No, Parks Are Not Just Fine

When the chief of the U.S. Park Police complained last December that her force was understaffed and stretched too thin to adequately protect National Park Service facilities, her bosses put her on leave, saying her comments were “an open invitation to lawbreakers.” And then, last week, Chief Teresa C. Chambers was summarily fired with no further comment from the National Park Service or its parent, the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton held a press conference last week to declare that the Bush administration was virtually showering money on the nation’s parks. She said the service’s $1.8-billion budget was unprecedented and the number of park employees had increased by 829 since 2000. The figures are in dispute, but even if they are accurate, they do not paint a real picture of the state of funding, which the National Parks Conservation Assn., an advocacy group, says “is a critical and chronic issue” throughout the park system. The fact is, it was Congress that added more than $100 million to the Park Service budget, and many programs in the parks are a shambles. Things got so bad that, in March, park officials advised employees to explain cuts in visitor programs as “service-level adjustments.”

So far as is known, Chambers is the only official to be fired for telling it the way it is. Last December, she said her force of 620 should be increased to 1,400 to protect park facilities in the Washington, D.C., New York and San Francisco areas. Considering the circumstances after 9/11 and the fear of attacks on icons such as the Statue of Liberty, that does not seem unreasonable. Chambers added that she already had swallowed a $12-million budget shortfall. Park officials throughout the country say they have done much the same since 2001 to meet heightened security requirements. One example was the diversion of park employees to guard the Golden Gate Bridge.

The parks’ budget may be larger than ever, but retired park officials insist that not enough dollars are getting to the parks themselves. Bill Wade of the Coalition of Concerned National Park Service Retirees says the total Park Service force has declined under this administration, that most of the parks are getting less money this year than last and that the service needs an additional $600 million a year to operate the way it should and to solve its chronic maintenance backlog. That backlog, he says, is getting worse, not better as Norton claimed.

It’s bad enough that the White House and Congress have skimped on park budgets for decades. It’s worse to try to fool Americans into believing everything is just fine. And so far, no lawbreakers appear to have taken Chambers up on her “invitation” to attack park facilities.