Talk of Budget Cuts Raises a Threat of State Park Closures

A high-level Wilson Administration official said Thursday that some state parks may have to be closed or operated by other government entities if further deep cuts are made to balance the state budget.

State Parks and Recreation Director Donald Murphy promised that “every innovative and creative” method of saving money will be pursued before parks are considered for closure, which he called a “last resort.”

But he said the task of balancing the state budget in the current deep recession is so daunting that “only very difficult options are available to us, including the possibility of closing some parks and entering into management agreements with other government agencies.”

Murphy, however, dismissed as “only preliminary” a budget document made public by a staff member Wednesday which suggested that a 15% savings Gov. Pete Wilson has demanded of most state agencies could be achieved by the closure of 59 parks and other recreation facilities across the state.

For the parks department, such a cut would be on top of an 18% reduction previously ordered by Wilson in his attempt to overcome a projected $8-billion budget shortfall without a general tax increase.

The 59 parks were not identified in what officials repeated was a “very preliminary” in-house budget document that they said is subject to substantial changes before the July 1 start of the new fiscal year.

“Somebody in the parks department evidently has been working on a list and . . . determining what sort of reductions have to be made,” said Andrew H. McLeod, an assistant secretary in the Resources Agency, parent organization of the department. “That process has not been completed and any report is premature.”

For officials of one employee organization, the 800-member State Park Rangers Assn., the notion of park closures had a familiar ring from two years ago, when a similar compilation was drawn up. It was abandoned in favor of other deep budget cuts.

However, “I’m more concerned about (park closures) now than I ever have been,” said Ron Schafer of Riverside, a director of the association. “If I were a betting man, I would say the parks wouldn’t close, at least not 59 of them. But I’m not a betting man.”

The state parks system, long considered one of California’s jewels, includes about 275 facilities, ranging from pristine mountain retreats at Lake Tahoe and popular ocean beaches in Southern California to historic Gold Rush ghost towns in the Mother Lode and wilderness tracts throughout the state.

In a statement, parks director Murphy did not elaborate on the possibility of contracting with other government agencies to manage state parks. The department currently contracts with local governments for operation of some beaches, but these local departments are suffering the same kinds of fiscal pressures as the state agency.

McLeod said he knew of no current proposal to sell state park properties, but said expanded contracting with local or federal government agencies for management of the state facilities is a possibility being examined.