[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 17 (Friday, February 27, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1160-S1162]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. THOMAS (for himself and Mr. Abraham):
  S. 1693. A bill to renew, reform, reinvigorate, and protect the 
National Park System; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.


               vision 2020 national parks restoration act

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, there are many issues in the Congress that 
divide us. We come from different areas. We come from different 
philosophies. Today I come to the floor with a bill that is an 
opportunity to come together collectively, introducing a bill on one of 
the uniquely American priorities that does, in fact, bind us together--
our national parks.
  If you have felt the Earth shake and experienced the thunder of Old 
Faithful in Yellowstone or contemplated the patriotic enigma at 
Gettysburg, you can well understand my passion for support of these 
areas so important to our national identity. The value of national 
parks is clearly one of the cultural constants for Americans. As the 
chairman of the Subcommittee on National Parks, I can tell you each and 
every Senator needs to look at the perilous state of the parks today 
and act with me in developing some long-term solutions.
  The bill I introduce today, Vision 2020, the National Parks 
Restoration Act, is a result of a quite lengthy process of inquiry and 
of study. Over the last year, the subcommittee has had more than 15 
park-related hearings. We have spoken to dozens of park experts--
environmental groups and user groups. We have listened to the 
suggestions as well as the criticisms from our colleagues and have 
attracted activity in the House. Our purpose is and was to carefully 
review the state of national parks and to evaluate areas for 
improvement within the agencies.
  We have found that there is a system of parks tremendously popular 
with the public but afflicted by problems that the public sometimes 
only vaguely recognizes. Let me share some of the findings. Our system 
of national parks stands at 376 units, including over 83 million acres 
of the most treasured landscapes and historical sites of our national 
possessions. The National Park Service is charged by law with a 
distinctly unique mission--to protect its natural and cultural 
resources unimpaired for the enjoyment of current and future 
generations. It is a charge and responsibility that is hard to handle 
in the best of times. In times of fiscal constraint, that mandate 
requires a broad range of innovative approaches to get that job done. 
Each year, over 250 million recreational users enjoy our parks. Our 
hearings revealed that each year 12 million visitors are from foreign 
lands, with their visitations contributing significantly, of course, to 
America's $22 billion international travel trade surplus. This 
explosive popularity directly stimulates over $10 billion in annual 
economies locally and supports 230,000 tourism-related jobs.
  However, the parks face many problems. One of the most pressing 
problems facing the agency is the ``thinning of the blood,'' explained 
in one of our hearings by previous Park Service Director Jim Ridenour. 
At the same time, new parks have been added to the system without 
appropriations to care for them. The agency has been saddled with new 
responsibilities at the same time the resources have not been available 
for the parks already there. Collectively, the shortfall between where 
the Park Service is and where it should be in terms of maintenance, 
construction, staffing and resource protection is approximately $5 to 
$8 billion in arrears. Another problem is the wear and tear on roads, 
bridges, campgrounds and other facilities, leaving critics to observe 
that the parks have been ``loved to death.''
  As visiting populations grow, facilities that were often built 
decades ago cannot stand the strain. It has become clear through our 
oversight process that park managers are hobbled in their ability to 
assess the inventory of natural and cultural resources, probably one of 
the primary functions of the park and the park management. The funding 
and cooperative cost sharing have simply not existed to catalog the 
resources that the parks must protect. At a time when we need the best 
from the Park Service managers, rangers, maintenance, scientific and 
administrative staff, we find there is less to offer them in terms of 
professional development.
  Probably as serious as any of these conditions is the problem of the 
public apathy. Don't get me wrong, the Americans truly like their 
parks. They love their parks. But as of yet, that has not really 
translated into a definitive call for action from the Congress or the 
administration.
  In my local park of Yellowstone, there has been some increase in 
appropriations each year, but the required changes in terms of 
retirement, in terms of staffing and in terms of inflation have been 
more than eaten up in the increase in the appropriations to where the 
expendable income has, in fact, gone down.
  Probably as serious as any of these conditions, as I said, is public 
apathy. I can tell you, the day is coming when we will have increasing 
problems, and I hope that we will be ahead of that game. I propose we 
mobilize ourselves to address these problems before we are in a crisis 
and have to close parks and take more costly measures.
  I continue to say if we are to have these resources in the future for 
our kids and our future generations, then we are going to have to do 
something soon, the sooner the better, in terms of coming to a 
solution. If we continue to do what we have been doing, we can't expect 
better results in the future.
  So Vision 2020 provides a broad, systematic approach to addressing 
the needs of the National Park Service. The restoration bill takes a 
broad approach, with 11 titles covering key areas of concern. Vision 
2020 will enhance resource protection by extending the fee base that 
goes directly to park programs. This will be accomplished by expanding, 
extending and dedicating to the park increased demonstration projects 
fees that were approved last year and that have been in effect 1 year. 
We want to put them in all the parks where it is practical and lawful 
to collect those fees. We now have them in about 100 parks out of 376 
that can be expanded.
  We need to harness the enthusiasm of voluntarism, and also 
philanthropic donations. Voluntarism is alive and well

[[Page S1161]]

in many parks. At Golden Gate Recreation Area, 8,400 residents of the 
Bay Area donate time each year to support the park in a variety of 
ways--volunteer time and philanthropic donations can be improved by 
orders of magnitude to add to the solvency and expertise and the work 
power of parks. We need to tap the power of individual donors for local 
causes.
  At our hearing in Denver, I learned the charitable contributions are 
most successfully subscribed from individual donors on a local basis, 
those that visit or those that live, or those who are familiar with the 
park that is closest to them, where they can help monitor the direct 
results. As a result, we also ask the National Park Foundation to 
develop a formal program of orientation, strengthening, guidance, and 
ongoing assistance for park locales interested in developing friends 
and groups that are interested in supporting their local park. There 
are many in almost every park. We were in Gettysburg last week. 
Gettysburg has several groups supportive of their own park.
  We need to find ways to enhance the contribution of concessionaires. 
Park funding levels will be directly enhanced by asking the 
concessionaire to help to shoulder a more realistic portion of the 
park's expenses through a fee structure that closely tracks their 
earnings in particular parks. At present, fee schedules vary widely. 
Face it, people do travel in parks. They do require lodging, meals and 
facilities. Remember the purpose of the park? To preserve the resource 
and provide a pleasant and quality visit. That is what these 
concessions do. Many concessionaires operate in an almost 
noncompetitive market where the business is virtually assured. We are 
striving for a fee system that maximizes revenues for these businesses 
privileged to operate in parks--of course, recognizing the need for 
them to make a profit in order to be there.
  We need to improve park concession management performance. In 
fairness to concessionaires and park visitors who rely on their 
services, a dramatic change is proposed in the way concessions are 
managed by the Park Service in this legislation. We think the parks 
should utilize more of the private sector expertise in these activities 
that are totally commercial in nature and we would utilize a private 
industry asset manager to support many aspects of developing, bidding, 
developing prospectus and rewarding management of commercial contracts. 
An advisory board, made up of the agency and industry experts, would 
guide the director. This would be a board of three agency people, three 
private sector people, chaired by the Secretary of the Interior, 
controlled, obviously, by the agencies, to ensure that whatever is done 
in the commercial sector does not, in fact, damage the resource 
protection purpose of the park.
  In addition to that, we are going to ask that our Hollywood friends 
share some in the cost of maintaining parks. Hollywood will be asked to 
do their part through a provision that ties filming fees to a small 
percentage of the commercial production costs. You would be surprised 
how many movies are made in parks. We think that is fine, but there 
ought to be some contribution. We are not asking much from Hollywood, 
but the American public expects some return for the use of those public 
facilities.
  We are developing a Passport to Adventure to garner members. A park 
``passport system'' would be created featuring annually issued 
collectible stamps similar to the successful duck stamp series, raising 
revenues which would encourage people to contribute something to their 
park; or perhaps a tax refund contribution. We thought we would make it 
easy for people to make a contribution, a unique opportunity for 
American taxpayers who want to not only talk the talk but will, as a 
result, have an option of dedicating part of their tax refund to the 
National Park Resource Protection programs by simply checking it off on 
their tax form.

  Promoting agency professionalism. One title of the bill concentrates 
on the strategy for developing more expertise among National Park 
Service employees. By the way, let me say that my experience personally 
with parks over the last year or two leads me to believe or feel that 
there is a great deal of loyalty among park agency employees. I don't 
know of an agency in the Federal Government where people are more 
committed or more loyal to what they do than the employees of the Park 
Service. Of course, to be able to do that, they do need the additional 
ability to have training as well as defining a system of recruitment. 
Future park superintendents and senior managers need to have an 
opportunity to become as professional as possible.
  We are interested in making sure that science is there as a 
foundation for the management of these resources. Vision 2020 directs 
support for the science necessary to guide that important work by 
making some shifts in the program.
  The Park Police are important. I guess I didn't realize myself until 
recently what a significant contribution the Park Police make, 
particularly here in Washington where there are over 400 Park Police to 
take care of the parkways, the parks, the rivers, and all of the things 
here, as well as in New York City. This aspect of the Park Service has 
often been overlooked. We are asking that there be some studies to 
assure that they have the resources to do the kinds of things that they 
are obliged to do.
  Finally, we are going to talk about an innovative area of park 
resources. Almost all of the large parks have the same kinds of things 
that small towns have. They have sewers, streets, buildings, all of 
which are very difficult to maintain on an annual budget. So we are 
going to seek to put into play, at least as a demonstration program, a 
bonding program where large parks like Yosemite could have an 
opportunity to issue bonds of $10 million--and, in fact, that will be 
the limit for any park--to do some kind of facility restructuring that 
can't come out of annual budgets, direct a stream of repayment revenue 
from the demonstration project so that maybe over 5 or 10 years those 
bonds would be retired--similar to what almost every government agency 
does in the whole world when they have facilities to build.
  This won't be easy. It is not customary for the Federal Government to 
have bonding programs. It's also, frankly, sometimes uncustomary for 
the Government to do anything they haven't been doing for a hundred 
years. So there will be some difficulty in causing that to happen. But 
we think it's important, and we think it will be useful.
  Basically, what we are seeking to do, Mr. President, is to recognize 
how important parks are, to recognize the difficulty parks have had, 
and are continuing to have, in maintaining those resources, to deal 
with some opportunities to supplement the taxpayers' appropriation 
support for parks by having some outside methods of raising funds that 
can be used in the parks.
  With those additional funds will go some requirements for additional 
and strengthened management, so that there is accountability for how 
those dollars are spent. There will be a vision plan over a period of 
time for the agency, with vision plans coming from each park, with 
measurable results in the plan. The GAO, the Government auditing 
office, says often we have plans and we even have appropriations where 
the plan is not implemented and we want to cause that to happen. And 
then, in addition to that, of course, we want to help strengthen the 
management through professionalism and do some things, such as bonding.
  So, in conclusion, I want to ask you to consider for a moment an 
America without national parks. How would we feel without Yosemite, 
Independence Hall, or Grand Canyon protected for public enjoyment? How 
much of our national identity is reflected in these icons--the Statue 
of Liberty, Yellowstone, the National Capital Mall, or Old Faithful? 
How much of the rugged, adventurous American spirit is still revisited 
by hiking the back country of Glacier or mountaineering in Alaska's 
Denali? What would America be without protecting habitat for bison, 
moose, and bighorn sheep? These are the kinds of things we have 
available. These are the kinds of things that challenge us to protect.
  As Americans, what would we leave our children and grandchildren if 
not these wild and historic places to reflect, recreate and pause for 
some spiritual renewal? It seems to me that we all have an obligation 
to a measure of national service directed at strengthening our proud 
system of parks--the

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first such system in the world--the system that over 100 other nations 
have modeled after around the world.
  So I am asking for the support of my colleagues for Vision 2020--not 
only your vote, but also your review and constructive commentary. We 
worked very hard to put together the bill. We don't suggest that it is 
perfect. We will have hearings, and there will be an opportunity to 
evaluate how we achieve success. That is the key. These words are not 
unchangeable, but the goal is to preserve the parks.
  I believe that together we can accomplish constructive changes. We 
have an opportunity to bring the National Park Service and our national 
parks into the 21st century, alive, vibrant, effective and efficient. I 
think the public expects us to seize upon that opportunity so that our 
parks will be healthy and available for them to enjoy for a very long 
time in the future.
  So, Mr. President, I will submit this bill. First of all, I will add 
Senator Spencer Abraham as an original sponsor. I submit the bill for 
introduction.

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