A Parks Bill That Was No Walk in the Park

California’s Democratic and Republican members of Congress fought over many issues during the session of Congress just ending--including immigration reform, welfare and budget cuts of all kinds.

But one bill that caused them collective grief in the waning days of the session was a measure on which they all agreed: a huge national parks bill that takes care of 17 projects in California, including the Presidio, the former Army base in San Francisco.

As the end of this Congress approached this week, the measure--the largest parks legislation since 1978--was approved only at the last minute on Thursday by the Senate and is expected to be signed by President Clinton.

“I’m so elated and so exhausted,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said afterward, likening the marathon negotiations on the bill to President Clinton’s recent attempts to find peace in the Middle East.

“My role, as I saw it,” said Boxer, “was to keep the talks going and resurrect this bill, because this bill was deader than dead.”

It began as a bill to set up a nonprofit public-private trust to manage the leases of buildings at the Presidio, a former Army base on the San Francisco side of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

But as it wound its way through the legislative process, it grew and grew. By the time House and Senate negotiators finished tinkering with it last week, the bill had grown from 400 pages to 1,000. It looked like a Christmas tree loaded down with heavy ornaments.

For California, it included not only the Presidio plan, but projects such as the Manzanar National Historic Site near Bishop in the Owens Valley, where Japanese Americans were confined during World War II; designation of the AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco; a land swap between Orange County Boy Scouts and the Cleveland National Forest, and the federal government’s takeover of a 6,264-acre ranch on the east end of Santa Cruz Island, the last piece of private property on the Channel Islands.

What was perplexing to even seasoned Washington insiders was that there had to be any fight at all to keep the bill alive, because it eventually included something for almost everyone--136 local projects sprinkled across 41 states.

So broad was its reach and support that both the Clinton White House and the Republican Congress can equally claim credit for it.

But as the parks bill showed, even a popular bill--which, incidentally will benefit vote-rich California--can survive the legislative grinder, pick up the support of 99 senators, and still be threatened by one lone opponent.

The “problem” with the bill was Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He opposed the final version because it omitted a timber industry provision to increase logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.

The provision was dropped over the weekend after the White House said it would veto the bill unless Tongass and 41 other projects were removed.

“That was a really ugly bill,” said Kathy Westra of the National Parks and Conservation Assn., a nonprofit group.

So in the drive to go home for the year, the House voted last Saturday 404-4 for a stripped-down version.

But in the Senate, Majority Leader Trent Lott set the rules requiring unanimous approval. And Murkowski refused to budge.

From her California office, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who labored for seven years to pass the Presidio bill, frantically mounted a last-minute lobbying effort for Senate approval.

In Washington, Boxer arranged meetings between Murkowski and White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta. She also pressured Murkowski and Lott from the Senate floor. There has been “too much sweat, too many tears, too many expectations, too much work to allow . . . one senator to stop this bill,” Boxer argued. Others, including Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), piled on.

The tension mounted on Thursday, as the legislative deadline neared.

Murkowski finally agreed to let the parks bill move forward because the White House promised to address his logging industry concerns through a separate agreement. But a few hours later, Boxer-with the color gone from her cheeks--told the Senate a new dispute had arisen over one phrase in a letter from Panetta to Murkowski spelling out their pact.

Finally, as the clock ticked toward the hour of adjournment, Lott announced a final deal.

For all the lofty philosophical debates the senators engage in on the Senate floor, the fight over the parks bill showed what members of Congress will do for the folks back home. All politics is local.

Boxer wiped the sweat off her brow and headed home for a news conference with Pelosi at the Presidio. Pelosi said she “never entertained the thought we would fail.”

And Murkowski--with his own compromise forged--expressed relief as well. “I’ve never had the obvious honor of giving birth to anything,” he said, “but this is the closest I would like to get.”