Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, is asking Congress to give priority to national parks in the upcoming economic stimulus package, saying the parks have been neglected and have deteriorated in recent years.

"Not only would park service funding help restore grandeur to this system of national pride, but would partially fulfill the important task of creating jobs for working-class Americans," he wrote to House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, D-W.V.

"With close to 400 aging properties in the park service system, compounded by years of underfunding, these significant sites of national, cultural, and recreational importance deserve the government's attention," he wrote.

Matheson added that many of the biggest needs in parks are for roads, bridges, trails, visitor centers, rest rooms and restoring historic structures. He said funding such projects "would help in employing large numbers of workers in one of the currently most unemployed sectors of the economy."

Last year, a Deseret News analysis of National Park Service data showed that while visitation has increased in recent years, park budgets have been cut and their workforce reduced — which has led to decreases in voter satisfaction, and increasing reports of deteriorating facilities.

For example, the newspaper found that between 2003 and 2007, recreational visits to parks nationally increased by 3.6 percent. But "full time equivalents" of employees were cut by 2 percent.

While budgets for park-level operations increased by an average 11.6 percent in those years, that was lower than the 12.7 percent combined rate of inflation then.

The situation was more extreme in Utah. Visitation at its 13 park service units increased 4.3 percent overall in that time, but full-time equivalents were cut by 6.6 percent — almost twice as deeply as the national average.

Meanwhile, park-level operations budgets in Utah increased overall by only 9 percent, well below both the national average for other parks and the rate of inflation

As an example of problems at Utah parks, Dinosaur National Monument's world-famous visitor center — enclosing a cliff where 1,500 dinosaur bones in the rock were carefully exposed —has been closed as unsafe for years. It was the park's main attraction. Amid such problems, the monument has the worst visitor satisfaction ratings among all park service units in the nation.

E-mail: lee@desnews.com