Criticism prompts Park Service to suspend foreign travel

National Park Service Director Fran Mainella announced Thursday the agency is suspending all foreign travel in response to concerns from lawmakers about excessive travel and other expenses that have forced some national parks to consider cutting hours of operation and services.

During a hearing before the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, Mainella acknowledged the agency's management problems and vowed to fix them while ensuring the agency continues to fulfill its core mission. A General Accounting Office report last year found travel increased 29 percent from fiscal 2000 to fiscal 2002, when it reached $50 million. The agency managed to reduce that amount to $44 million last year.

Mainella said she will approve any exceptions to the foreign travel ban, and she also promised greater scrutiny of domestic travel with the aim of reducing it by 10 percent. In addition, she said the National Park Service would more closely examine large partnership projects such as a $100 million visitor center and museum project in Valley Forge, Pa., that was begun without the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee's consultation. Current regulations require that projects costing $1 million or more must be reviewed by the agency's director and those costing $5 million or more must be approved by the subcommittee. But several projects bypassed both reviews.

Lawmakers also pressed agency officials on how they could consider cuts in services and hours at national parks when funding for park operations have increased by 47 percent in the last decade while the number of visitors has fallen 2 percent. Interior Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Norman Dicks, D-Wash., and others said either the Park Service was not devoting enough money to base operations or was mismanaging its resources.

"It's hard for this committee to understand why there should be any reductions in service," Dicks said.

Mainella and NPS Deputy Director Randy Jones noted that the agency is in the process of reviewing and adjusting is resources and needs. But Dicks insisted that "we're getting at the ragged end here. Money should be going from other areas of less importance back" to base operations.

"Who's minding the store here?" asked Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., pointing to the Valley Forge project in particular. In response, Jones acknowledged that there are a few projects that are "out of control and need to be fixed." But he added that there are many more that have been very successful and completed at little or no cost to taxpayers. And Mainella vowed that the agency would do what it has to "to keep these parks open." Although she said the agency may need to adjust operations at the parks in response to visitor flow patterns but would not cut hours or operations because of funding problems.