Via Shakespeare's Sister, I see that the Bush administration is once again short-changing the national parks:
The Bush administration has ordered America's national parks to show that they can function at 80 percent or less of their operating budgets, which is forcing some parks to cut services for visitors as summer approaches....National Parks are the embodiment of a beautiful idea: that this land, or at least certain choice pieces of it, belongs to all of us. It's not an exclusively American idea, but it did have the advantage here of large expanses of undeveloped land, land of extraordinary beauty and grandeur, so this is where it flourished.
President Bush is proposing to cut an additional $100.5 million from the parks' $2.1 billion budget next year. According to a report this month by the Government Accountability Office, the parks have an estimated $5 billion maintenance backlog, and even before the cost-cutting began, many of them had moved from slashing back-office operations to trimming visitor services.
At the same time, the parks are facing rising costs. Payroll, utilities, fleet and other fixed operating costs have increased yearly. Pay raises have been about 4 percent a year. At Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, utility costs increased 46 percent from 2003 to 2005.
If the financial pressures continue to grow, the parks will have no choice but to cut more services, reduce access for visitors or rely more on private funds. The Park Service receives as much as $250 million a year from fees, donations and concession royalties.
That idea, as much as budgetary limitations, may well be the problem here. The savings are infinitesimal in the context of the budget; maybe the real motive is ideology. The National Park idea implicitly rejects the notion that America should belong to the very privileged very few. They can't kill the idea, but they can deprive it of air. They can take the money that should be maintaining the ideal and give it instead to the ultra-wealthy. They can force the parks to cut services (services for everyone) and raise fees (so, as Shakes points out, fewer can afford the experience).
They really do believe that they own the country, and we're just living here on their suffrance.
[That's all, folks]
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