Professors from Harvard and Colorado State University have laid out the steps they believe can lift the cloud of financial instability off of the National Park Service/Rebecca Latson file
Congress makes annual efforts to address the National Park Service’s financial predicament, but year after year those efforts end with little significant impact on the agency’s staggering maintenance backlog or improvement to the day-to-day operations of the National Park System.
At a time when the Park Service’s annual appropriation has been relatively flat since 1999, when staffing for the agency has reportedly fallen by 7 percent at the same time that more than two dozen units have been added to the National Park System, professors from Harvard and Colorado State University have proposed a range of strategies they believe would quickly enhance the Park Service’s fiscal fitness if adopted by Congress.
What’s particularly eye opening by the research done by Professor Linda Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and John B. Loomis of Colorado State is their belief that Americans would pay an additional $92 billion a year for the parks and the many programs they provide the country.
The evidence to backup that claim, and the professors’ contention that the National Park System can conservatively be valued as a $100 billion entity, are laid down in their book, Valuing U.S. National Parks and Programs: America’s Best Investment.
“We looked at the many different kinds of values that the national parks produce. I think that the concept of valuing the national park asset is something that people know in their hearts that they attribute a value to it,” said Professor Bilmes, “but the way that the parks have traditionally thought about value has been around tourism and around the value contributed to local economies of having national parks and the tourist value that they bring, which is a kind of a value.
“But what we show in our book is that there is a much, much larger value, which includes the value of those who appreciate the parks even if they don’t visit,” she added during a recent conversation. “It includes the value of the parks in terms of education, watershed protection, carbon sequestration, intellectual property, cooperative programing with other agencies. We tried to bring together a variety of different ways to think about the value, and what we find is that looking across even a small subset of the kind of value, you can find that there’s a value of at least $100 billion.”
It’s often claimed that every dollar of federal appropriation for the National Park Service generates $10 of local economic activity, or roughly $30 billion based on the annual approporation of around $3 billion. The professors believe that claim actually undervalues the 419 parks in the system because it ignores the intrinsic value of the parks -- “Most people feel that even if they never go to Gettysburg, they would like it to be protected as a national park,” Professor Bilmes pointed out –- the scientific value, the scenic value that movie studios parlay into blockbuster films, the value of understanding and managing ecosystems, the value of the flora and fauna.
“We were the first survey to ever look at the value of the programs, and what we found which was quite interesting and kind of surprising to us is that people really do value the national park programs, particularly the education and historical curation that the National Park Service does,” she said. “So it’s not that people are asking to just protect the land, but they’re also asking to protect all the stuff that the National Park Service does on the land, and particularly the aspect of the … telling of the American story, the curators who actually bring to life the story of the places, whether it’s the wildlife or the landscapes or the geology or the history, that all of those things are things that people value very much.”
Congress is charged with seeing that the Park Service has the resources to provide those services and experiences, but has failed to do so in recent decades. The maintenance backlog across the park system, estimated at around $12 billion, is one key example. Nearly $700 million was spent during Fiscal 2018 on maintenance projects, yet the backlog still is nearly $12 billion.
Congress had a chance last year to give the Park Service a big lift by passing legislation that would have provided $6.5 billion over five years specifically for maintenance needs. But the measure died near the end of the 115th Congress as the politicians found themselves at budgetary loggerheads with President Trump. The legislation has been introduced again to the 116th Congress, but has yet to take significant steps towards passage.
"In the case of the national parks, the funding has not only been sort of very hand to mouth in the federal government, just an annual appropriation, which doesn’t lend itself to long-term investments in the parks, it also is the case that because the national parks are so beloved they have become a kind of political football in Congress with being the first agency to be shut down or threatened to be shut down every time there’s a financial disagreement in Washington." -- Professor Linda Bilmes
So what can be done? Quite a bit, according to the two professors.
- Start by providing the Park Service with a two-year appropriation, a move that would help see that the agency doesn’t “get caught up in the constant stopgap shutdown crises, which are a feature of our current budget process,” said Bilmes.
- Create an endowment for the agency.
“The mission of the National Park Service is a perpetuity mission. They are supposed to be protecting these places to be pristine forever,” she said. “That’s a pretty complicated mission, and the way that most organizations that have a perpetuity mission are funded is that they have an endowment, which is a perpetuity type of funding mechanism.”
- Give the Park Service bonding authority to address infrastructure repairs and needs.
- Put a check off box on tax returns that would allow taxpayers to contribute an extra amount specifically for the Park Service.
- Restructure the way concession fees and park entrance fees are collected and spent.
Currently, Bilmes pointed out, only about a quarter of the 419 park units charge entrance fees, and few have lodging and dining concessions that could generate revenues for them.
“National parks that may be geologically of very great value may not have a lot of people around them and may not have a large friends group to help raise money for that unit,” she said.
While philanthropic dollars are very important to individual parks and the park system as a whole, they can ebb and flow and so are not something that should be relied on year after year, added the professor.
“There also are limitations as to what can be funded through philanthropic dollars,” she added. ”So in addition to giving philanthropic dollars more flexibility, it’s more important to have a kind of long-term endowment that can supplement philanthropic dollars to give more flexibility to the (Park Service) director in terms of how they can use and deploy philanthropic dollars.”
The two professors hope their research will catch the eye of Congress and that they’ll be given an opportunity to appear before the House Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to explain in detail their proposed strategies.
Their work, park advocates say, is something that deserves consideration.
“We definitely applaud Dr. Bilmes for her attention to the economic importance of parks and additional funding that could help the Park Service, so we look forward to reviewing the details of the proposals,” said John Garder, senior director for budget and appropriations at the National Parks Conservation Association. “It’s critical to outline the many economic values of our national parks beyond visitor spending and the billions of dollars in economic activity it generates each year.
“It was a big step for Congress to create a national parks endowment in the recent Centennial Act,” he went on, “but it will take quite some time to build up a meaningful corpus for that endowment…and meanwhile our parks continue to struggle with underfunding.”
"The idea of a two-year budget seems to get some attention in every session of Congress but ultimately is never adopted. It's an interesting idea. There are definitely some people on Capitol Hill who would say it’s a great idea, but who also wonder if that would solve the problem of an annual appropriations process that has broken down, and much to the frustration of a lot of appropriators who want to better meet the needs of our national parks and other priorities. In the end, what is most needed is a firm congressional commitment to a functional and orderly appropriations process. Year after year, we see it break down to a lesser or greater extent, from one continuing resolution to the next, and the occasional shutdown, all of which harm our parks, their staff and their visitors. It’s past time for Congress to turn a new page." -- John Garder, NPCA
The NPCA official saw potential for a tax check off, though Phil Francis, who heads the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, “would like to see how Congress’s appropriations process would ensure that the money reached the NPS.”
“The details of this idea would be interesting, and I think looking at new funding models is a necessary step to solving the problem we have,” continued Francis. “That said, there would need to be significant changes so that enough funds could be raised and protected from other uses.”
Francis, who spent four decades working for the Park Service, including stints as superintendent of the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park, wanted to learn more about how the Park Service could wield bonding authority and spend from an endowment.
“I am not sure that those type of accounts could be used to pay for ‘permanent’ obligations such as permanent employees under past budget rules,” he said. “I have no experience with bonds but with endowments, the corpus would have to be huge to make a significant difference in the deferred maintenance and annual operations shortfalls.”
How many of the professors’ suggestions are realistically viable remains to be seen.
"Any and all of these ideas need to be explored for their viability, but it’s also critical to note that none of them can be an excuse for Congress not to meet one of its fundamental duties, to ensure adequate funding for the National Park Service,” NPCA’s Garder said. “Poll after poll shows people want Congress to fund their parks, so it is no surprise that they are willing to pay more in taxes to finally pay down the operations and maintenance backlogs facing our parks, and the growing understaffing that has been accompanied by the challenges of increased visitation.
“Congress and the administration need to make that commitment. It is achievable if they commit to more adequate appropriations and passing dedicated funding legislation for both the maintenance backlog and land acquisition,” he said.
The professors’ book, said Bilmes, is a roadmap of sorts for Congress, as well as the Interior Department and National Park Service, to navigate.
“One of the things that we can do now is to be changing the funding structure of the national parks to make it more sustainable,” she said, “because if we don’t it’s not just the backlog but the fabric of sustaining these places that will become more and more difficult and expensive, and we don’t have a funding mechanism to do it.”
Listen to Professor Linda Bilmes' interview on National Parks Traveler's podcast.
Comments
Given that 80% of your readers (who presumably care about the parks)weren't willing to give a dime to support your efforts, one must question that the public at large would be willing to pay $92 billion a year.
good point
True enough and for many varied reasons; however, with regard to whether the "public at large would be willing to pay $92 billion a year" to support national parks, I believe mass delusion augmented by general selfishness is the primary obstacle. The public at large has been tricked, deluded by the top of the economic pyramid, into believing that "the system" is structured on individual merit, that they were born with merit, and that they deserve and would have so much more than they have if it weren't for the undeserving other guys in their midst taking a free ride. This delusion is the source of their selfishness. It distracts them from realizing how systematically twisted the game has become. It blinds them from fully comprehending how economically stratified society has become, how it is becoming continually more stratified, and how an unfair, anti-progressive, and ultimately counterproductive tax structure continues to drive that stratification.
And, that's just how the top of the economic pyramid wants it and want to keep it. It now takes over $500K a year in income to break into the top 1%, an amount effectively unattainable without inherited wealth and position. The top 5 to 10% of the population do not pay anywhere near their fair share in taxes and the truly unsustainable condition of the country, it's schools, it's healthcare, it's infrastructure, it's national security, it's national parks, it's social discourse, all reflect this structural instability. The tax structure needs to be reformed and made far more progressive and revenues need to be increased. Once that happens $92 billion a year will seem affordable, especially given the jobs and subsequent return tax revenues that repairing, refurbishing, and maintaining our national parks would generate. The Yellowstone area alone generates over a half billion dollars a year just in direct tourist revenue and I don't fully believe that accounts for revenues in the southern half of the ecosystem, which I believe are far higher than offically tallied. I would be shocked if an accurate total ecosystem tally didn't go above a billion a year just for that segment of the park system. I was once broadly excoriated, at least within the tiny and discrete area in which I worked, for criticizing the outrageous rightwing corruption involved in spending over half a trillion dollars on the incompetent development of an underperforming airplane that even the military, known for embracing corruptly expensive rightwing sweetheart deals, is now openly admitting will not do its job at any level worth an eighth of what it cost. Compared to that boondoggle, spending $92 billion a year would seem to be a good investment.
But, I am a realist and, although I detest most of what H. L. Mencken ever said, I'm afraid that toxic old curmudgeon may have been correct at least once nearly a hundred years ago, probably by accident, when he wrote, "As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron." I still hold out hope; but, it may be in vain.
The top 10% pay 70% of federal income taxes. How is that not a "fair share". In fact, anon, I challange you to give me a valid reason anyone should pay a penny more than you do. There is one, but you won't like it. Oh, BTW, the two richest people in this country didn't get there through inheritence or position. They built their wealth and generated massive wealth for many others in the process based on merit. Your contention that wealth it isn't obtainable without inheritence or position is pure BS.
No, the top 5 to 10% of the population do not pay anywhere near their fair share in taxes. In these times, there are two relevant metrics for assessing whether they are paying their fair share and the percentage of the total tax burden they pay is not one of them. First, America is already one of the most economically stratified societies in the world and it is becoming continually more stratified each and every day. Economic stratification leads to oligarchy and a concentration of power at the top, undercutting democracy in the process. Oligarchies lead to stagnant societies wherein corrupt cliques at the top work together to block innovation and progress because change can threaten their hold on power and that's the last thing they want. Russia is an oligarchy and Putin does not share power, never, not to his last breath.
Second, the country is in appalling shape. The annual national deficit has risen nearly 30% over the past couple of years; our the national debt, stable only a few years ago, is rising quickly again; and, if the economy does pick up, rising interest rates on that debt will be a major problem. Public schools are underfunded; teachers are underpaid and striking; healthcare costs are still critical a problem for the majority of Americans that are not in the top 5 to 10%; our infrastructure is in bad shape; our national security depends on our adversaries not taking advantage of our recent strategic mistakes; our national parks nedd an additional $92 billion to stop and reverse the rot; our elections are not secure; and our social discourse is infantile, no offense. Progressive tax rates are a traditional way in which democracies, our democracy, can work to prevent or even reverse the evils of economic stratification and raise the revenues needed to correct these problems. The tax structure needs to be reformed and made far more progressive and revenues need to be increased. Yes, the top 5 to 10% and especially the top 1% need to pay more in taxes until we can stop economic stratification and rebuild the damage done over the last twenty years. That's the proper metric to assess whether they are paying their fair share. When the country is once again on a good footing, the top of the economic pyramid will be paying its fair share. It's that simple.
As far as whether you can find some of the rich who have built their wealth through their own merits, there are always going to be exceptions that prove the rule. The majority of the individuals at that level got there a different way.
As far as whether I stand by my comments, I do. I even stand by the H. L. Mencken quote I offered.
As far as whether my position is BS or not, I honestly can't understand why Repanshek coddles you and puts up with or even allows your snide and condescending bullying. Nobody else is allowed to get away with that "in your face" offensive stuff.
I will ask again, why should anyone pay a penny more than you do? Oh, and I agree, the deficit is a disgrace. I have been saying that for decades, where have you been? Sorry you find poignant questions and actual facts "offensive".
You have repeatedly asked "why should anyone pay a penny more" than I do? This is actually a mantra that comes out of the depths of the "It's a flat earth; so, we should have a flat tax to match it" lunatic hillbilly fringe of the rightwing and I have tried to avoid addressing it directly because it's so distasteful. However, I have tried to, as tactfully as I could, respond with allusions to the evils of narcissism and selfishness. Since allusions seem too subtle for you and you're clearly fixated on this unenlightened slogan, I'll hold my nose and go for the direct approach. First, at the most lowest and self centered level, I am already taxed at the current maximum rate and, yes, that means my advocacy of a more progressive tax rate curve implicitly welcomes higher taxes for myself and my friends and colleagues. It's our duty and our responsibility.
Why is it our duty and responsibility? For that answer I need to direct you to Luke 12:48. There have been different translations and much paraphrasing of this passage; but, the one taught to me and my favorite is simply "From those to whom much has been given, much is expected and, from those to whom much has been entrusted, much more will be asked." What does this mean? It means that pretty much all of us have been given gifts of one sort or another. Some have been granted inherited wealth; some are born physically attractive; and some are born with innate strengths or talents. Regardless of what Luke 12:48 tells us, we can actually choose between three different approaches to how we respond to and use these gifts.
Taking the first approach, we can narcissistically see our gifts as making us special and superior, use that self image as the basis for believing that whatever we can get is due to our special superiority and should be ours and ours to keep, thereby justifying our perceived right to go ahead and predatorily or parasitically pillage whatever we please with only a minimal evasive nod to any pesky laws, constitutional mandates, or standards of behavior that might stand in our way. Under this world view, the notion that all men are created equal only means that, regardless of our how much has been given to us, whether through inherited wealth or innate strengths or talents, we are not our brothers' keeper, should only be expected to contribute what the poorest among us contributes, and that means a flat tax gosh darn it. If we're entrusted with anything, that just means those who entrusted it to us are stupid and inferior; it's their fault for trusting us; we don't owe our inferiors anything; and, if we can wiggle out of what's expected of us, that's because we're smart.
The second approach is to do our best to follow the mandate of Luke 12:48, recognize the need to at least attempt to be our brothers' keeper, and try to use our wealth, strengths, or talents in ways that lift up society at large. Yes, there are practical limits to this approach. I do not give away everything, which would be counterproductive over the long term. I try not to indulge indolence or perversion, whether among the rich or the poor. But, I do use my resources and advocate for society to use its resources to invest in laudable societal aspirations, whether they relate to the schools, healthcare, national parks, or whatever.
There is even a third approach and it can be compelling to you whether you hear the call of Luke 12:48 or not. America was built on progressive taxation; it had to be because it was expensive to build this empire. A flat tax drops the available revenues down to the level of the lowest common denominator in our society, the available wealth of the poorest citizen. Can you, speaking metaphorically in your case of course, imagine what America would be like under those circumstances. As I have said before, even under the current revenue scenario, the scenario imposed by the rightwing over the past twenty years, America's schools are underfunded; teachers are underpaid and striking; healthcare costs are still a critical problem for the majority of Americans; our infrastructure is in bad shape; our national security depends on our adversaries not taking advantage of our recent strategic mistakes; our national parks need an additional $92 billion to stop and reverse the rot; our elections are not secure; and our social discourse is infantile. Even you should have enough business education to see that going further in the direction the last twenty years have taken us is unsustainable, unrealistic, and an unholy road to nowhere.
I also don't understand what you mean by a "poignant" question. What is that?