NATIONAL PARKS: Bipartisan bill would bar closures for 'political leverage'
Phil Taylor, E&E reporter: Greenwire: Thursday, April 16, 2015
A new House bill would require the secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture to allow local governments to keep national parks, forests, wildlife refuges and other lands open during a government shutdown.
The bill, by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, would require the departments to accept within six months any offers by local governments to support the continued "operations and public access" to public lands in the event of a lapse in funding.
The bill is a response to the Interior Department's decision to bar access to national parks, refuges and open-air monuments during the 16-day government shutdown in October 2013, a decision that many Republicans argued was driven by politics.
"Our national parks, forests, and monuments -- resources built and maintained by American tax dollars -- should never be used as political leverage," Issa said in a statement.
"The Monuments Protection Act of 2015 ensures that state and local governments have the option to step in and continue to operate affected properties in the case of a lapse of federal funding, thus providing more flexibility to the regions that rely heavily on parks and monuments, rather than forcing them to adhere to the whim of an federal bureaucracy that is, at times, thousands of miles removed from the areas impacted by decisions to shut down federal properties across the board," he added.
The bill states that "any restriction of public access" to public lands during a funding lapse when such steps are "not necessary to comply with budgetary constraints and when an agency has not taken steps to mitigate restrictions on public access, shall be considered a direct violation of the purpose for which these lands and monuments were established."
The bill says the federal government should reimburse entities that pay to keep public lands open "to the extent that funds are made available."
The bill is similar to S. 146, reintroduced in January by four Western Republican senators, that also would require land-managing agencies to accept offers from local governments to fund the continued operation of public lands in case of a government shutdown.
A Park Service official last July testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that the agency "strongly opposes" a previous version of S. 146.
"We disagree generally with the idea of enacting laws to try to lessen the impact of a future government shutdown for a few select governmental activities rather than protecting all such activities by avoiding a lapse in appropriations," NPS's then-Deputy Director Christy Goldfuss said in written testimony.
"We also believe that this legislation specifically, with its mandate to enter into agreements to reopen public lands at the request of a state, would be very difficult to execute."
