Groups with interests in Congress addressing the roughly $12 billion maintenance backlog facing the National Park Service are optimistic a bill covering $6.5 billion of the total will gain passage by year's end/Rebecca Latson photo of Bryce Canyon National Park

With mid-term elections a small handful of weeks off, senators and congressmen up for election have less time than normal to work on passing legislation. And yet, groups anxious to see passage of a measure that would make a significant downpayment on erasing the National Park System's roughly $12 billion deferred maintenance bill are optimistic it will happen by year's end.

Slowly working its way through Congress is the Restore Our Parks Act, which would would establish the “National Park Service Legacy Restoration Fund” to reduce the maintenance backlog by allocating existing revenues the government receives from on and offshore energy development. The $6.5 billion in funding envisioned by the legislation would come from 50 percent of all revenues that are not otherwise allocated and deposited into the General Treasury, not to exceed $1.3 billion each year for the next five years.

Last week the House Natural Resources Committee sent the bill to the House floor for action. The full Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has yet to take up companion legislation. Still, the progress the measure has experienced so far is almost unprecedented in recent decades.

"I had a chance to speak to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee earlier this year, and it was an interesting dynamic because some of us have been trying to get Congress to pay attention to this issue for a long time," said Will Shafroth, president and CEO of the National Park Foundation. "Getting their attention and having this become something that was on the table as an agenda item hasn’t been easy.

During the hearing, at which various funding bills were discussed, he went on, "I was asked by one of the senators which bill I supported. I said we’re not taking a position on a bill at this moment because there really isn’t a bill out there. But the fact of the matter is, what’s encouraging is that we’re now talking about which bill, as opposed to whether there should be a bill or not. That is a remarkable progress in and of itself."

Through Wednesday, the Restore Our Parks legislation had been cosponsored by 28 senators and 169 members of the House of Representatives. That bipartisan support has fueled growing optimism that Congress by year's end will send the measure of President Trump for his signature.

"It’s not often that you have legislation that’s co-led by Congressman (Rob) Bishop (R-Utah) and (Raúl) Grijalva (D-Ariz.)," said Marcia Argust, who's been leading the Restore America's Parks initiative for The Pew Charitable Trusts. "And I think that’s a real testament to the support behind this issue. The cosponsor list on the House effort and the Senate efforts, both of those initiatives have the key sponsors that were on all the other deferred maintenance efforts before them. Those cosponsor lists are growing, and almost split exactly between Democrats and Republicans, which is fascinating."

The National Park System's deferred maintenance debt didn't materialize overnight, but has been growing steadily. When George W. Bush was running for president in 2000, he pledged to erase what was then a $4.9 billion tab in five years. But the full funding never materialized, and all the while the costs were escalating due to a range of factors.

Under the National Park Service's approach to bookkeeping, once a maintenance project becomes more than a year old, it falls into the deferred maintenance category. Lack of adequate funding from Congress can slow down the Park Service's pace of clearing maintenance projects, too, as different priorities can arise and some projects are delayed while others move forward. Sometimes donations of property, whether real estate or structural, come with dated maintenance needs. It all contributes to an ongoing and escalating maintenance bill that can be tough to corral without a special appropriation.

Back in December 2016, at the end of the Park Service's centennial year, Rep. Grijalva tried to attach to the National Park Service Centennial Act an amendment that would have provided the agency with an extra $300 million per year for fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, but the House Natural Resources Committee chaired by Rep. Bishop refused to consider it.

More recently, the National Park Service Legacy Act was introduced in March 2017 by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Mark Warner (D-Virginia), and the National Park Restoration Act was introduced by Sen. Lamar Alexander  (R-Tennessee) and Congressman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) this past March. Those two measures were the building blocks for the current Restore Our Parks measure.

“I’m more hopeful than I’ve been in this long process in trying to get the maintenance backlog funded," Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, said. "And I think we’re closer than we’ve ever been to actually having a consensus bill that the administration supports. So we’re hopeful that we’re going to be able to get something, most likely through the lame duck, if it happens."

The "lame duck" Pierno referred to is what's left of the current congressional session after the November election. It could prove to be a particularly contentious time if Democrats gain control of one or both houses of Congress in light of the contemptuous relationship between that party and the president.  

"Yes, it’s certainly a danger," Ms. Pierno answered when asked if she was concerned that that discord could derail Congress's usual course of business. "And it’s hard to know what is going to happen after the election. ... Can you think of anything else that has the kind of bipartisan support that the national parks have? And if anybody is in a mood to bring both sides together, this would be a great opportunity and a great piece of legislation to do that with.”

It is possible that Congress, in a bid to get as much done as possible during a lame duck session, would package various measures into one bill that could gain passage. Related measures that could accompany the Restore Our Parks legislation into such a package could involve funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, if that is not tackled before the program expires at the end of September. The House Natural Resources Committee did, on September 13, pass legislation to reauthorize the LWCF.

Though time is growing short for congressional passage of the Restore Our Parks legislation, Shafroth was optimistic.

“You know, the fact that we’ve made it this far, bills in both houses of Congress, I’m feeling very upbeat about this, especially considering how far we’ve come this fast," he said this week, adding that he thought the bill could make it through a lame duck session if it came to that.

“I don’t know that the elections are going to change anybody’s minds substantively," said Shafroth. "There’s a lot of consensus around the backlog bill. I think that there’s certainly a chance that, as they’re going through that (lame duck session), if there were sufficient consensus around this bill that there will be some bundling that will occur in December, which there always is. And so there’s certainly a possibility that it could get added on to something else."

At the Outdoor Industry Association, Jessica Wahl, the organization's government affairs manager, said passage of the legislation is one aspect of a larger approach to managing the country's public lands in a healthy way.

"We’re interested in this as part of a bigger funding push that looks at the appropriations process, LWCF, our public-private partnerships, and things like the centennial challenge program, and all of that together coming to help support the parks," she said. "This is sort of one piece, and a big piece and an important piece I think to a bigger puzzle, and we can’t forget about the federal appropriations that go to all of these things as well."

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources national parks subcommittee is expected to markup that chamber's version of the Restore Our Parks bill next week.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts