[at-l] Speaking of park fees...

[pmags@xxxxxxxxx (Paul Magnanti)]

>From the America's Roof newsletter.


U.S. to privatize Park Service jobs
Critics fear plan will weaken protection of priceless
resources

Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times   Monday, January 27,
2003

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As part of its push to privatize federal workers, the
Bush administration has identified about 70 percent of
full-time jobs in the National Park Service as
potential candidates for replacement by private-
sector employees.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who oversees the Park
Service, has earmarked 11,807 of 16,470 full-time
positions for possible privatization. They range from
maintenance and secretarial jobs to archaeologists and
biologists.

Interior Department officials stressed, however, that
the number of people replaced would not be nearly that
high. Moreover, they said that law enforcement
personnel, managerial positions and most park rangers
would keep their jobs.

But some of the people who have come to embody the
institution's 86-year- old tradition of public
service, as they greet visitors and lead them on
nature walks, could be replaced by volunteers.

Critics fear that the outsourcing of federal
positions, including the Park Service's entire corps
of scientists, could undermine protection of the
nation's vast inventory of archaeological and
paleontological sites within parks and hand over the
care of forests, seashores and wildlife to private
companies not steeped in the Park Service culture of
resource protection.

"This is about respect for professionals. It is about
a recognition that people spend a lifetime learning
their profession and how to resist pressures - -
political or commercial -- in the public interest,"
said Roger Kennedy, who directed the Park Service
during the Clinton administration.

"The public understands that parks are not parking
lots -- they are places that require a high degree of
professional skill to manage. Not just anyone can do
it."

The potential cuts are part of the Bush
administration's effort to identify as many as 850,000
federal jobs that could be performed by private-sector
employees.

Park Service Director Fran Minella said she wants to
maintain uniformed personnel in the parks as a "public
face" to visitors. Still, some duties performed by
rangers, such as nature walks, could be conducted by
volunteers, Park Service officials said.

Interior Department officials say there is little
likelihood that all of the jobs identified by Minella
will be outsourced.

Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Scott Cameron said
he anticipated that no more than 4 percent of the
current workers would actually lose their jobs.

He said much of the changeover would occur as current
employees retire. Cameron estimated that about 20
percent of the Park Service staff will reach
retirement age in the next five years.

The positions identified by Norton will be examined to
determine whether they can be eliminated or filled
more cheaply and efficiently with nongovernmental
contract employees.

Park Service employees would be given a chance to
argue why they are better equipped to perform their
jobs than private sector workers.

Officials say the injection of free market-style
competition would bring out the best in employees.

"This is a way to capture the benefits of competition
to produce better performance and better value,"
Cameron said. "Competition makes for a much more
exciting Lakers game than if only one team were on the
court."

But critics say the responsibility of overseeing the
country's 388 parks and monuments is too important to
entrust to people with little or no preparation for
working in the nation's park system.

"The Park Service is not a business enterprise," said
Frank Buono, a former assistant superintendent of
Joshua Tree National Park and a former manager of
Mojave National Preserve. "There is a fundamental
ideological binge that the free enterprise system will
heal all wounds and solve all problems. Ask Enron
about the efficiency of the unregulated private
marketplace."

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and
others charge that replacing Park Service scientists
with "hired hands" would create a conflict of interest
and produce a vacuum in parks where esoteric
specialists are required.

"What you get is a pliant and controllable science
staff," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of the
public employees organization. "Our concern is that a
biologist who works for the park will be replaced by a
private consulting firm, which, in order to get its
contract renewed, will tell the park what it wants to
hear."

The Interior Department is just one of the federal
agencies that have been told to trim jobs. The trend
to outsourcing is inexorable, said Fred Smith,
president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a
Washington, D.C., free- market advocacy group.

"The government is way behind the curve," Smith said.
"Something as mulch- ridden as the Park Service is
long overdue for this. Allow voluntary groups to work
in the parks. Let people and groups who care deeply
about bats and sea turtles and caves do the work. The
private museum system has been using docents for
years. It's about time the government caught up."




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The true harvest of my life is intangible.... a little stardust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched
--Thoreau

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