In this morning's Seattle PI, Joel Connelly writes about the funding situation in national parks. Short summary: it's bad. There's a reference to a document circulated among the park management, and one paragraph caught my attention:
The The Bush-Cheney campaign site touts the funding, though other sources disagree a lot.
Looking at the numbers, the budget increased $50m, or 3% from 2003 to 2004. However, according to National Geographic, damage from forest fires cost an additional $50m, and while Hurricane Isabel added about $150m. (I find it a little strange there isn't a reserve for natural disasters. After all, disasters happen every year.) Additionally, each time the Homeland Security Advisory system changes to orange, they rack up $1m/month to reshuffle people to protect national monuments. (Hmmm... I didn't know the Statue of Liberty has been closed since 9/11/2001.) Instead of being up 3%, their net is down 9%.
There's a lot more reading, including The original memo, but the whole thing makes me mad... especially when we're pissing away money buying silver RVs for anti-terrorism operations in Caspar, Wyoming.
If you are personally pressed by the media in an interview, we all agree to use the terminology of 'service level adjustments' due to fiscal constraints as a means of describing what actions we are taking."Later Connelly mentions examples of these service level adjustments, including closing during federal holidays (government employees get overtime... BUT that's when people would be most likely to visit a park) and the firing of Teresa Chambers after giving an interview to the Washington Post regarding current budget. (Original article is here; see also: Slate, Sen Paul Sarbanes, and an earlier interview, and other commentary) She's essentially under a gag order, though the park service offered her her job back if she'd seek approval before talking to the media.
The The Bush-Cheney campaign site touts the funding, though other sources disagree a lot.
Looking at the numbers, the budget increased $50m, or 3% from 2003 to 2004. However, according to National Geographic, damage from forest fires cost an additional $50m, and while Hurricane Isabel added about $150m. (I find it a little strange there isn't a reserve for natural disasters. After all, disasters happen every year.) Additionally, each time the Homeland Security Advisory system changes to orange, they rack up $1m/month to reshuffle people to protect national monuments. (Hmmm... I didn't know the Statue of Liberty has been closed since 9/11/2001.) Instead of being up 3%, their net is down 9%.
There's a lot more reading, including The original memo, but the whole thing makes me mad... especially when we're pissing away money buying silver RVs for anti-terrorism operations in Caspar, Wyoming.
.