Parks may be doing public disservice

WASHINGTON — The National Park Service told superintendents to mislead the public about service cuts forced by tight budgets, hoping to avoid "public or political controversy" this election year, according to memos released by a group of retired Park Service employees.

Denny Huffman, former superintendent of Utah's Dinosaur National Monument, disclosed the memos at a press conference at the National Press Club. He complained the memos were issued just four days before the Park Service kicked off a major campaign last month to attract more visitors.

"You can't engage in large-scale efforts with the travel industry to ramp up visitors to the parks and then at the same time pressure superintendents to cut service," said Huffman, who is spokesman for the Coalition of Concerned National Park Service Retirees.

"The only possible outcome from reduced operations of parks that already are critically far behind in needed maintenance is a reduced quality in the visitors' experience," he said.

David Barna, chief of public affairs for the Park Service, acknowledged that parks will face service cuts this year, but he said instructions to superintendents were intended to allow them to decide what to cut but not wage their own public campaigns for more money.

"We didn't want to see 380 parks whining for lack of dollars. That's not what we're about," Barna said.

While the Park Service budget is technically increasing, Barna said it must absorb added costs from firefighting, damage from Hurricane Isabel and extra homeland security to protect parks and monuments from terrorism.

That means less for operations at most parks. Superintendents "are the ones making the decisions how to deal with this," Barna said. "They may delay opening campgrounds until later in spring. They may close visitors centers earlier in the evening."

The memos released Wednesday, however, say superintendents were told to paint the service cuts in the most positive light possible, and even mislead the media.

One memo said Deputy National Park Service Director Randy Jones told superintendents "that if you feel you must inform the public through a press release on this year's hours or days of operation, for example, that you state what the park's plans are and not to directly indicate it is a cut in comparison to last year's operation."

If pressed by the news media, superintendents should "use the terminology of 'service level adjustment' due to fiscal constraints as a means of describing what actions we are taking," the memo said.