House Panel Urges Cut in Park Funds

A key House subcommittee recommended only $4 million Tuesday for land acquisition in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in the 1994 fiscal year--significantly less money than the urban park has received in recent years.

The action by the appropriations subcommittee on interior is a crucial first step in the annual appropriations process. The full House follows the panel’s lead; the Senate, meanwhile, has usually been less generous in the sums that it earmarks for park purchases.

The news was distressing for park officials who are racing the clock to conclude the purchase of the scenic 314-acre Paramount Ranch in Agoura. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that buys and manages land for the recreation area, has agreed to acquire the much-coveted ranch from Union Federal Savings Bank but still owes the bank $10 million, which it was to pay off by June 30 or face possible foreclosure.

“We’re going to have to re-evaluate what the situation is” with the bank, said Joseph T. Edmiston, the conservancy’s executive director. “We had hoped we would be in a position that the House had done something fairly good and it would only be a matter of extending” the terms by several months.

Edmiston said that he hopes the Senate will be more generous, particularly with freshman California Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the Appropriations Committee. He said he would urge Feinstein and fellow California Sen. Barbara Boxer, both Democrats and environmentalists, to go to bat for the recreation area at a time when there are many willing sellers.

Following the November election, park advocates had hoped that they would fare better with Democrat Bill Clinton in the White House after 12 years of Republican rule.

But the Clinton Administration dealt the first blow to the recreation area when the President failed to include any money for park acquisition in California in his proposed 1994 budget. Rather, he called for shifting more money to park construction and maintenance in an effort to create jobs and help spur the economic recovery.

“I think the Administration is conservation-minded,” Edmiston said. “I also think the country is deficit-minded. Sometimes when those two objectives clash, it is hard to argue for parks.”

Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills), the Santa Monicas’ leading congressional ally, sought Tuesday to put the $4 million figure in a positive light. Although he had sought $20 million from the interior subcommittee, he maintained that “in this budget climate, any amount--no matter how modest--is a victory.”

Last year, the recreation area received $13.2 million--nearly 15% of the $90 million national total for park purchases. The $4 million, in contrast, is 6.4% of the $62 million national allocation that the interior subcommittee recommended for next year. The Santa Monicas National Recreation Area has averaged $10.1 million annually over the past 14 years.

The interior panel also included $310,000 for a study of the Santa Monica Mountains to identify lands containing American Indian artifacts and other matters of archeological and historic interest and to prepare information about the mountains’ natural and cultural resources.

“This study will be useful in helping the National Park Service establish priorities for land acquisition and in providing more information about the park’s resources for everyone who visits it,” Beilenson said.