The testimony touches on several issues highlighting the 
effect on concessionaires who bring in $1.5 billion in revenue 
for the National Park Service annually. At the end of 2023, the 
final rule updating 36 CFR part 51, the commercial visitor 
services concession contracts, was issued. And while this is a 
great improvement towards the issue of the minimum franchise 
fee, I still have concerns about transparency within NPS.
    Mr. Greenblatt, first of all, just a detail. Which location 
was vacant for years starting in 2010 that you mentioned in 
your testimony?
    Mr. Greenblatt. Which position was vacant?
    Mr. Lamborn. Which location?
    Mr. Greenblatt. I am blanking on the name of it right now, 
but it was a restaurant and lodge. Thank you. It was Blue Ridge 
Parkway. It had a significant structure that was vacant because 
of mold.
    Mr. Lamborn. OK, very good. And do you have any numbers on 
what revenue is lost from that facility? Or if not, you could 
get that back to us.
    Mr. Greenblatt. Sure, we can get back to you. I don't know 
that. I think that is probably an NPS question, but we can see 
whether there is any data on that.
    Mr. Lamborn. Thank you. And did either of you, your 
organizations or agencies, identify whether any of the current 
deferred backlog applies to concessionaire contractual 
maintenance requirements?
    Mr. Greenblatt. I don't know the answer to that off the top 
of my head, but we can get back to you on that.
    Mr. Johnson. Yes, we would also need to get back to you on 
that.
    Mr. Lamborn. OK. If you could, that would be great.
    Have either of you seen any evidence of using 
concessionaires to improve quality-of-life additions to visitor 
areas?
    In some cases, NPS' deferred maintenance backlog in visitor 
services facilities like campgrounds and visitor centers could 
impact adjacent concessionaire operations directly or 
indirectly. With that in mind, has there been any consideration 
of partnering with the concession industry to help accelerate 
curing these aspects of the NPS deferred maintenance backlog?
    Mr. Greenblatt. I am not aware of any. That again would 
probably be an NPS question in terms of whether they have 
explored that path. I don't know of that sitting here right 
now.
    Mr. Lamborn. But it sounds like something they should look 
at.
    Mr. Greenblatt. I think they could explore all sorts of 
different options, but that is something that, like the issue 
in the Blue Ridge Parkway where there was a restaurant and a 
lodge that were not active for a decade, presumably there could 
have been concessionaires that had an interest there. But that 
is something, again, that would be an NPS question.
    Mr. Lamborn. Would you have anything to add to that?
    Mr. Johnson. No, thank you.
    Mr. Lamborn. OK, thanks.
    As Vice Chair of the Natural Resources Committee, I have 
heard many of the issues about NPS employee housing and the 
rundown nature of the infrastructure. Has the OIG or the GAO 
addressed or reviewed further utilizing public-private 
partnerships to provide support in some of the most important 
infrastructure to the parks?
    Mr. Greenblatt. No, I know that that is a significant part. 
Going back to that Blue Ridge Parkway, one of the reasons why 
that situation was fixed was they ultimately went to private 
donations to get that situation remedied. So, I think that 
could be a robust avenue for some improvement there. But we 
have not looked at that, as far as I know.
    Mr. Lamborn. OK. And Mr. Greenblatt, would the minimum 
franchise fee have been a burden to solidifying contracts in 
certain places?
    Mr. Greenblatt. We haven't looked at that, but I can look 
into our records to see whether we have explored that issue in 
the past. That is not coming to mind, whether we have done any 
review on that in particular.
    Mr. Lamborn. OK. With all those various things that you 
didn't have at your fingertips but could find, please provide 
that to the Committee and we would appreciate that.
    Mr. Greenblatt. Absolutely. Will do.
    Mr. Lamborn. Thank you so much.
    Mr. Tiffany. Will the gentleman yield the balance of his 
time to me? Thank you very much.
    Mr. Greenblatt, you have seen recently in the news the 
National Park Service wanted to remove the William Penn statue 
from Welcome Park in the heart of Philadelphia. That received a 
lot of blowback.
    In your opinion, if the National Park Service spent more 
time focusing on deferred maintenance rather than being the 
woke police, do you think it might help them in actually 
reducing that $22 billion backlog?
    Mr. Greenblatt. I appreciate the question. I am not really 
well situated to answer that question, but I appreciate the 
nature of that question.
    Mr. Tiffany. It is amazing what the priorities are of this 
Administration. I yield and recognize the gentlelady from New 
Mexico, the Ranking Member, Ms. Stansbury.
    Ms. Stansbury. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Greenblatt, for being here 
today. We really appreciate you being here.
    I have to admit, like some of the other members on this 
Committee have stated this morning, I was pretty shocked when I 
initially heard some of the numbers and what we were seeing 
with the change in the baseline around the deferred 
maintenance. And I think, like Mr. Case, we are all still 
struggling a little bit to kind of understand what is going on 
and why this re-baselining happened. But I do think it is 
important to revisit the timeline a little bit, because I think 
it will help to answer a lot of questions.
    So, Mr. Chairman, if you will indulge me, I think it is 
important for us to recognize that the GAOA passed in August 
2020, and as we all remember, 2020 was the height of the 
pandemic, right? So, we were all working from home, the 
national parks were seeing an overwhelming number of visitors, 
and there was very little work happening on construction 
projects. The Federal Government and Department of the Interior 
had an all-time vacancy high at the time, and it was the end of 
the Trump administration. And my understanding is that after 
GAOA passed, the Trump administration under Secretary Bernhardt 
convened a task force to look at how to address this big chunk 
of money that was now being reallocated from the LWCF fund to 
deferred maintenance.
    And it is important to recognize that these weren't sort of 
new dollar appropriations. These are dollars that come into the 
Federal Government from oil and gas and minerals revenues. And 
for 50 years, we have been trying to get that funding 
reallocated to the original purposes for what LWCF was 
originally authorized. So, this was sort of the final 
realization of that, but it happened at the height of the 
pandemic.
    So, my understanding is that Secretary Bernhardt convened a 
task force, and one of the first things that they identified 
was actually this problem with the baseline data and how they 
were estimating costs. So, it was actually Secretary Bernhardt 
who set into motion the process of re-evaluating the actual 
financial baseline of how this deferred maintenance was 
actually being calculated.
    In addition to that, it was Secretary Bernhardt who put 
into motion a process for prioritizing projects. And it is our 
understanding that that administration wanted to prioritize 
major projects first.
    Now, everyone on this Committee understands that major 
projects like roads and huge construction projects require a 
lot of planning. We have an engineer right here on the 
Committee, and that takes a long time to actually put together 
the plans. You have to get permits. And at the height of the 
pandemic, we were having shortages of construction materials, 
as well.
    So, we are talking about a 3-year timeline between when 
this bill passed--3\1/2\ years to us sitting here today. And 
what we do know from the GAO report, as well as the OIG report, 
is that there are projects underway, major projects that 
originally were put on that list in 2020 and a lot of minor 
projects. But what we are seeing in these reports is a complete 
re-baselining of how those costs are estimated. And I think 
that all of us are a little concerned about the sort of across-
the-board estimation of those costs.
    And Mr. Johnson, I have to say when you shared your 
anecdote about the data that you requested, I was a little 
shocked, but not surprised because I am a former OMB employee, 
and one of my jobs at OMB in the Interior branch was to collect 
data, just like what you were speaking to today. And when I 
worked at OMB between 2011 and 2015, the Department of the 
Interior was struggling with baseline data on deferred 
maintenance. And I am glad you brought up BIE, because it is 
one of the biggest challenges, as well. And it, of course, 
affects all of our tribal communities.
    So, I think it is important that we understand there has 
been a re-baselining of the costs. We had labor shortages, we 
had agencies that were barely operational because of a 
pandemic, we had planning horizons, we had major projects, we 
had a change in administration, and we just had the ramp-up of 
getting projects done and then ticked off the list. So, there 
is a lot going on National Park Service right now. And I think 
it is important that we do give proper due to the fact that 
they are doing their best, even if the internal controls need 
some fixing.
    I know I am running out of time quickly, but Mr. Chairman, 
if you will indulge me, I would like to ask both of the 
witnesses.
    You both mentioned that in the reauthorization we could 
bake things into a reauthorization statute that would fix some 
of these problems. I am wondering if you could each share very 
quickly what your thoughts are on that.
    Mr. Greenblatt. Well, I think in the effort to reauthorize, 
we could bake in some additional oversight mechanisms, some 
additional internal control mechanisms in terms of how some of 
these estimates are implemented.
    And then also the execution side, I mean, to your point 
about getting away from the estimates and looking at the actual 
work being done, the internal controls, I would think, are a 
significant part. Now, whether that is statutory or whether 
that is a mechanism of oversight by the folks in this room, you 
know, us as well as the committees at play, that might be a 
valid path, as well.
    I am not going to comment on whether it should be statutory 
versus sort of on the ground. But, I think there are a wide 
array of mechanisms that we can pursue, and we are happy to 
engage with all of you as we move forward and as you all 
contemplate the reauthorization of GAOA.
    Ms. Stansbury. Mr. Chairman, would you allow Mr. Johnson to 
respond?
    Mr. Tiffany. Yes.
    Ms. Stansbury. Mr. Johnson?
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
    In addition to the internal controls, I would agree more 
oversight would be very helpful. But in our work there are a 
couple things that we saw that might make the LRF a little bit 
more effective. So, a couple of things that we highlight here 
today would be the contingency fund so agencies are able to set 
aside a contingency fund in case the projects go over a little 
bit.
    And what we are seeing with that is that some agencies like 
BIE, for example, they have a very small amount of deferred 
maintenance. So, the contingency fund is set at 10 percent. 
They could be doing a lot of projects that are about $100,000 
or so. So, the process that they go through to sort of request 
those contingency funds and proceed, they would be asking to 
move $10,000. And that is a little bit of a delay of time, so 
it might be helpful to maybe adjust the different thresholds 
for the different agencies based on the amount of deferred 
maintenance.
    And then the last thing that I would highlight is consider 
separating LRF allocations from the budget process. Now, that 
does not mean no oversight. Oversight is what has really 
helped, I think, move the ball forward on some of these issues. 
But what we are seeing is that, in many of the parks or areas 
in the country, they are dealing with extreme weather issues, 
and there is very limited time to be able to do some of the 
work. So, if there is a delay, that could also set that project 
back by a couple of years. So, there might be an opportunity to 
do that.
    And I would be happy to work with your office or any of you 
to get you additional insights that we have from our work.
    Ms. Stansbury. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Tiffany. The Ranking Member yields. I would like to 
recognize Mr. Stauber for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Stauber. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
    And to the Ranking Member, you mentioned Secretary 
Bernhardt. I just want to give you my opinion. I think he was 
one of the best Secretaries of the Interior in this country's 
history.
    To our witnesses, thanks for coming. And Mr. Johnson, I do 
like the idea of contingencies being able to make those on-the-
spot decisions, rather than going through the bureaucracy to 
finish a project if it is $10,000, et cetera. But I do want to 
say, is the mission of the Park Service, is it to increase and 
expand access for responsible recreation?
    Mr. Greenblatt. I think that is part of the mission, 
certainly.
    Mr. Stauber. In your priorities throughout the park system, 
was that kept in mind?
    Mr. Greenblatt. I assume so, everything I have seen----
    Mr. Stauber. I know that Mr. Case talks about his great 
national parks in California, and I have no doubt about that. I 
want to talk about my Voyageurs National Park.
    Go ahead, if you want to respond.
    Mr. Case. I am just going to correct. Mine are in Hawaii, 
not California.
    Mr. Stauber. Oh, that is right, OK, correction.
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. Stauber. Mine are in northern Minnesota. My only 
national park is Voyageurs National Park, and it gets a lot of 
use, and the priority list that has been put out, when you talk 
to some of the local officials and the users, that doesn't sit 
well with them. And I will just give you a couple examples. 
Some of the winter trails, because of the blowdowns, et cetera, 
they can't use them. And the park has wanted to resurface roads 
that have several years of lifetime in them.
    I would just encourage you to listen to the users of those 
parks that use them frequently, and I think that is important. 
But I also want you to be independent thinkers and make good 
decisions.
    Conditional use permits, they are expanding in price. The 
conditional use permits, the folks that use them in Voyageurs 
National Park, when they have asked the Park Service why they 
have increased, the Park Service says the additional monies go 
to administration. Briefly tell me where does that money go, 
that additional $20 on a conditional use, administration of 
what?
    Mr. Greenblatt. That would be a question for the National 
Park Service. I am not familiar with----
    Mr. Stauber. OK. Mr. Johnson, do you want to respond?
    Mr. Johnson. Generally, I would say that as agencies 
administer programs, there are always some administrative costs 
that are involved in the administration. Whether you are sort 
of doing the oversight of the actual project or sort of design, 
there could be things related to compliance. So, some agencies 
may do a small set-aside to account for those sorts of things.
    Mr. Stauber. Yes. I think that for both of our witnesses, I 
think that the mission of the Park Service, I just respectfully 
ask that you keep the mission in mind to increase and expand 
access to the American people, not restrict it.
    In the Great American Outdoors Act, the Land Legacy 
Restoration Fund, there is $1.33 billion to the National Park 
Service for a 5-year period of deferred maintenance, is that 
correct?
    Mr. Johnson. Correct.
    Mr. Greenblatt. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Stauber. Where does that money come from?
    Mr. Greenblatt. Fifty percent of that comes from oil and 
gas, as Ms. Stansbury just talked about a moment ago, oil and 
gas revenues that are directed specifically for----
    Mr. Stauber. So, 50 percent come from oil and gas. What 
happens if this Administration gets their way and shuts down 
oil and gas? How are we going to recoup that money? Where is it 
going to come from?
    Mr. Greenblatt. I don't know the answer to that question.
    Mr. Stauber. Mr. Johnson?
    Mr. Johnson. If the source of the revenue comes from the 
oil and gas, then it would be up to appropriations to determine 
where else the money----
    Mr. Stauber. It has to come from somewhere else. There is 
already a funding stream for it, right?
    Mr. Johnson. Right.
    Mr. Stauber. And if the Biden administration gets their 
way, funding is going to go away.
    And I think that the most important part of that is we know 
that our national parks, they are crown jewels in our 
respective states. The public wants to use our national parks, 
and they want them to be kept up, kept open, and as my 
colleague on the other side of the aisle said, there have been 
deferred maintenance backlogs, we should have been doing this a 
long time ago, right? But here we are now, and we have the 
opportunity to start. And you have a good opportunity, monies 
invested to do just that because these national parks are 
used--and we saw it in COVID, as was already mentioned. They 
are beautiful, and I implore you to do your best to keep them 
that way, and keep the mission in mind to increase access for 
Americans to these parks.
    And I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I would now like to 
recognize Ms. Lee for 5 minutes for questioning.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the representative of the 
state that has the most Federal land outside of Alaska, one of 
the proudest votes I took was for the Great American Outdoors 
Act, including the establishment of the LRF to address a 
priority deferred maintenance at many of the land management 
agencies. And my own district is home to Lake Mead, the first 
National Recreation Area to be designated as such by Congress 
in 1964.
    I am going to turn some of my questions more to the human 
aspect of managing deferred maintenance. Before I do that, I 
just want to ask you, Mr. Greenblatt, is it fair to say that 
Lake Mead is one of the many NPS sites with infrastructure and 
resources that date back more than half a century?
    Mr. Greenblatt. I think that is fair.
    Ms. Lee. And is it also fair to say that the proposed 
Federal actions to assets 50 years or older, ranging from 
demolition to rehabilitation, often require significant 
expertise, funding, and time to complete, given both the 
historic and the environmental review processes involved?
    Mr. Greenblatt. I am not an expert on those specific 
issues, but I have no reason to disagree with that.
    Ms. Lee. So, as essential as it is, the LRF funding alone 
is not a cure-all for the deferred maintenance issue. The level 
of expertise and staff resources needed to successfully tackle 
these issues also requires a commitment from Congress to 
adequately fund the National Park Service and other Federal 
agencies year to year.
    And the reason I am making this point is today's hearing 
comes at a time when House Republicans are seeking to slash the 
National Park Service budget by more than $400 million, 
resulting in what the National Parks Conservation Association 
estimates would result in the loss of more than 1,000 National 
Park Service staff members.
    Mr. Greenblatt and Mr. Johnson, every year the non-partisan 
Partnership for Public Service releases its annual rankings of 
the best places to work in the Federal Government based on 
employee responses. Do either of you happen to know how the NPS 
came out in these rankings?
    Mr. Greenblatt. I don't actually, off the top of my head.
    Mr. Johnson. No.
    Ms. Lee. Well, sadly, in the lowest 15th percentile, 
ranking 371 out of 432 agencies. The Partnership's CEO further 
emphasized that the National Park Service's overall score has 
consistently been low throughout the last decade. And why? 
Because employees have had to operate with really diminished 
resources for a very long time.
    I mean, we talk about even their facilities where they 
sleep and eat and all the deferred maintenance with that. They 
feel like their hands are tied behind their back and they don't 
have the resources they need.
    So, in spite of these challenges, the professionals at the 
Park Service are actively putting LRF funding into work at Lake 
Mead, including more than $5 million to ensure continued access 
to safe drinking water for visitors, and a little over $4 
million to demolish abandoned and hazardous structures within 
the park.
    If the Majority's concern about deferred maintenance in our 
national parks is genuine, I would urge them here, just as I 
have on the Appropriations Committee, to join us and join House 
Democrats in making sure that the National Park Service 
actually has the resources and the congressional support it 
needs to succeed and implement these types of programs.
    And with that, I yield.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentlelady yields. Now I would like to 
recognize Mr. Collins from Georgia for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I too am trying 
to figure out what the problem is. And a lot of times it is not 
always more resources. A lot of times it is the management, and 
I think that is where we are at today. We are seeing numbers 
that we don't understand. I am a business person. They don't 
look like they make sense. You can throw all the money you want 
to at anything. But unless you have the right management, and 
you trust that management, and you trust those numbers, then 
you really don't have anything.
    I had questions I wanted to start with, but since I have 
gotten here I have other questions. So, what I wanted to ask 
right off the bat, Mr. Greenblatt, is expansion considered 
deferred maintenance?
    An example was like what Mr. Neguse was talking about, they 
were increasing the campground. Would that be part of deferred 
maintenance, or is that a new project?
    Mr. Greenblatt. I am not 100 percent sure the answer to 
that question. We can get back to you on that. I don't think it 
is, but we will give you a more certain answer.
    Mr. Collins. OK, yes, I would love to know what the exact 
definition would be.
    The 214,000 work orders that are 3 years or older, why is 
that? Waiting on studies, or they just weren't important, or 
did you get an answer?
    Mr. Greenblatt. That was a conservative estimate by us. You 
could easily draw the line at, say, 2 years or 1 year. Some 
parks classified deferred maintenance at 1 year; we went with a 
conservative estimate at 3 years. So, it could actually be much 
more than the 200,000 work orders that we found if you drew the 
line at 2 years or even 1 year.
    And what we heard was that there were no policies in place 
in terms of how to classify the deferred maintenance, and some 
folks wouldn't even classify them at all if they weren't funded 
already. So, it was just an unreliable data set. There was no 
consistency across the NPS. That is what we found with respect 
to the work order process.
    Mr. Collins. So, if you look at cost versus estimate, and 
they are estimating going up 35 percent across the board, did 
you go back, or is there a way to go back and look at, when a 
project or a deferred maintenance is actually done, that the 
cost was in line with whatever national average is on other 
cost and other agencies to do the same work?
    Mr. Greenblatt. We are doing work right now looking at 
contracts and overruns, and looking at how they are being 
managed right now. That is in the process, so that could be 
months down the road. But we are doing a job on that specific 
issue right now to look at those types of issues. That is a 
sweet spot for us in terms of doing our oversight----
    Mr. Collins. Do you have an idea when you will finish that?
    Mr. Greenblatt. It is months away. It is early-ish in the 
process, so it is several months away. They are just ramping up 
with a lot of these jobs, but I will get back to you with a----
    Mr. Collins. Yes, I think that is very important in the 
whole scope of this.
    And Mr. Johnson, when you were talking about climate and 
disasters and stuff like that happening, don't we allocate 
money for disasters to help fix these parks over and above 
deferred maintenance? That wouldn't even be deferred 
maintenance, would it?
    Mr. Johnson. Yes. There are events that happen where we 
have flooding or a wildfire occur or some other disaster and 
sometimes they do receive money in conjunction with other 
pots----
    Mr. Collins. Yes, I thought that we went in and put in 
additional funds over and above.
    All right, now I am going to get to my questions that I had 
written down yesterday.
    Mr. Greenblatt, we have seen numerous examples. You have 
been in here before. We have talked about things like passwords 
and how you all hacked 90 percent of the Department of the 
Interior's computers in less than 15 minutes because they don't 
update things. Outdated technology is leading to inefficiency, 
and it is also costing us money, the taxpayers.
    In that vein, during your investigation, you mentioned that 
you found that the NPS inconsistently entered deferred 
maintenance work orders into its tracking system. What was the 
cause of this inconsistency, and was it due to outdated 
technology such as them running on Windows 7?
    Mr. Greenblatt. I don't know if it is a technological issue 
as opposed to a consistency in terms of policy across the 
board.
    As I mentioned before, there were some folks that were not 
entering deferred maintenance at all until it got funded. There 
were some folks that said, well, if it is a year old, then we 
are going to classify it as deferred maintenance. There were 
some folks that used different standards across the board, so 
that is why we were saying that this is unreliable.
    I mean, if you have 400-some-odd park units and they are 
all using different processes, different definitions, then your 
data set is going to be problematic.
    Mr. Collins. Right. Mr. Chairman, in what I have seen and 
what I have been looking at, and from the testimony that we 
continue to hear, to me it just seems like a lack of concern or 
a laziness within a department of the Federal Government.
    And with that, I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I would like to 
recognize the gentlewoman from New Mexico, Ms. Leger Fernandez 
for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you, and thank you very much to 
our witnesses. Thank you for the work that you do in both 
working on trying to make our park systems available in a way 
that our public can enjoy them, and for actually holding them 
accountable to the GAO. We appreciate both of those aspects of 
your testimony.
    And in New Mexico, as you all know, we have a lot of 
national parks. We have a lot of amazingly beautiful places and 
historic places of cultural significance. Many of these parks 
were built back in the 1930s. We have Civilian Conservation 
Corps construction. And when something is 100 years old, the 
maintenance is even harder when you are trying to also preserve 
the historic nature of it.
    And I am concerned about the idea that we have these 
oversight hearings and we beat up on the agencies at the same 
time that we are starving the agencies of resources. Right now, 
there is a proposed $450 million cut to the Park Service. 
People carry out the services, people do the work. And when you 
cut the funding and the resources for people, you can't really 
get that work done.
    Mr. Greenblatt, how would such a severe cut to the Park 
Service affect the ability to address deferred maintenance 
backlog if there actually were a $450 million cut, which we are 
fighting against, I can tell you.
    Mr. Greenblatt. Well, there is no question that the 
National Park Service has stated repeatedly quite publicly that 
insufficient funding, in their view, has caused the deferred 
maintenance backlog, along with other issues as well, like 
heavy visitor use. There is no question that the National Park 
Service has stated that for years. We have not done an 
independent review on that particular item, so I can't opine on 
the direct correlation there.
    What I would say was that under the Inflation Reduction 
Act, there were additional funds spent for National Park 
Service, $500 million spent for the National Park Service. We 
in the Inspector General's office, we are beginning work right 
now. It is going to be a while before we are coming public, but 
we will keep you posted, we are doing a review of their 
workforce planning and the implementation of those funds, as 
well.
    So, we are playing in that space, but that is foreshadowing 
something that could be a bit down the road. But we are trying 
to look at those very issues that you are raising.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. Well, like I said, I really do 
appreciate the accountability role that the GAO plays in each 
of the agencies and the role that you play there. As you know, 
I find it very important. I am very appreciative of the work 
you are doing in New Mexico on other matters.
    But I have also been hearing from my constituents about 
what it means when the maintenance is not done. I have ranchers 
in the Valles Caldera area in New Mexico, for example, who keep 
talking about the fact that those fences aren't mended. And 
when those fences aren't mended, what you are doing is you are 
creating conflict between people who are concerned about the 
environment, who are concerned about wildlife, and people who 
are concerned about ranches. Deferred maintenance is also an 
area in which if we do not fix it, we create conflict where 
there should not be conflict between different community 
members.
    So, I wanted to ask you, Mr. Johnson, how does the National 
Park Service prioritize projects so that we can look at where 
would it be good, should we prioritize a project where, if we 
don't get it done, like fixing the fences at Valles Calderas, 
we have both a negative impact on wildlife, but also a negative 
impact on a way of life, and should that be a priority of 
looking at ways in which we prioritize projects to reduce 
conflict within a community?
    Mr. Johnson. Yes, thank you for the question. We know from 
our work that the Park Service really considers five factors 
when they are trying to look at projects to fund for the 
deferred maintenance. They are looking at things that are 
relevant to their mission. They are looking at the scope, they 
are looking at if they are quick implementation, or even things 
like, is it the site visitation?
    So, what we know is that all of those things play a role 
into the decision-making, but it is something that we would 
also say that prioritization isn't a one-time thing. You don't 
just sort of go through the exercise or do it once. You have to 
constantly reassess and think about all the different types of 
priorities and risks out there, and that might get you 
different decisions along the way depending on what the overall 
priorities would be.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. Well, thank you. And I think that we 
need to really be careful that we are not, by deferring this 
maintenance, then expecting and passing the cost on down to 
ranchers, for example, and that we need to be careful that 
kicking the can down the road is really not acceptable because 
of its impact on private individuals like ranchers.
    And with that, I yield back. Did you want to add to that, 
Mr. Greenblatt? I ran out of time, however.
    Mr. Greenblatt. Just to your point, in our example in the 
testimony, the deferred maintenance shut down buildings, and 
private donations had to come along to then fund the 
remediation of the mold and get those buildings up and running 
again. So, I think that is analogous to what you were just 
mentioning.
    Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you, Mr. Greenblatt, and I yield 
back.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the few extra minutes.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentlelady yields, and I will now 
recognize Mr. Bergman from Michigan for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Bergman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It has been a few 
years since I have been in this committee hearing room. It 
feels great to be back, because we are talking about things 
natural, OK? And we are talking about resources, in this case, 
how we spend money to preserve the natural resources that God 
has granted us with.
    I represent half the state of Michigan. To be specific, 
Sleeping Bear Dunes, Isle Royale, Pictured Rocks National 
Seashore, Keweenaw. Roughly, of those four on the list here, we 
have about $156 million in deferred maintenance issues.
    Now, numbers are one thing here in DC, but when you are 
that small business operator in and around those areas of those 
national parks and national seashores, you are the person who 
is running the guided tours. In some cases, you are the one 
doing the Pictured Rock cruises, all the different things. And 
if we take the $156 million in deferred maintenance and we 
multiply it by an average--this is fact at least in our neck of 
the woods--that tourist dollar that comes up there turns seven 
times. We are talking about $1 billion-plus in economic 
opportunity for the local businesses.
    So, if we have facilities closed or unusable at these 
national parks, the people aren't going to come, the economic 
opportunity is not there for those small business owners. It is 
not big business up there. This is small mom-and-pop kind of 
things.
    And I guess we hear, regardless of whether you are Democrat 
or Republican, if you are here elected in the House, if you are 
not looking at oversight of the expenditure of taxpayers' 
dollars, then you are not doing your job. Really, it is not 
party-specific because we are counting on you to take the money 
that we give to the agencies and hold them accountable for 
results. And I don't want to talk too long here because I have 
a couple of questions.
    But one example in our district, do any of you all work 
with the Army Corps of Engineers at all?
    Mr. Johnson. Yes.
    Mr. Bergman. When we did the Soo Locks project upgrade a 
few years ago, the Army Corps admitted they made a mistake in 
estimating how much it would cost. They were only off by a 
billion and a half dollars. What happens when that happens? 
When we are talking about being held accountable, it goes both 
ways.
    What I would like to hear from you, Mr. Johnson, is the 
Government Accountability Office, in this case, exactly what 
entities are being held accountable for what we are talking 
about here today?
    When you go to work and your staff goes to work on a daily 
basis, they have their list of, in my case, and by the way, the 
Army Corps is doing a great job of catching up, but they didn't 
kick the ball through the goalposts on the first try, OK?
    So, any of you want to give me an example of, in this 
particular case, who you are looking at specifically from an 
accountability standpoint?
    Mr. Johnson. Yes, absolutely. I lead our oversight of 
issues related to Federal lands and water resources. So, I have 
oversight responsibility for the Federal land management 
agencies, National Park Service, Forest Service, Fish and 
Wildlife Service, et cetera.
    I think that the work that we do on a daily basis in 
response to requests and mandates that we get from Congress is 
about holding the agencies accountable. And one of the things 
that I have been very encouraged by, just as we have done this 
work, as the IG has done this work over many decades, is being 
there as the agencies are trying to make decisions, are 
struggling with how to move forward. It is because of the work 
that we have done that I think has really helped them to sort 
of think about issues that they didn't think about before.
    For example, I pointed out that $821 million in my opening 
statement. That was some deferred maintenance that was under-
reported, and----
    Mr. Bergman. I hate to cut you off, because I know you are 
deeply involved in it.
    And the only thing I would ask both of you, if you embody 
the following phrase, ``a sense of urgency,'' we need to have 
that sense of urgency go all the way down so we here on this 
side of the river can look at how we are spending money wisely 
in support of our natural resources to do better for our 
citizens and those small businesses.
    With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I would like to 
recognize the gentleman from Idaho, Mr. Fulcher, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Fulcher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to the panel for 
being here, thank you for that.
    I frequently say, and I will say it again here today, 
please excuse us when we come and go. Sometimes we have dueling 
committees. I mean, there are two going on at the same time. 
So, if this is a repeat, forgive me, that is why.
    But we are here, of course, talking about National Park 
Service backlogs, and that is a huge issue for us and our state 
in Idaho, the jump from, I think it was $12.7 billion in Fiscal 
Year 2019 to $22.3 billion for 2022.
    One of the things that has driven a lot of those concerns 
is the concern of a wildfire in our state. We have tremendous 
wildfire problems. A lot of unmanaged Federal land is subject 
to that, so that is always a factor for us.
    A question for Mr. Johnson. I know fees are briefly 
mentioned in the GAO report, but there was at least a component 
that I didn't fully understand about that, and that is having 
to do with recreational fees. In Fiscal Year 2021, recreational 
fees from the Federal Lands Recreational Enhancement Act 
collected about $463 million. Over the last 10 years, the 
Interior bureaus and offices have used about $80 million, or at 
least that is my understanding. Is that accurate? And if so, 
where is the difference between the $463 million and the $80 
million?
    Mr. Johnson. Yes, what we know is that some agencies 
collect recreation fees, and they are allowed to use some of 
these fees to address deferred maintenance.
    I think the sort of difference that you may be seeing there 
is that these agencies, such as the National Park Service, have 
a lot of different activities that they do. So, some of those 
fees are applied to deferred maintenance, and the other fees 
might be applied to other activities that they do.
    I am happy, if you would like us to take a look at----
    Mr. Fulcher. Are those fees, in your view, are they 
appropriately set? Should we be considering increasing those 
fees, decreasing those fees?
    Mr. Johnson. Yes, that would sort of be a policy decision. 
We have not taken a look at those fees in quite some time. We 
would be happy to do that. But that is one option that we know 
that has been talked about by various stakeholder groups is 
increasing recreation fees. But that comes with advantages and 
disadvantages.
    Mr. Fulcher. OK, thank you. I am going to shift to Mr. 
Greenblatt.
    The Department of the Interior is one of the Federal 
agencies responsible for wildfire management, as well. And, 
again, I just have to underscore that is a huge concern for us. 
The largest fires in Idaho in 2023 occurred, of course, on 
Federal U.S. Forest Service land.
    Would you take just a very brief second here and speak to 
the Forest Service backlog, and then some of the challenges, 
and I can be more specific, but some of the challenges you have 
in doing a better, more thorough job with the backlog?
    Mr. Greenblatt. The Forest Service isn't under our 
jurisdiction. That is under Ag. But in terms of Interior, we do 
have wildland fires, and we are doing work on that right now.
    Mr. Fulcher. And I am aware of that.
    Mr. Greenblatt. And we have a report in the draft phase 
right now that will be coming out with respect to their 
preparedness in terms of their firefighting vehicles and 
maintenance. That is in process, and hopefully will be out in 
the not-too-distant future.
    Mr. Fulcher. Hit some high points on the struggles. I hear 
about manpower, and I hear about hiring issues, housing issues. 
Just talk to me about the high points there and some of the 
struggles.
    Mr. Greenblatt. Yes, certainly staffing. I remember we 
mentioned Secretary Bernhardt earlier. He mentioned staffing 
concerns back when he was Secretary, this is when I first 
started in 2019, that that was a significant issue.
    And hiring the seasonal employees, getting them on board 
quickly is difficult and has been a problem for Interior in the 
past, and that has certainly been an issue. We are identifying 
some concerns with respect to vehicle maintenance so that folks 
can go out when there is a fire, and I think funding is pretty 
much what they would assert is an issue for wildland fire 
services and the various components that deal with wildlife 
fires.
    Mr. Fulcher. I might just mention, because we are out of 
time here, that we do have a very capable State Department of 
Lands. And in our state, we are one of very few with more than 
50 percent of our land mass Federal. So, I just want to, while 
I have you here and I have your ear, I want to just plug in 
there partner with them to the extent that you can. It will 
help both of you.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. The gentleman yields. I would like to 
recognize the gentlelady from Utah.
    Ms. Maloy, you have 5 minutes.
    Ms. Maloy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 
letting me join your Committee today.
    I represent Utah's 2nd Congressional District, and for that 
reason I have a big interest in the backlog. The Department of 
the Interior manages the majority of the land in my district. 
We have three really large national parks, including Zion 
National Park, which is one of the most visited. And I may be 
new to Congress, but I am not new to this issue. I have spent a 
lot of time working on issues with Zion National Park, and any 
time we talk to a park or any Interior agency, what we hear is, 
``We are underfunded, we are understaffed, we don't have the 
resources.''
    My local elected officials--state, county, city--want to be 
good partners with the parks. And I am hearing from them that 
they have offered resources. They are saying, ``We will help 
with parking, we will help with transportation. We want to 
offset some of these burdens on the park,'' and the park hasn't 
been very interested in responding, but they keep talking about 
the maintenance backlog and how far behind they are. And the 
local officials get the feeling that the backlog is the excuse 
they use to try to limit the number of people who are coming 
into the park. There is just an ethic within Park Service that 
the parks are being loved to death, and they should have fewer 
people in them.
    And I have spent a lot of years trying to find ways to help 
the parks have the resources they need, and this is startling 
to me to hear today that they don't actually even have a good 
handle on what their backlog needs are. So, there is a question 
in this, I am not just going to monologue.
    But first of all, Mr. Greenblatt, when can we expect more 
accurate numbers?
    Mr. Greenblatt. Well, according to the National Park 
Service, they have implemented this process starting in Fiscal 
Year 2022. It should be fully implemented this year. This is, 
again, according to the Park Service.
    I will note, though, that as of today, the estimate on the 
Department's website for deferred maintenance, my understanding 
is that something in the order of magnitude of a third of that 
estimate for the National Park Service is still under the old 
work order model which we found to be unreliable and 
inaccurate. So, my concern is that even with the shift to the 
new process, if it is still relying on those old numbers or 
those old work orders, that is where we are having problems.
    The other piece is, as they are moving to the new system, 
it will only be as accurate as their internal controls and as 
accurate as their processes. For example, in the new system, if 
they don't close out work orders that are completed, it is 
going to show up as something that is still deferred 
maintenance. So, they have to be on top of it. Otherwise, it is 
bad data in, bad data out.
    Ms. Maloy. Yes, thank you. I find that really concerning. 
That is something that my office will be following up on.
    Mr. Johnson, what are you doing in your accountability role 
to make sure that these agencies that control so much of the 
resources in the West, and particularly in my district, are 
being good partners?
    If they don't have accurate numbers of what the backlog is, 
I am concerned that it is going to be really difficult to 
partner with somebody who doesn't even have a handle on what 
their needs are.
    Mr. Johnson. Well, I think one of the roles that we serve 
here is we try to highlight through our work the appropriate 
sort of internal controls that they should be taking, 
particularly for the data issue that is so important here to 
get a handle on it.
    But then also, making them aware, through our work, of 
leading practices. I know a lot of what our report focused on 
was the Legacy Restoration Fund itself and sort of looking at 
are they following leading practices for selecting the projects 
and getting that money out? Because if agencies can focus on 
those key controls and those leading practices, they have a 
better chance. But they still have to be consistent as they do 
it on a day-to-day basis.
    Ms. Maloy. Thank you. I am going to have my staff follow up 
with yours on that, as well, because this is a really important 
issue in my district and for my constituents.
    With that, I yield back.
    Mr. Tiffany. Will the gentlelady yield the balance of her 
time?
    Ms. Maloy. Yes.
    Mr. Tiffany. She brings up a very good issue, the 
gentlelady from Utah. Have either of you done an analysis of 
using other agencies, in particular state and local agencies, 
to help with this problem that the National Park Service has?
    Mr. Johnson. Yes, we did not do any in-depth analysis on 
that, but we do know that the Park Service is starting to 
consider partnerships in this particular area. But that is 
about the extent that our work covered there.
    Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Greenblatt?
    Mr. Greenblatt. We have not done any work on that, but I am 
interested in working with you and your teams to see whether 
there is a viable path where we can add value in that regard. 
So, I am happy to have a follow-up engagement with you all.
    Mr. Tiffany. I think a good place to start is to talk to 
Ms. Maloy from Utah, because it sounds like she has some of the 
information.
    I yield and turn to the Chairman, Mr. Westerman.
    Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Chairman Tiffany. And, again, 
thank you to the witnesses today for your insight on something 
that is very important, as we have already outlined.
    I was listening to the questions. Mr. Case made a good 
point about the cost is the cost. Whatever it costs to do these 
projects, that is the cost. And what is the importance of a 
good estimate versus what it actually costs? And I think it is 
extremely important that we have good estimates, as 
policymakers, and it is extremely important that the Park 
Service have good estimates as planners and implementers of 
policy.
    Looking back to the time when the Great American Outdoors 
Act was passed, as a policymaker we were told that there was 
$12.7 billion in maintenance backlog. So, GAOA had $1.9 billion 
per year, with 70 percent of that, or $1.33 billion, going to 
the Park Service. And over the previous 4 years that should 
have been $5.32 billion of that $12.7 billion that was erased. 
But here we find ourselves today. And then, if you put the 5th 
year in, you would be at $6.7 billion of the $12.7 billion. We 
find ourselves here today with a number saying we have a $22 
billion backlog, which could potentially be more by the time 
GAOA reauthorization comes up.
    So, instead of thinking we are more than halfway through 
and on pace to maybe another 5-year reauthorization to wipe out 
the maintenance backlog, we find that we are actually in worse 
shape than we thought we were when we approved GAOA to begin 
with.
    My first question to you is, what is the real number, or 
how do we get to the real number as we consider reauthorization 
of GAOA?
    Mr. Greenblatt. Well, according to the agency, the PCA, 
their new process will be fully implemented this fiscal year, 
and hopefully that will define a more accurate number. We have 
not done work on the PCA process in terms of verifying the 
accuracy. Like I said, it is not fully implemented, so that 
would be something that we would wait for full implementation 
before starting our review. That could be a fruitful endeavor 
after they implement it fully, but hopefully that will get to a 
better spot at the end of this fiscal year. But that is a 
question for NPS to ask. But that is my understanding of the 
lay of the land right now.
    Mr. Westerman. Mr. Johnson, do you all have methods to come 
up with a real number to assign a level of accuracy to the 
number that the Park Service eventually gives us?
    Mr. Johnson. Yes, so that would be something that we would 
need to work with the Park Service on. And I think the Park 
Service would really need to sort of drill down and make sure 
that they are having that accurate data so that they can get 
that number.
    I think what we could do in a subsequent review, if 
Congress was interested, we might be able to look a little bit 
more at sort of that decision-making process, and factors that 
go into that, and that might help us look at the reliability of 
some of the estimates.
    But I think what my accountability colleague pointed out, 
if the beginning point is those work orders, and they have to 
have that data correct, if there is no attention to detail in 
terms of updating those work orders to be accurate, then 
everything is going to sort of be off from there.
    Mr. Westerman. All right, I am going to have to cut you 
off.
    Going back to when we were doing GAOA, and I mentioned in 
my opening statement that I spent a lot of time traveling 
around to the parks, talking to Park Service employees, and I 
specifically remember being out in Yellowstone with the former 
Superintendent, and actually the Director of the Park Service 
at the time, when we were doing a tour. And I was asking 
questions, what does it cost to fix this road? And it was $1 
million per mile, which was a lot of sticker shock to me 
because we weren't talking about building a new road from 
scratch, we were talking about adding a shoulder to the 
existing road, which at the time, that seemed like a very high 
number.
    What does it cost to fix this housing? When you go through 
the math and it is like $800 per square foot, which again, was 
sticker shock. So, I thought, well, the Park Service is way 
over-estimating what their costs are, which I think the real 
problem was they had no grasp of the scope of what they were 
actually embarking on.
    But on those high costs, it was explained to me that 
Yellowstone's remote area you only have certain times you can 
do construction, the labor is costly, plus you are dealing with 
Park Service property, where you have all the extra levels of 
permitting. You have, like on the explanation for the $800 per 
square foot where these are historical structures and there is 
a shake roof on this building that nobody makes anymore, so you 
are going to go have that custom made. I actually talked to 
some contractors after that, and they said they couldn't 
imagine how you could spend $800 a square foot to build 
something new, much less renovate something, unless you are 
literally doing gold plating on some of this stuff.
    So, in your analysis, have you looked at the unit cost that 
the Park Service is using, and are there opportunities to lower 
those costs going forward by maybe easing up on some of these 
historical preservation guidelines that they have to do, and 
taking a more realistic look at NEPA permitting to widen the 
roads in Yellowstone and other places?
    Mr. Greenblatt. Like I mentioned before, we are working on 
a contract job, looking at some of the costs and the overruns 
and why is that happening, that sort of thing, how often is it 
happening and why is it happening?
    We are not looking at the specific issues that you raised 
in terms of whether they should look at removing historical 
requirements or NEPA regulations. We are not looking at it 
quite through that lens, but I am happy to pay attention to 
those things as we are going about that process and see if 
there is something where we can add value in that.
    I did go to Yellowstone, and I saw many of the same things 
I think that you are talking about where their costs are very 
high because their window to operate is very narrow. They have 
to bring people in for seasonal workers to do a certain amount 
of work in a certain amount of time. And I heard some of those 
very same things, and I understand those concerns. But we 
haven't looked at whether the estimating has baked in some 
costs that are beyond that. But we are looking at the contract.
    Mr. Westerman. I had visited with Secretary Bernhardt about 
this then. You know, if you have a short window of 
construction, labor is expensive. Then we were talking about 
maybe using mass timber to do modular construction, where you 
had everything kind of pre-built. You truck it in and you erect 
it quickly. And I think Secretary Bernhardt actually had some 
Secretarial Order to do some of this, and it was going to be 
neat by using local timber species to the area. But I think 
that got tanked under the new Administration.
    But should they be looking at things more creative on how 
to lower construction costs and shorten that schedule?
    Mr. Greenblatt. I think they did do the modular work in 
Yellowstone for a bunch of that housing. I know we went and saw 
some of that as it was being implemented there. So, I think Cam 
Sholly, the superintendent out there, was looking at different 
ways to fix the housing problem, the very housing problems that 
you are talking about. I think they did use modular. I don't 
think it was using the local timber, but it was trucking in 
fully formed structures for their employee housing, because 
that was a significant problem for them.
    Mr. Westerman. Right. And I know I am way over time, but 
one last question. I waited until the end, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Tiffany. I won't cut you off.
    Mr. Westerman. We are talking about 70 percent of GAOA 
funding for the Park Service, 5 percent went to BLM, 5 percent 
to U.S. Fish and Wildlife, 5 percent to BIE, and I know, Mr. 
Johnson, you talked about BIE. I don't know if either one of 
you have looked at the Forest Service, but is this a problem 
specific to the Park Service, or are these other agencies that 
far off in their estimates, as well?
    Mr. Greenblatt. We are currently conducting a review of 
BIE's management of the deferred maintenance issues there for 
BIE. That is in process. We have a draft to the agency right 
now, and we are working on that, getting their comments back. 
And we will, obviously, be sharing that with you all.
    One thing that we are seeing, our understanding is now, and 
this is pending comments from BIE itself, is that how they 
characterize deferred maintenance can be very different inside 
the Department. So, one component can define it this way, 
another component can define it that way, and a third can do it 
a completely different way. So, when you aggregate all these 
numbers together, like right now on the website it says there 
is $30.8 billion with respect to deferred maintenance in the 
Department. But if each one is characterizing them completely 
different, it is apples and oranges.
    So, that is one of the things that we think we are seeing 
with respect to BIE on the one hand and NPS on the other. 
Again, that job is still in process, but that is our initial 
understanding as it stands right now.
    Mr. Westerman. How about Fish and Wildlife and BLM?
    Mr. Greenblatt. We haven't done those. Those are relatively 
small with respect to the orders of magnitude at issue, so I 
don't know the answer to that, sitting here right now. But my 
understanding is that the definitions are not consistent.
    And was that part of your work? I think I heard that from 
your office.
    Mr. Johnson. That is correct, yes.
    Mr. Westerman. I know I have some Fish and Wildlife 
facilities in my district that are in need of deferred 
maintenance work, but to my knowledge there has not been any 
deferred maintenance projects carried out on the Fish and 
Wildlife.
    And then the Forest Service, I realize that is not 
Interior, but we set aside 15 percent of GAOA funding to go to 
the Forest Service, and I have seen very little work on Forest 
Service property, as well.
    I yield back. Thank you.
    Mr. Tiffany. The Chairman yields. I really am glad that you 
brought up mass timber. Hopefully, some day in the future here, 
hopefully in the near future, we are going to be able to get 
more mass timber structures that are built here in the United 
States of America. Just in a variety of ways, aesthetically, I 
think in terms of carbon footprint, things like that, they are 
probably a good thing. So, I am really glad you bring that up.
    To the witnesses, thank you for your testimony, and I want 
to thank the Members for your questions.
    Members of the Subcommittees may have some additional 
questions for our witnesses today, and we will ask that you 
respond to these in writing. Under Committee Rule 3, members of 
the Subcommittees must submit questions to the Oversight and 
Investigation Subcommittee Clerk by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, January 
16, 2024. The hearing record will be held open for 10 business 
days for these responses.
    If there is no further business, without objection, the 
Subcommittees stand adjourned.

    [Whereupon, at 12:06 p.m., the Joint Subcommittee was 
adjourned.]

            [ADDITIONAL MATERIALS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD]

Submission for the Record by Rep. Gosar

                        Statement for the Record
                              John Garder
              Senior Director of Budget and Appropriations
                National Parks Conservation Association

    Chairmen Tiffany and Gosar, Ranking Members Neguse and Stansbury, 
and Members of the Subcommittee, I am John Garder, Senior Director for 
Budget and Appropriations for the National Parks Conservation 
Association (NPCA). Founded in 1919, NPCA is the leading national, 
independent voice for protecting and enhancing America's National Park 
System for present and future generations. We appreciate the 
opportunity to submit for the hearing record our views and observations 
on the National Park Service's (NPS) implementation of the Great 
American Outdoors Act (GAOA) and recent reports examining this topic.
    We were fortunate to work with Members of Congress on both sides of 
the aisle to pursue passage of GAOA, which was an historic achievement. 
Since former President Donald Trump signed it into law in August 2020, 
the NPS other agencies have made significant progress responsibly 
investing energy receipts in hundreds of critically needed repair 
projects across the country, including in many congressional districts 
represented by members of these subcommittees. These investments are 
allowing NPS and other agencies to make significant progress with their 
deferred maintenance backlogs--progress that would not be taking place 
were it not for GAOA.
    The law's success is already visible in numerous parks and other 
public lands and will increasingly be noticeable to visitors in the 
ensuing months and years as projects move from planning, design and 
procurement to construction and completion. As these projects are 
completed, we will see a significant amount of deferred maintenance 
taken off the books.
    The record of success in national parks throughout the country is 
impressive. Between FY21 and FY23, GAOA's National Parks and Public 
Lands Legacy Restoration Fund (LRF) has allowed NPS to program nearly 
$5 billion to improve more than 2,200 assets including water and 
electric systems, roads and campgrounds--some with critical life and 
safety issues. NPCA analyzed the list of LRF projects and found that 
over 200 congressional districts, nearly all 50 states, the District of 
Columbia, and multiple U.S. territories are benefiting from projects.
    These projects are enhancing visitors' safety and experiences and 
the ability of staff to perform needed duties to meet NPS' mission to 
protect resources and serve visitors. These successes have come despite 
several challenges including those outlined in the recently released 
Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, Agencies Generally 
Followed Leading Practices in Selections but Faced Challenges--in 
particular the rising cost of labor and materials, supply constraints 
and severe weather, all of which spread the LRF's dollars more thinly.
    It is notable that in concluding its congressionally mandated 
study, the GAO had no recommendations for NPS to improve its work to 
prioritize and process projects. Equally significantly, neither the GAO 
nor the Department of the Interior's (DOI) Inspector General (IG) 
report found any waste, fraud, abuse or other problems with the 
projects and the many phases of execution required to bring them from 
infancy to completion. Instead, as the GAO affirms, we are seeing a 
solid record of success repairing our parks and other public lands, 
directing long-overdue dollars to reconstruction and repairs with 
remarkably little overhead--an average of less than 3% across projects 
within DOI.
    Projects at or near completion improving the visitor experience 
include at Grand Teton National Park, where roads have been repaved, a 
bridge has been reconstructed, and parking areas and the southern 
entrance station have been improved. Additionally at Grand Teton, NPS 
has been replacing the Colter Bay wastewater main lift station and 
replacing the roof and addressing safety needs at its headquarters. At 
other parks, projects at or near completion include the rehabilitation 
of roads at Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah National Parks, which 
together accommodate millions of visitors annually who drive on these 
roads and invest in local economies along the way.
    Our national parks have gone more than fifty years without the 
robust investment that is needed to maintain more than 75,000 assets, a 
collection second only to the Department of Defense in its magnitude. 
NPS desperately needed the LRF investment because it has gone for so 
long without a robust investment in its aging and degraded 
infrastructure while at the same time, it has been struggling with a 
significant operational shortfall.
    Appropriated operations increases over the decade have been 
insufficient to provide for NPS' significant fixed costs that include 
staff cost of living adjustments, benefits and insurance, leading to an 
erosion of staffing levels. Understaffing and other operational 
shortfalls have been exacerbated by visitation increases that spread 
staff even thinner as they tackle multiple collateral duties. Between 
2012 and 2022, NPS lost 13% of its staff while accommodating a 10% 
increase in visitation. Between this operational shortfall and 
insufficient annual investments in line-item construction and park 
transportation infrastructure, NPS has been unable to keep up with the 
growth of the deferred maintenance and repairs backlog. Notably, the 
FY24 House Interior and Environment appropriations bill would 
significantly worsen this problem and should be rejected. NPS estimates 
that ``more than one billion dollars is needed annually for 
preventative and recurring maintenance and component renewal activities 
just to keep the portfolio of assets at a steady state.''
    There are numerous repair and reconstruction projects that would 
have waited indefinitely to be addressed were it not for the LRF. For 
example, the maintenance facility at Acadia National Park that was 
built in 1963 was declared structurally unsound over a decade ago and 
it was not until GAOA that the park was able to repair it. This project 
was critically needed to ensure the functional operation of this park 
that accommodates nearly four million visitors annually who 
collectively spend nearly a half billion dollars, supporting almost 
7,000 jobs in gateway communities.
    The GAO's recent report outlines agency successes despite several 
challenges. Firstly, it shows that NPS and the other LRF-funded 
agencies have been responsibly following standard procedures for 
estimating deferred maintenance and repairs and have been using 
strategic and responsible criteria in estimating and addressing this 
maintenance. It also demonstrates that the LRF funding infusion 
provided additional motivation to agencies to refine their methods and 
establish more consistent criteria for estimating deferred maintenance. 
It observes that all five agencies funded by the LRF have been 
following leading practices recognized as effective strategies for 
addressing deferred maintenance, according to the six relevant criteria 
the GAO examined.
    Furthermore, the GAO report shows that the infusion of LRF funding 
allowed NPS and other agencies to address repair projects that could 
not have been funded with other funding sources such as appropriations. 
Clearly, the infusion of LRF funding and associated efforts by the 
agencies to more accurately, reliably and transparently estimate their 
backlogs has given lawmakers and the public a more complete 
understanding of the breadth of the federal public lands deferred 
maintenance backlog. The report found that all five agencies 
established clear objectives, performance goals, baselines for 
outcomes, and performance measures. This included maximizing return on 
LRF investments and minimizing overhead costs. Another major finding 
was that all the agencies sought to take as much deferred maintenance 
off the books as they could and considered factors including public 
safety, the importance of the asset to the agency's mission, the level 
of visitation (especially in the first year of funding), the cost and 
scope of the project, and the speed with which they could implement the 
project.
    The GAO report reflects NPS' improved methodology for estimating 
its backlog, a need that was recognized and mandated only months after 
GAOA's passage in November 2020. At that juncture, former DOI Secretary 
David Bernhardt pointed to the flaws in NPS' former system of 
estimating the backlog based on work orders and that NPS would need to 
initiate ``a comprehensive review and reform of the systems and 
processes used to manage its properties, including a streamlined 
condition-assessment methodology that better conforms to generally 
accepted practices.'' In April 2023, NPS Director Chuck Sams wrote the 
IG to explain that NPS was still in the process of updating its 
methodology for calculating deferred maintenance, yet the IG performed 
its review rather than waiting until NPS made additional progress with 
revising its system for calculating deferred maintenance and 
prioritizing projects. It is notable that the more recent GAO report 
did not find issues with NPS' methodology; on the contrary and as 
outlined above, the agency found NPS' work to be in line with industry 
standards. NPS has clearly made its transition to updated methodology 
successfully.
    In our testimony to the Federal Lands subcommittee in April 2023 in 
advance of its NPS deferred maintenance hearing, we made several 
observations that are summarized much more briefly below. For greater 
detail on these observations, we encourage members of the committee to 
review that testimony.
    NPS has not received a robust investment in over fifty years in its 
assets despite their considerable age, increased visitation creating 
more wear and tear, and understaffing and underfunding that have 
undermined maintenance capacity. The bipartisan creation of the LRF has 
been successfully applied across the country in dozens of congressional 
districts that are urban and rural, with projects both large and small. 
The larger level of funding than has historically been provided has 
been able to fund large projects such as roads, bridges, and water 
systems. Meanwhile, Maintenance Action Teams (MATs) have performed 
hundreds of smaller projects throughout the country, many to preserve 
historic resources. Among the many resources that DOI has been posting 
is a map of completed MATs projects.
    Over the last three years, NPS has engaged in a transparent process 
that has involved numerous online databases, fact sheets, state by 
state fact sheets and other information relevant to LRF execution. They 
have engaged in multiple briefings for stakeholders and to 
congressional committees including the House Natural Resources 
Committee. The LRF has also further enhanced NPS' economic benefits 
nationally and in communities throughout the country. According to NPS' 
most recent Visitor Spending Effects report, ``in 2022, 312 million 
park visitors spent an estimated $23.9 billion in local gateway regions 
while visiting National Park Service lands across the country. These 
expenditures supported a total of 378 thousand jobs, $17.5 billion in 
labor income, $29 billion in value added, and $50.3 billion in economic 
output in the national economy.'' The LRF has additional benefits. By 
NPS' last estimate, thousands of jobs are being created with more than 
$6 billion in benefits to the national economy. Those benefits will 
continue, showing that the LRF is not only restoring our historic and 
cultural heritage and ensuring the quality of the visiting experience, 
but also creating and supporting jobs throughout our nation.

    Below is a sample of National Park Service news and promotion of 
projects, from social media to press releases to television news:

     Cuyahoga tow path

     Lincoln Birthplace restoration

     Craters of the Moon, Hagerman Fossil Beds and Minidoka 
            facilities repaired

     Mammoth Cave's Echo River Spring Trail

     Grand Teton roads and trailhead

     Carver National Monument restoration work

In conclusion:

    National parks are getting repaired, and millions of visitors will 
benefit. The LRF is proving successful in states and congressional 
districts throughout the country in areas both urban and rural, with a 
mix of smaller, medium-size and larger projects that would have been 
difficult to fund with non-LRF appropriated and other funding sources. 
NPS and other agencies have evolved their methods to use transparent, 
responsible procedures and methods that follow standard business 
practices. While the DOI IG report did not reflect these methods, the 
more recent GAO report demonstrated the responsible and effective use 
of these funds despite challenges including the eroding power of 
construction dollars. There has been no indication of shortcomings in 
project execution. To the contrary, the effective use of these funds to 
repair and reconstruct facilities demonstrates the power of this 
bipartisan achievement.
    Because agency backlog lists show significant continuing needs, 
NPCA again calls on this committee and the Congress at large to 
introduce and pass legislation extending the LRF's funding at current 
levels for an additional five years. We remain available to answer 
questions or provide additional information supporting this call to 
action. Thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony.
    Please see our website at npca.org to learn more about the 
successful Great American Outdoors Act projects, including LRF success 
stories.

                                 [all]