Bill Wade
Chair, Executive Council
Coalition of National Park Service Retirees

Let's be clear here. From everything I know, Core Operations was invented by Mike Snyder and was done so he could ingratiate himself to the then Director, but more importantly, to the DOI - especially then Deputy Secretary Lynn Scarlett. He got buy-in from the Director which had the effect of having the process foisted off on the other regions, but clearly a number of the other regions (including Jarvis in the Pacific West Region) didn't buy it lock, stock and barrel and dragged their feet in implementing it; so the consequences were felt far less in the rest of the NPS than was the case in the Intermountain Region. It seems clear that Mike Snyder has to bear the responsibility for the damage.

It seems clear that this is the first of other "corrections to the System" that Jarvis intends to initiate. I am attending the "Ranger Rendezvous" - conference of the Association of NP Rangers here in Gettysburg. Jarvis spoke to the attendees yesterday morning, and one of the things he mentioned that he (and the DOI) intend to work on immediately (he's evidently already appointed someone to lead this effort and perhaps has put out guidance to the regions on how he intends to proceed) is to reduce the "excessive reporting requirements" in the NPS. Core Ops was a terribly flawed reporting requirement, and there are other ones either flawed or useless out there. We wish Jarvis huge success in getting a handle on this as he moves ahead with other things needing correction from the mess he inherited.

I surmise that a major reorganization of the leadership of the Intermountain Regional Office of the NPS will become a Jarvis action item.

Yes, superintendents do fail. It is no secret that the NPS does not have a management succession or leadership development program. Superintendents are plucked from wherever they may come from. Case in point, the new GS-15 superintendent of Boston NHP is coming from the US Forest Service. No NPS or park experience. It's hard to blame managers who are put into postions without training or experience.

It is a bit maddening to see that a few people in the IM Regional Office don’t seem to grasp the idea that park staffs and/or management deal with the complete gamut of managing parks everyday, including park budgets. It is also frustrating to see that somehow these regional staff members have concluded (in some cases perhaps legitimately) that parks were incapable of, or not concerned with, managing budgets, but then again we were all well aware of this attitude. It seems that as Core Ops developed in IMR, this feeling that the park staffs were adversaries instead of colleagues striving to deal with fiscal problems became more and more apparent. It is also clear that the process was clearly often tainted with vindictiveness instead of being an objective examination of park needs.

Ironically, if we could look at all of the fiscal costs associated with this effort including regional and park staff time and travel, I’m quite certain we would find that hundreds of thousands of dollars (perhaps more) in IMR funds were expended on never-completed (and completed) Core Ops Plans and BCPs across the region, not to mention Core Ops exercises that were repeated. Beyond this, the human cost in terms of lost positions vital to park missions and the animosity that his program has generated is incalculable. The tragedy is that most of this effort did not result in positive outcomes for parks.

While it is maddening to see some of the comments, it is also understandable. After spending many years with the NPS and seeing huge planning efforts such as GMPs, RMPs, CIPs, BCPs, and Core Ops involving hundreds of hours of time by many people, often quickly discarded, I can understand the feeling of ownership in the Core Ops process and all the effort that went into it at the regional level. It is painful for some to see so much effort cast aside. But I would encourage our colleagues in IMR office to use that energy to work collaboratively with new leadership and parks to help confront looming fiscal crises that we are all well aware of.

I wish the best for Mr. Jarvis as he strives to deal with all the issues on his very large plate.

Core operations was designed against the backdrop of the A-76 initiative which was championed by Vice President Al Gore under the Clinton Administration, but began in the prior administration and continued through the Bush Administration. A-76 was an effort to look at privatizing many of the functions of government, and much of its attraction came from the argument that government agencies were bloated and inefficient. The NPS was hit hard by two events that contributed to this perception: The Delaware Water Gap comfort station story which gained national attention for wasteful spending, and the Sperry Chalet story which gained attention for much the same reason. Whether or not these two projects deserved their characterization in the national media, they were taken by Congress, and by our Congressional appropriators, as examples that the NPS was not managing its money wisely, and that its budget process was not transparent or accountable.

Core Operations was an effort to provide that accountability and transparency. It had nothing to do with any other political considerations. At the time Core Operations was developed, most IMR parks were projected to be mired in red ink based on the budget cost projection module. In addition, most IMR parks had very little budget flexibility to address a crisis, with fixed costs eating up as much as 100 percent of park ONPS base accounts. Core operations was designed to allow each individual park, each program, and the regional office, to look at their operations and prioritize those operations so that they could make budget cuts thoughtfully and strategically – not ad hoc. In doing so, budget decisions would be squarely in the hands of managers, not dictated by circumstance. It was also designed to ensure that, if parks and programs could not meet their basic core needs as identified by the process, they would have a transparent and credible process on which to base their request for an increase in funds.

The process of Core Operations was not easy. No question about it. No hard look at budget priorities ever is. But it was a solid, straightforward attempt to give the parks and programs in the region the tools to plan strategically for their future at a time of great budgetary uncertainty.

One of the great joys of working for the NPS is that we share a remarkable mission. We are all dedicated to that mission, whether we are in the parks, running programs, in the regional offices, or in the Washington office. Until this debate on Core Operations, I truly thought that we all believed that each of us was dedicated to that mission. We may have disagreed about how to carry it out, but we knew that we were all equally deeply committed to it. Are those who have posted on this web page, questioning the motives or intent of others, really so certain that they have a corner on how to carry out that mission? Have we lost the graciousness and generosity of spirit seemed to be the hallmark of wearing the flat hat?

Really? Only people from inside the NPS are qualified as managers of park units? It's hard to believe that there are not many capable and intelligent folks out there who can come in, study and understand the mission and goals of the NPS, and make significant contributions to the agency. Unless we are willing to allow outside talent and perspectives in, we run the risk of all insular and self centered organizations -- failure of creativity, lack of fresh thinking and perspectives, and eventual obsolescence.

I've worked for the NPS for 21 years and we've seen these initiatives come and go, usually at a large cost to the NPS and the individual parks themselves without a lot of tangible benefits to the NPS employees , operations, or the public. Core Ops was a particularly bad one! The IMR pushed forward on this as if it were the saving grace for the NPS and the region was not alone in zealousness! A handful of park Superintendents signed on right away to implement this without exercising prudent judgement as to the benefits of this program. From my perspective, these managers (at the region and at the park level) were anxious to prove their loyalty to the current (now past) administration and recklessly abandoned their responsibility to the NPS mission as stated in the Organic Act. In the past, I felt that our Directors were not cut from the same cloth as other agency managers. They stood up for what was right and were driven by the mission, not the partisan politics of the current administration. This was not evident during the Bush Administration.

In the 90's, there was a strong push to professionalize many of the job series in the NPS in an effort to attract and retain valuable individuals to further the mission of the NPS. Through Core Ops, we saw a lot of that effort wiped away in an effort to reduce budgets through downsizing, downgrading, and elimination of key positions. There is no merit given to the Superintendent who eliminates positions or down grades or converts them to seasonal only in an effort to improve the bottom line - that's not even what Core Ops was purported to be yet that is exactly how my former Superintendent did it and with ZERO transparency - he just wanted to cozy up to Mike. These employees who were discarded, downsized, down graded and whose jobs were converted to seasonal without benefits are people who deserve respect and appropriate pay. How many of these Superintendents actually considered downsizing or downgrading themselves in their effort to demonstrate a good bottom line to the Regional Director???

Core Ops was like a scud missile to employee morale and I think any one who has worked in a park can attest to the fact that a good morale and working relationship between divisions is one of the best ways to improve efficiency and save dollars yet this process stabbed at the heart of morale and often by managers who seemed to not care in the least about the welfare of the persons who were targeted by it. I watched morale in my park go from one of the highest I had ever been a part of to the lowest ever - nice work new SW Utah Park Superintendent.

Jarvis is doing what should have been done 8 years ago - standing up for the mission, science, and the employees who make this the greatest agency in the government!

"One of the great joys of working for the NPS is that we share a remarkable mission. We are all dedicated to that mission, whether we are in the parks, running programs, in the regional offices, or in the Washington office. Until this debate on Core Operations, I truly thought that we all believed that each of us was dedicated to that mission. We may have disagreed about how to carry it out, but we knew that we were all equally deeply committed to it. Are those who have posted on this web page, questioning the motives or intent of others, really so certain that they have a corner on how to carry out that mission? Have we lost the graciousness and generosity of spirit seemed to be the hallmark of wearing the flat hat?"

Can't speak for everyone posting here, but I certainly don't think that most of us feel that we have a corner on how to carry out the mission. I do think that Mr. Snyder and his minions such as Tony Schetzle felt that THEY had a corner on defining the mission, carrying out the mission, and that other opinions from park staff were simply either not allowed or ridiculed. The graciousness and generosity were removed, not by those posting their opinions on this web page, but by the the violation of trust and respect that was so clearly portrayed by those implementing the "reign of terror" as more than one person has described this debacle. The IMR will need new leadership before we can begin to heal these wounds.