Gorton Backs Higher Park Fees Interior Secretary Criticized For His Closure Threats

Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., said Tuesday he supports a Clinton administration proposal to give the National Park Service authority to raise park entrance fees.

But he criticized Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt for threatening to shut down 200 national park lands if Congress cuts the agency’s budget.

“It’s absurd. There’s no way in the world he’ll do that or we’ll allow him to do that,” said Gorton, chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the budgets of all Interior Department agencies.

But he agreed the agency should be able to raise park fees on its own. Currently, fee hikes at national parks require congressional approval.

“Ninety years ago the admission fee to Mount Rainier National Park was exactly what it is today - five dollars. In the meantime, Mount Rainier National Park is tens of millions of dollars behind in maintenance,” he said.

Gorton said he also supports proposals to create a commission that would consider closing some national parks.

And he questioned why the National Park Service should manage motor parkways, like the one connecting Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

“It is a very nice way to drive but it really isn’t a national park,” he said.

Local governments should take more responsibility for managing parks that primarily serve local residents, like the new one at the former Presidio military base in San Francisco, Gorton said.

He suggested a new category of “national treasure” parks be given priority in congressional appropriations.

“They would be parks that have a tremendous attraction from people all over the United States and for that matter foreign countries. The Grand Canyons, Yosemites, Olympics, Mount Rainiers and the like, against some of the smaller units in the system that are really local in nature,” he said.

Gorton said his panel likely will follow the lead of its counterpart in the House and recommend freezing the National Park Service budget next year. He also said maintenance of existing parks should have priority over acquisition of land for new parks.

Babbitt told Congress last week that as many as 200 national parks, recreation areas and motor parkways managed by the service could face closure if Republicans followed through with proposals to dramatically cut the agency’s budget.

Gorton said the threat was typical “of the kinds of threats that are proposed whenever there’s any proposal with respect to the Park Service.

“It is the old kind of thinking. It is the kind of thinking that 10 years ago under similar circumstances threatened to close the Washington Monument. It isn’t going to happen,” he said.

Gorton said Babbitt’s budget proposal included $60 million for new land acquisitions.

“My priorities are going to be to preserve the parks we have first before we keep on willy-nilly, on a largely political basis, buying new parks,” the senator said.

Gorton said he hopes to keep spending steady at the National Park Service next year despite House and Senate budget resolutions that require his subcommittee to cut agency budgets by 10 percent.

But he said he was going to demand that the National Park Service and the Interior secretary “come up with new and more creative ways in which to run their parks.”