Park revitalization program might suffer in budget battle

In the ongoing battle between Congress and President Bush, the National Park Service stands to lose out on a multimillion-dollar program to revitalize parks if Bush's signature Centennial Challenge is scrapped as lawmakers scale down the budget to get closer to his proposed spending levels.

The House-passed Interior-Environment Appropriations bill includes a record amount of spending for the national parks, more than $2 billion, but the Senate version reported out of the Appropriations Committee is $88 million smaller.

A large part of the difference is $50 million in the House version toward the Centennial Challenge, which was proposed by the administration to revitalize the park service by its 100th anniversary in 2016, said Melissa Kuckro, a Park Service legislative specialist.

The $50 million makes up half of the president's $100 million per year request for the Centennial Challenge, which would match federal funds with donations from the private sector, Kuckro said.

The House Natural Resources National Parks Subcommittee and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources National Parks Subcommittee have held hearings this year on authorizing the $100 million request, but neither subcommittee has taken action.

"The [House] Appropriations Committee realized that this new mandatory funding was unlikely to be running by the start of fiscal 2008, so they said let's put $50 million to get that program up and running. It was never intended to be in the appropriations bill," Kuckro said.

The funds were included in the House version in large part due to the efforts of House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Norman Dicks, D-Wash., Kuckro said.

The authority for including the funds comes from a previous authorization for a park service program that allows the agency to set up smaller matching grant programs, a subcommittee aide said.

The Centennial Challenge and the existing program are sufficiently similar that the Appropriations Committee felt it was acceptable to include the $50 million, the aide said.

The Senate Appropriations Committee report states "the proper venue for resolving the many issues surrounding the proposal is within the authorizing committee's jurisdiction."

The $50 million is just a part of the proposed funding increase for the parks.

The president proposed an additional $100 million year in operating funding for the parks, which appropriators signed off on.

"This year has the potential to be the best year we've seen for the National Park Service," said Craig Obey, vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association.