Activists Welcome Bush Budget Plan to Buy Parkland

President Bush’s singling out of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area as a “top priority” in his budget plans has encouraged park supporters who want to see it expanded.

“That’s the best news we’ve had in nine years,” said Jo Kitz, chairwoman of the Save the Mountain Park Coalition, an advocacy group that criticized former President Ronald Reagan for taking a hostile attitude toward the Santa Monica Mountains park.

In budget documents released Thursday by the White House, Bush disclosed plans to ask Congress to spend $206 million for federal parkland acquisition in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, compared to $24 million under the budget Reagan proposed shortly before leaving office.

Bush would spend $824 million on parkland acquisition nationwide in the next four years. Reagan had sought $96 million for the same period.

Although Bush did not specify the amount of money he would seek for buying land for the Santa Monica Mountains park, his budget summary said:

“Parks that will be enjoyed by people should be our top priority. The Administration is particularly committed to the development and expansion of existing national parks in urban areas, such as the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.”

Hailed by Beilenson

Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Tarzana), author of the law that established the park in 1978, hailed Bush’s budget statement as “a most welcome change” from the Reagan years.

“We have spent the last eight years fighting the Reagan Administration for funds for this park,” Beilenson said Friday in a prepared statement.

“Now we’ll be working with the new Administration to secure them,” he said.

Bush’s specific mention of the park as one to which he is committed means that “the prospects of getting more funds are better than they have been at any time during this decade at this stage of the annual funding cycle,” Beilenson said.

The prospect of more federal funds allows the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state parks agency, to negotiate more aggressively with private landowners about selling to the park, said Joseph T. Edmiston, conservancy executive director.

However, many in Congress are skeptical of how the government will pay for Bush’s proposed spending programs while substantially reducing the federal budget deficit, said Beilenson aide Melissa Rice Kuckro.

Some fear that Bush will get the credit for his spending programs while Congress gets the blame for implementing cuts that make them possible, she said.

In fact, Bush’s proposed $206-million parkland-purchasing allocation is equal to what Congress appropriated last year.

The National Park Service would probably share the money with other federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

$11 Million Last Year

Last year, the Park Service received $52.6 million, of which the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area received $11 million.

In all, Congress has appropriated about $91 million of the $125 million in direct federal funds authorized for the park by its 1978 enabling legislation.

Bush’s specific request for Santa Monicas funding in the coming budget year will not be known for several weeks or months, a spokeswoman for the federal Office of Management and Budget said Friday.

Beilenson probably will seek $25 million to $30 million for expansion of the park, Kuckro said.

Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), who lobbied Bush to support funding the park during the presidential campaign, probably will seek about $15 million, Wilson aide Caren L. Rubin said.

The park’s boundaries encompass a 150,000-acre area in the mountains from the Hollywood Freeway to Point Mugu, but much of that is developed or privately owned.

The Park Service owns 16,000 acres in the recreation area and has targeted an additional 6,681 acres for purchase at an estimated cost of $70 million, an agency spokesman said.