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The Senate must decide whether to sign off on the bill.
By Michael
Doyle
Fresno Bee - October 14, 1998
WASHINGTON - The decades-long fight to change park concessions, propelled
by revelations about old business dealings at Yosemite National Park, effectively
concluded on the House floor Tuesday.
The House easily passed a park reform measure that eventually will change
how big national parks like Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon pick hotel
and restaurant operators. The legislation also will help Yosemite's curious
neighbors track the park's budget and operating plans, and give park enthusiasts
a new way to pay for their annual visits.
"It's taken us years and lots of work to get us to this point," said Rep.
James Hansen, R-Utah. "This was a very difficult piece of legislation to put
together."
To be sure, Hansen, chairman of the House parks subcommittee, has a few more
hours to go before the 105th Congress adjourns. The Senate must still formally
sign off on the bill it has passed once before, and the measure could be taken
political hostage for unrelated purposes.
The measure, approved by voice vote, avoids past controversies like any effort
to winnow out existing national parks, but goes beyond concession management.
For instance, national parks will have to start making available to the public
their annual budgets, performance plans and five-year strategic plans. That
will give Yosemite's neighbors, for instance, the chance to see more easily
how the park divvies up its $19 million annual budget.
"Most of that information already exists, but not in one place," Yosemite
spokesman Kendell Thompson said. "I'm sure there are people who would find
it convenient to have it packaged together."
Park visitors and memorabilia collectors also will get to buy a new kind of
annual park "passport." For $50 a year, people will be able to buy a stamp
providing unlimited access to national parks. Like the Fish and Wildlife Service's
popular duck stamps, the park stamp design will be selected through an annual
competition. As about 15% of Yosemite's 4 million yearly visitors already
buy the similar Golden Eagle Passport, and about 5,600 such passports are
sold at Sequoia and Kings Canyon every year, the new passports have popular
potential.
"It certainly is a major advantage to the visitor, if they're going to visit
several parks," said Kris Fister, spokeswoman for Sequoia and Kings Canyon
national parks.
The core of the legislation repeals a 1965 law governing park concessions.
Perennial efforts to repeal the law were boosted in the early 1990s, with
the news that Yosemite's then-concessionaire was only paying the government
three-quarters of 1% of its revenues that exceeded $89 million. It took until
this year, however, for the House and Senate to agree on legislation, and
Yosemite's contract long since has been modified so that the equivalent of
about 22% of gross revenues go to the park.
Some California-based park professionals worried Tuesday that the bill actually
will make their work harder and make it difficult to replicate improvements
recently undertaken at Yosemite.
For instance, they worry about the clout of a new concessions advisory board
and the implications of contracting out the park service's concessions management.
"It leaves us in a less powerful position," Stephen Crabtree, San Francisco-based
concessions management chief for the park service's Pacific West region, "and
the concessionaire gets more power."
For future contracts, like a new one for Grand Canyon, the bill changes how
the park service calculates the value of the concessionaire's investments.
Existing contracts, like the one calling for Delaware North Park Services
to spend at least $11 million in building the Wuxsachi visitors facility at
Sequoia, will stay the same.
The bill eliminates one impediment to concession competition, which is the
preference given incumbent concessionaires. However, small guide and packhorse
services like the four that serve Sequoia and Kings Canyon retain this preferential
right to renew.
The new Sequoia concessions contract taking effect Nov. 1, for instance, will
run from between 15 and 30 years, depending on the size of the investment
made by Delaware North Park Services. The bill calls for 10-year contracts,
or 20 years at a maximum.
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