United States Senate
Subcommittee on National Parks, Historic Preservation and Recreation Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

National Parks Restoration Plan
"Vision 2020"

Testimony by
John Poimiroo, Deputy Secretary
California Trade and Commerce Agency and Chair-elect, Western States Tourism Policy Council

Senator Thomas, members of the Committee and honored guests, I appreciate the opportunity to address the Committee on this most important issue for America and the West.

My name is John Poimiroo and I am Deputy Secretary of the California Trade and Commerce Agency. I serve as California's chief tourism official and am chair-elect of the Western States Tourism Policy Council. This council is comprised of the state tourism directors of Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and -- most recently -- Wyoming.

A year following the White House Conference on Travel and Tourism which was held in October, 1995, the Western States Tourism Policy Council fulfilled one of the National Tourism Strategy objectives by holding the first Western Summit on Tourism and Public Lands. This summit addressed many of the concerns you describe in your white paper. Time does not allow me to describe in detail the findings of this summit, today, but I have included a full summary of the Summit for the official record of these proceedings.

One of the key recommendations of the Western Summit was that communications and cooperation be improved between federal agencies charged with managing public lands and state tourism offices. In September, the Western States Tourism Policy Council and all federal agencies that are involved in public lands tourism management signed a memorandum of understanding, which I have attached with these remarks. The MOU encourages improved cooperation between the two parties for the purpose of sustaining the economic and social benefits of tourism and encouraging responsible actions on public lands.

Several of the points made in your white paper are reflected within the findings of the Summit and the work now occurring resulting from the MOU. The White House Conference, the Summit and the MOU have served to uncover concerns and provide a mechanism for improved relations and problem solving as regards management of federal lands and tourism.

The Western States Tourism Policy Council is, on the whole, encouraged and very pleased with changes in the way the National Parks are being managed today. We appreciate the increased efforts of the NPS in seeking our opinions and support. We recognize the very difficult position that the NPS is in as regards balancing its dual mandate of preservation and use while responding to the many publics that are interested in the parks and we congratulate the Service for its actions recently to reach out and increase involvement in solving the serious problems that face the parks. As regards National Parks and western states, we wish to emphasize that the NPS should continue and expand its outreach to the communities and states affected by their decisions.

Because of the physical remoteness of many national parks, it has been common among National Park superintendents and their staffs to operate independently from gateway communities, county governments and state governments. Today, however, the solutions needed by National Parks are often dependent upon the approval and involvement of these entities. Take for example, the transportation plan envisioned for Yosemite. It is not just a plan designed within the confines of the National Park, but depends upon support from gateway communities and counties and state government to be successful. Today, National Parks cannot operate as islands, regional solutions are needed.

Therefore, we ask that you emphasize in your final report, that National Park solutions must anticipate the need for the involvement and approval of affected communities and state governments in advance and throughout the process.

As to the major points addressed in your white paper, we add the following:

Financial Matters

We agree that a major funding source is needed and applaud the inventive suggestions offered in the white paper. Your suggestion for a bond program for public lands is the kind of creative solution that can help. And, while supportive of sponsorships, volunteerism and foundations as ways of supplementing park budgets, we caution that they cannot replace the need for increased operating budgets.

I speak as one who has helped attract sponsors and innovative funding sources for park restoration projects, who has volunteered with the Sousson Foundation of San Luis Obispo on restoration projects in Yosemite National Park and who has been a regular contributor to The Yosemite Fund. Obviously, I favor the expansion of such programs. However, these approaches tend to support highly visible and appealing projects, such as wildlife protection, construction of heavily visited park facilities or restoration of park trails. They do not generally finance the mundane operating needs of our parks, such as cleaning rest rooms, snow removal, or repairing park roads (a $2.2 billion backlog). The latter depend upon approval of increased operating budgets and allocation of special funds that compete with other federal programs and obligations.

Unfortunately, as more units have been added to the National Park System, the NPS operating budget has not kept pace. If the American people were asked to state what percentage of their tax contributions they believed should be allocated to national parks and recreation on public lands, we believe they would recommend a staggering increase in financial support to the public lands.

Concession Reform

In the effort to seek responsible contribution by park concessioners to the preservation and operation of parks, we caution not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Our national park concession operations are the finest in the world today. The present concession system and its concessioners have served the nation well. The use of "comparability" has assured the public of fair pricing and the guarantee of "posessory interest" has encouraged private concessioners to invest in improvements to facilities within the National Parks.

Park concessioners are scrutinized like no other travel or tourism purveyor on Earth. Therefore, their operating costs are necessarily higher. To attract and retain good cooperative concessioners, special allowances for excellent performance should be sustained. However, instead of an absolute "preferential fight of renewal," for existing concessioners, exemplary performance could be rewarded by giving extra points to a concessioner who exceeds pre-contracted performance standards, such as support of park management objectives or implementation of resource protection and interpretative actions.

Additionally, the special operating conditions of concessions in national parks should be recognized: short operating seasons, higher costs due to remoteness, risk from disasters, and insecurity of investment due to the contractual nature of operations.

Improved Management

We applaud the recommendation that talented financial managers be recruited or trained. Further, we recommend that any NPS employee seeking advancement to park superintendent or regional manager positions be required to learn about good practices in community relations, public policy and tourism management. The U.S. military requires its senior officers to train in world affairs and national defense strategy, similar broad understanding of public policy, tourism management, management and finance should be expected of senior park service employees, from park department head and up.

Additionally, because travel and tourism is growing quickly, it is important that the highly visited parks become knowledgeable about and involved in the management and development of travel and tourism.

We very strongly recommend that a national NPS tourism manager be retained to work with the travel trade (tour operators, receptive operators, bus companies, state tourism offices) and that this individual be allocated funds (along with similar representatives from the USDA Forest Service and BLM) to attend major national and world travel and tourism trade shows in order to meet with the travel trade and educate them about federal regulations and operations.

Further, we recommend that all highly visited National Parks assign specific personnel collateral and/or full-time duty to work with the travel, tourism and film industries.

We recommend that contracting with state and local agencies be considered in addition to private contractors. The NPS might be able to reallocate its resources and increase its support to resource protection or interpretation by contracting out (for example): law enforcement (California Highway Patrol), road maintenance (Caltrans), solid waste management (private or county), campground management (private), snow removal (Caltrans), landscaping and fee collection (private).

Criteria for New Parks

Facilities identified as National Parks should be of extraordinary national and/or international significance. Not all facilities so designated within the past satisfy this requirement. This has resulted in expansion of the operating demands on the NPS without corresponding budget support. Further, the addition of parks of lesser significance denigrates the status of the National Park System overall.

In order to assure that funds allocated in support of national parks be used to protect and preserve those most deserving of this national standard, an assessment of the entire system should be undertaken by an authoritative and impartial panel to determine which facilities should be retained as national parks and which would be better managed by another federal, state or local agency.

Until this assessment is completed and standards identified for what differentiates a National Park from other federal designations, we agree that a moratorium on the addition of new National Parks should occur. In order to protect undesignated and threatened lands held in this status until criteria are established, Congress should consider special actions or appropriations until which time as criteria for designation have been reviewed and approved.

Park Service Employees

While training is helpful in improving the quality of the workforce, we recommend that a study be conducted that establishes what training is occurring today and how much it costs the NPS, before new training programs are established. Park records on employee training, man-hours of training per park, subjects trained, cost of instruction, cost of travel and other factors be evaluated. It may be revealing that a substantial amount of training occurs today, but that training is not always directly relevant to improvement of performance or productivity.

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