Rocky Mountain National Park is one of the recipients of GAOA funding / NPS-Jim Ecklund photo

Editor's note: This updates to note that the Interior Department last fall produced a strategic plan in response to the Inspector General's concerns.

While in the past fiscal year the National Park Service has spent Great American Outdoors Act funds on backlogged maintenance projects at parks as diverse as San Juan National Park Historic Site, Colonial National Historical Park, and Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, as well as Theodore Roosevelt, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and Yosemite national parks, some Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are concerned about "dubious multi-million-dollar investments in urban liberal cities" while smaller parks "have struggled to compete for funding."

The concerns are not new, but rather date to the first distribution of funds from the act, which was signed into law by President Trump and which provides the Park Service with $6.5 billion over five years to address backlogged maintenance work. 

During Chuck Sams' confirmation hearing to become National Park Service director back in October 2021 several senators pressed Sams to look into how the Park Service determines how and where to spend the $1.3 billion a year it is receiving. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana, asked Sams, if confirmed, to see that the funding is "distributed fairly among the parks and the states, no matter their location or their size."

The fairness of how the Park Service is spending GAOA funding also was raised by Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who pointed out that Virginia, North Carolina, and New York, three states with miniscule amounts of federal lands, were receiving many millions more of GAOA dollars than is Utah, a state where he said the federal government owns 66-67 percent of the landscape and where national parks were struggling with maintenance issues.

"Virginia, North Carolina, and New York have gotten significant funds through the Great American Outdoors Act, receiving in the case of Virignia $247 million, $153 million in the case of North Carolina, and $50.5 million in the case of New York," Lee pointed out. Utah, however, has received just $7.3 million, the senator said.

At the time, the National Park System's maintenance backlog was estimated to be around $12.7 billion, but it ballooned to more than $22 billion after the Park Service revised how it calculated maintenance costs. That dollar jump was underscored last week by Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the Subcommittee on Federal Lands under the Natural Resources Committee in the House, during a hearing into how GAOA funds were being spent.

“Despite Congress investing billions of taxpayer dollars in recent years to address the National Park System’s deferred maintenance backlogs, it has only gotten worse," Tiffany said in a statement. "That’s a problem, and the Federal Lands Subcommittee is committed to holding the Biden administration accountable for every dollar of taxpayer money that is being spent, so that we may preserve our parks and provide the very best visitor experiences.”

At the outset of the hearing on April 18, the congressman said the growth of the Park Service's maintenance backlog has been "unacceptable."

"With only two years of GAOA funding remaining, it is imperative that National Park Service commit to greater transparency and start showing actual progress in reducing the backlog," he said.

The GOP majority on the House Natural Resources Committee maintains that Democrats failed when they were in the majority to provide adequate oversight of how the Park Service was spending its GAOA dollars.

"This inaction allowed the Biden administration to squander taxpayer dollars with no accountability, causing funding to be improperly allocated across geographic regions, between large and small parks, and between urban and rural areas," the GOP said in a release.

The ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colorado, defended the Park Service, saying "the benefits of [GAOA] are touching parks all over the country. ... That's exactly why we need to continue investing in the future of national parks. The Great American Outdoors Act was a down payment, not a silver bullet or a magic wand meant to make deferred maintenance completely disappear." 

While the GOP acknowledged the Park Service's change in calculating backlogged maintenance costs could explain some of the increase in the total amount outstanding, "[I]n reality, a significant portion of this increase is due to mismanagement on the part of NPS. These concerns have been confirmed by the DOI Office of Inspector General (OIG), which released a report last year that found [Interior Department] lacked a strategy to maximize the impact of GAOA and failed to implement best management practices for deferred maintenance projects."

In that report, the Inspector General's staff noted that "without a documented strategy or best management practices for deferred maintenance, the Department and its bureaus are at risk of repeating the same practices that led to the continued increase in deferred maintenance. In addition, without a sound, documented strategy, the Department may face other risks—for example, financial, contracting, or logistical risks—as it spends the resources allocated to it."

Last October, seven months after the IG's office issued its report, the Interior Department released a strategic plan in response.

Priority for GAOA spending is given to projects that protect the safety of park visitors, partners, employees, and the agency’s natural and cultural resources. When complete, the renovations and upgrades are expected to sustain or improve conservation activities and recreation opportunities. As the Traveler documented earlier this year, parks across the country are benefiting from the funding infusion:

• Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Mass is receiving $27 million to address maintenance needs for buildings, structures, signage, and monuments. The work is expected to continue through 2025, the 250th anniversary year of the opening battle of the American Revolution.
• Golden Gate National Recreation Area in California is getting $35 million to repair and seismically strengthen the concrete wharf on Alcatraz Island. Approximately $8 million is going to the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park in Texas to rehabilitate the historic Texas White House Complex.
• Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio received about $14 million to stabilize the riverbank at eight sites on the Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath Trail along the Cuyahoga River. Construction was scheduled to begin last month.
• The Park Service provided almost $20 million to rehabilitate water, wastewater, and electrical distribution systems within Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Beginning in May, the Moraine Park Campground will close until summer 2024 to allow for a major construction project, including relocating electric power lines underground to reduce system damage caused by snow, wind, and falling tree branches that are electric and wildfire hazards. About 25 percent of the campsites are scheduled to receive electric hook-ups and improvements.
• Yellowstone National Park is replacing the deteriorating Lewis Bridge, built in 1960, and the Yellowstone River Bridge. In addition, 22 miles of the 30-foot-wide Loop Road between Old Faithful and West Thumb Road will be repaved. That work was scheduled for last year, but last June's historic flooding necessitated the roadwork be moved to Mammoth Hot Springs where the Old Gardiner Stage Road was upgraded to serve as a temporary entrance following June flooding that tore out sections of the North Entrance Road.

In his prepared testimony to the committee, Sams said that "the NPS has prioritized 130 projects to address critical deferred maintenance and improve transportation, administrative, and recreation infrastructure across the National Park System.  The average project size is $31.8 million, and it is estimated that the deferred maintenance addressed by these projects will be $3.8 billion. [National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund] funding for these projects will improve the condition of roads, buildings, utility systems, and other assets in 176 park units located in 48 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and will address critical life, health, and safety issues, as well as related code compliance and accessibility deficiencies."

In his questioning of the director, Congressman Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, pointed out that two park units in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district — San Francisco Maritime National Historical and the Presidio in Golden Gate National Recreation Area — received more than $365 million in GAOA and Inflation Reduction Act funding, an amount that would have erased the maintenance backlogs of parks in 37 states.

Rep. Neguse followed up by noting that there are GAOA projects in the congressional districts of every member of the committee, including that of Rep. Westerman, and pointed out that one was at Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas.

"So the chairman of our full committee will ultimately benefit from a project upwards of $17 million," the Democrat said. "Let us not confuse the public by creating this perception that these projects are only in a particular district or other, when across the country, from Arkansas to Mississippi to Arizona and everywhere in between there are projects that ultimately will be funded by the GAOA."

At the National Parks Conservation Association, John Garder, senior director for budget and appropriations, said the land-management agencies [National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management and others] have been keeping the public informed on how GAOA dollars are spent.

"It was reassuring to see members of Congress on both sides of the dais express support for the Legacy Restoration Fund and over 100 projects that are taking place at national park sites across the country," Garder told the Traveler in an email. "Visitor centers, utility systems, campgrounds and other critical infrastructure are being repaired at parks large and small in urban and rural areas, demonstrating the many continuing successes of the bill’s implementation. It was disappointing to hear concerns about transparency when the Interior Department, National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service have done an exceptional job posting project information on their websites and so many parks posting their progress on social media. The agencies are moving on projects in record time. We hope the committee will visit projects to see firsthand the incredible progress. Visitors are going to have even better experiences on parks and public lands this summer thanks to this major investment.”