National Park Fee Coffers Swelling

Yosemite spends little of the cash raised at its entrance stations.

by Michael Doyle
Fresno Bee - December 24, 2002

Yosemite National Park will be starting the new year with an embarrassment of riches.
Thanks to higher entrance fees, Yosemite and other popular parks have piles of money to pay for improvements -- so much so that federal auditors are urging parks to work faster so that the fee-collection program doesn't become politically vulnerable.

Message received, park officials insist.

"The pace is certainly going to be picking up," Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said Monday. "Starting next year, we're really looking forward to a lot of these projects' implementation."

The public pays up to $20 per car at parks such as Yosemite. In return, under a 1996 law still billed as temporary, Congress is permitting the individual parks to keep 80% of what they collect to fund improvements.

Yosemite, for instance, collected $42 million between 1998 and 2000 through the so-called fee demonstration program.

Only a small fraction has been spent.

The problem is not unique to Yosemite. The nearby Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks collected $7.7 million and likewise have spent little.

In 17 major parks surveyed nationwide, auditors found that only 11% of the planned fee demonstration projects had been completed.

"We believe that translating fee revenues into visible improvements is the major factor in ensuring the success and public acceptance of the program," Interior Department auditors stressed in their most recent study of the politically charged issue.

The auditors concluded that, overall, the fee-demonstration program has "proven beneficial" to both the public and the park service.

Parks nationwide have collected $459 million since Congress started the program in 1996.

But in many cases, auditors say, the tension between collecting and spending also has been outside of the parks' control. That's the case at Yosemite, where litigation over park planning helped stall projects.

"The lawsuits kind of froze them," said John McCamman, chief of staff for Mariposa Republican George Radanovich.

Radanovich's congressional district includes all of Yosemite, and he is chairman of the House subcommittee overseeing national parks. McCamman indicated that a "long-term" goal of the subcommittee will be to examine the park-entrance fee issue. Congress has given parks at least another year and a half to collect the higher fees.

Few parks nationwide collect more in entrance fees than Yosemite, which during the period studied had 34 projects planned. Park visitors already can see results. Last year, for instance, park officials finished renovating an auditorium behind the Yosemite Valley Visitors Center, where plush, stadium-style seats now invite visitors in for a showing of the introductory movie called "The Spirit of Yosemite."

Ten of these planned Yosemite projects were postponed, however, because of various lawsuits over planning. For instance, auditors noted that four of the 10 stalled projects were put on hold because 70 Yosemite workers were reassigned to work on the legally challenged Yosemite Valley Plan.

Another project to construct a new waste-water treatment plant and related facilities was delayed to head off potential litigation.

The auditors noted that failure to move ahead with the planned $8.7 million waste-water plant could force the closure of an area used by about 5,000 Yosemite visitors daily. A "cumbersome" park service review process, which in some cases requires 11 levels of approval, also impeded projects, auditors said.

While conceding the validity of the auditors' concerns, spelled out in a report issued this summer, park officials say they've already overcome some of the problems identified.

"The nice thing is, knock on wood, all the litigation is finally behind us," Gediman said.

Auditors also want tighter security for the money collected, in several respects. They noted that the "poor physical condition and isolated locations" of some entrance stations at Yosemite and three other parks rendered them vulnerable to theft. They urged, as well, that the seasonal park workers collecting entrance fees undergo background checks; only 42% of those surveyed had undergone the checks.

Yosemite officials responded by noting they had increased the frequency of law enforcement patrols, installed new surveillance cameras and improved telephone lines to act as a security stopgap until they could build new entrance stations.

"[National Park Service] officials stated that the low number of employee background checks was due in part to the lack of awareness that such checks were required, and the belief that they were too expensive, time consuming and unnecessary for seasonal personnel," auditors noted.

Park service officials said they would ask for more money to complete the background checks.