Politics skew park budgets

Those budget numbers are reported in a year when three-fourths of National Park Service units had their base budgets cut and environmental groups and organizations of former Park Service employees are calling for vast expansion of spending on parks.

Hansen blames politics for making budget squeezes worse by including many questionable parks that he says drain resources from better parks.

"(Former Rep.) Phil Burton (D-Calif.) was a big pusher on the Interior Committee and started an organization called the Park a Month club" for members to create local parks to increase tourism, Hansen said. "They are not all Yellowstones," he added sarcastically.

They include parks containing writers' homes (Eugene O'Neil, Edgar Allen Poe), homes of artists (J. Alden Weir), homes of signers of the Declaration of Independence (Thomas Stone, Charles Pinckney), homes of high-achieving African Americans (Maggie Stone, George Washington Carver), a jazz district (New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park) and even one to honor Rosie the Riveter (in California).

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Hansen said the worst case of politics he saw was in creation of the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site near Charleston, S.C., to interpret Pinckney's Snee Farm plantation.

"Pinckney, who signed the Declaration of Independence, was supposed to have been born there, so they put the park there. Then they found out a few years later that he was born 52 miles down the road, and there is a Wal-Mart there. But they kept the park," Hansen said, even though the main farmhouse there has nothing to do with Pinckney.

When Hansen was chairman of the House Resources Committee and complained about some lower-quality parks, he said he sent staffers to interview people visiting the Pinckney site to find out why they came.