WASHINGTON INSIGHT

HIKES IN THE PARKS: Millions of vacationing Americans could be hit with a little-publicized item in President Clinton’s budget: a hefty hike in entry fees at national parks. With many parks suffering from rutted trails, dirty restrooms and a scarcity of rangers, the Interior Department is seeking to raise fees by $32 million. . . . Specifics won’t be released until spring, but last year, for example, the Administration suggested increasing the fee for vehicles at Yosemite to $11 from $5--a 120% jump. Congress rejected the proposal, but the Administration has added a sweetener this time: Individual parks would get to keep some of the receipts for their own needs. . . . Overworked rangers at some parks don’t even bother to collect fees now because of the lack of incentive. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt says one harried ranger suggested that Babbitt collect fees when the secretary showed up, unrecognized, at a park near Washington and asked why money wasn’t being taken in. . . . The National Parks and Conservation Assn. backs higher fees--but only if they’re levied against “bus and air tour operators, not Joe Six-Pack.”

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SACRED HORSES: Clinton’s plan to shut down or slash numerous federal programs is already running into strong congressional resistance. A couple of long-running warhorses seem particularly unready to be sent out to pasture. . . . One is federal aid to schools impacted by nearby military posts. When Budget Director Leon E. Panetta came before the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) recalled that Panetta was once part of a House coalition that led the annual battle against eliminating “impact aid.” Grinning, Panetta acknowledged his past opposition but later winked to reporters, saying: “After all, Ft. Ord was in my district.” The program appears safe for now. . . . Likewise home heating subsidies to the poor. Lamenting that his hometown of Bismarck had suffered a week of windchill temperatures as low as 76 degrees below zero, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) told Panetta that he couldn’t understand why the Administration wanted to cut the heating aid program in half. Panetta assured Conrad that his state certainly was in the area targeted for continued payments. But anything more than minor cutbacks “doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hades,” a Senate aide said.

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BREAKING RANKS: Not all good men in the Marines are backing Iran-Contrameister Oliver L. North in his bid for the GOP Senate nomination in Virginia. One group of anti-Ollie Leathernecks in the Washington suburbs is mulling whether to call itself MAN (for Marines Against North) or MOON (Marines Opposed to Oliver North). They’re upset that the ex-lieutenant colonel engineered an arms-for-hostages deal with Iran and ran illegal aid to the Nicaraguan Contras while he was a White House aide--and lied to Congress about it. . . . Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) has broken ranks with many Virginia Republicans, asserting that North would stain the Senate with his record of criminal convictions. Angry GOP leaders call Warner a “traitor” for suggesting that the reversal of North’s convictions on appeal was a technicality. . . . Many Democrats, hoping to see Sen. Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), another ex-Marine, reelected this November despite his own spate of problems, hail Warner’s “courage” and “integrity.”

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ENVOY IN WAITING: After months of delay that began with investigations surrounding the House Bank scandal, the White House is now ready to proceed with the nomination of former Rep. Stephen J. Solarz of New York as ambassador to India. The long delay in filling the post had caused considerable unhappiness in New Delhi and on the part of Solarz, an early Clinton backer.