[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 93 (Tuesday, July 14, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8136-S8137]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. GORTON:
  S. 2297. A bill to provide for the distribution of certain 
publications in units of the National Park System under a sales 
agreement between the Secretary of the Interior and a private 
contractor; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.


              national parks magazine proposal legislation

 Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, as Chairman of the Senate Interior 
Appropriations Subcommittee responsible for funding the National Park 
System's annual budget and as a long time resident of Washington 
State--home to some of the true crown jewels of the system, I have long 
held both a personal and professional interest in ensuring that our 
parks are adequately funded and well maintained.
  Unfortunately in recent years due to declining budgets, more units 
added to the system, and substantial increases in visitation, our park 
system faces some serious challenges. All told, the total unfunded 
backlog in maintenance, resource stabilization, infrastructure repair 
and employee housing alone is a staggering $8.7 billion.
  While I have done everything I can to ensure that the National Park 
Service receives annual increases at a time when overall funding for 
the Department of Interior continues to decline, the fact is new, 
innovative ideas are imperative to overcome this desperate situation. 
For this reason, I have promoted such ideas in my Interior 
Appropriations bill.
  One idea that was incorporated into our bill during the 104th 
Congress was the establishment of the recreation fee demonstration 
program. Under this three-year pilot program, individual units of the 
National Park and National Forest systems that charge an additional 
entry fee get to keep 80% of the receipts collected from that fee 
within the park or forest unit to help address the backlog of 
operational and maintenance needs.
  The user fee program is designed to give each unit more authority 
over the resources needed to maintain facilities, to repair roads and 
other areas in need of up keep. While nobody likes higher fees, I have 
long believed that the public is willing to pay more to visit these 
national treasures if it could be assured that such increases went to 
addressing critical needs at the parks they visited. The recreation fee 
demonstration program is a small, but positive step forward in this 
direction.
  More recently, I have gotten behind the ideas and efforts of Senator 
Craig Thomas, Chairman of the authorizing subcommittee on national 
parks. Senator Thomas recently developed a comprehensive and forward 
thinking proposal to reinvigorate the park system. In addition to 
making my Recreation Fee Demonstration Program permanent and extending 
it to all units of the National Park System, Senator Thomas' proposal 
which passed the Senate last month contains a number of reforms which 
would improve overall services at our parks and hopefully generate more 
revenue. I am pleased to have supported Senator Thomas in this effort 
both as a fellow member of the Senate Energy Committee and on the 
Senate floor.
  In addition to my colleagues and my own ideas, I am also relying on 
the suggestions of the recreation community in my state of Washington 
which is home to the Olympic, Mount Ranier, and North Cascades National 
Parks. Recently, I was approached by Mr. John Taylor, a constituent of 
mine from the Seattle area, who came up with a thoughtful--albeit 
narrower proposal--which only furthers the interests of the system. 
This idea would create a National Park Service magazine similar to that 
established by the National Smithsonian Institution through its 
publication of the Smithsonian Magazine.
  A National Park magazine would be created for people who visit or 
have a particular interest in our parks, their programs, and purpose. 
The plan is to create a high quality commercial consumer publication 
that will have broad appeal and park specific sections that will 
provide useful information and serve as a guide for the park where a 
specific edition is distributed.

  Revenue generated from the sale of advertising in the magazine as 
well as from the sale of the publication itself would go directly to 
the Park in which the magazines are sold. Proponents of such a project 
inform me that such a magazine would generate $45 million for the 
National Park Service over the first 5 years of publication and $10-$12 
million each year thereafter.
  Unfortunately, current Park Service regulations severely restrict the 
sale of publications which contain advertising in units of the national 
park. Existing regulations are unnecessary in this case because a 
magazine for the national parks would no more commercialize the parks 
than the Smithsonian Magazine commercializes the Smithsonian 
Institution.
  Ads in a Park publication are very different than corporate signs and 
corporate sponsorships in the parks. Magazines are invisible except to 
those who purchase them. They don't enter the landscape in any way. 
They don't alter infrastructure. They don't use facilities. They don't 
express or imply any kind of ownership or funding of any part of the 
Parks by sponsoring companies. Nor do they imply an endorsement of the 
product by the National Park Service. Moreover, individual parks have 
for years distributed information, maps and so on which contain ads 
from local community sponsors to cover their cost. A National Park 
Service magazine is merely an expansion of this idea.
  Because of current NPS administrative roadblocks, I am introducing 
legislation which would correct this problem and allow the Park Service 
to begin consideration of magazine proposals. The entire cost of the 
project will be covered by the advertising and sales revenue the 
publication will generate through the large anticipated readership. The 
Park Service not only gains a vehicle for educating and informing the 
public about Parks--something that has been sorely needed for years--it 
does so at no cost. In fact under this proposal, it could do so while 
generating revenue for the Parks.
  While the revenue generated from this proposal is a mere pittance 
compared to the multibillion backlog our

[[Page S8137]]

parks currently face, the continued development and implementation of 
ideas such as this are critical to the long term restoration of our 
parks. I believe every Senator has an obligation to listen to good 
ideas at the grass roots level that help solve this growing problem. 
With budgets continuing to decline and demands only increasing for 
recreational outlets. Congress must continue to rely on the interested 
public for creative solutions that will generate more revenue for this 
important purpose.
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