Park Service officials faulted for excessive foreign travel

The National Park Service is under fire from appropriators for planning to reduce fiscal 2005 expenditures by cutting park hours and eliminating visitor services while spending millions of dollars on foreign trips.

In a letter dated March 19, House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Charles Taylor, R-N.C., and ranking member Norman Dicks, D-Wash., wrote to Park Service Director Fran Mainella that all foreign travel by agency staff in fiscal 2005 would require committee approval. The letter also asks the agency to "significantly reduce non-essential domestic travel" and use teleconferencing methods instead. Lawmakers said those cost-cutting measures and others would save up to $25 million.

A Park Service spokesman declined to comment and said the agency would draft a formal response to the Appropriations Committee. Mainella is scheduled to testify Thursday before the Interior panel. Lawmakers previously scored the Park Service for conducting a private fundraising effort relying on corporate contributions to enhance security at the Statue of Liberty rather than seek federal appropriations.

The Park Service budget would remain essentially flat under President Bush's fiscal 2005 request, rising from $2.33 billion in fiscal 2004 to $2.36 billion in fiscal 2005. The House lawmakers cited a GAO report last year that found travel expenses increased by 29 percent between fiscal 2000 and fiscal 2002, reaching about $50 million in fiscal 2002. In addition, the Appropriations Committee estimated that "there have been over 215 trips to China, South America, Africa, France, Italy and other countries since the beginning of 2003." The letter notes that the Park Service reduced its travel budget from $50 million to $44 million in fiscal 2003, however.

Foreign trips reported by the Park Service in fiscal 2003 and the first quarter of fiscal 2004 total $352,644, according to Interior Department documents. The largest single expenditure was for a trip by a staffer in the Alaska regional office to the Congo, at a $9,315 cost. Other trips include a $2,000 visit to Liechtenstein by a staffer at Grand Canyon National Park, and a $1,480 visit to Mexico by a staffer named Jose Sanchez of "unknown" headquarters. The agency's head of international affairs, Sharon Cleary, took four trips at a $19,251 cost, the most of any Park Service staffer -- two visits to France, and one each to China and South Africa.

The letter from Taylor and Dicks also criticizes the Park Service for initiating four large new construction projects, including a $100 million visitor center and museum complex at Valley Forge, Pa., "without any consultation with the committee," the lawmakers wrote. "The parks are a national treasure and the Park Service should not restrict our citizen's ability to enjoy them. Instead, you should properly manage existing resources in order to avoid shortfalls," the letter continued.