Endangering Our National Parks: An Editorial (cont'd)

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Just which positions will they outsource? Already, outside concessions run most of the parks' peripheral businesses. The in-park hotels, restaurants, gift shops, gas stations, and book stores—all privately run. Outfitters who set up shop in the gateway towns are the ones who take visitors on backwoods treks and canoe trips. Even bureaucratic, back room stuff like land appraisals, engineering work, and architectural design is largely contracted out these days.

What's left are the park rangers and the historians, the supervisors and scientists, the maintenance workers repairing trails and the smiling folks wearing "interpreter" badges who teach school groups about conservation. The very folks who enrich our park-going experiences and provide for our safety.

All of them, by the way, are cross-trained. Maintenance workers are trained in search and rescue efforts, and they're often the ones who find that ten-year-old boy lost in the woods for two days. During a 4th of July weekend car accident in Yellowstone, a nearby road repair crew having lunch heard the radio call and rushed to the scene to direct traffic while a park geologist—who was a certified EMT—arrived to administer first aid to the victims. Could we expect the same from employees hired for less than 80 percent of the pay by some low-ball bidding outside contractor?

The parks already receive woefully inadequate funding-two thirds of the level necessary, according to a Nov 9 LA Times article by Eric Bailey. Bailey writes that the annual shortfall of more than $600 million "has meant a lack of services, reduced public education programs, and deteriorating structures." Do we want it to get worse?

WASTING YOUR MONEY

This is all assuming that the Competitive Sourcing initiative will save the government-by which I mean us, the taxpayers-money. So far, it has done the opposite. The whole privatization fiasco has produced only a massive net loss.

The government has already spent $16 million on the outsourcing study, to which they will add another estimated $110 million over the next three years, according to a CPAL report. Note that that's not $16 million spent on doing the outsourcing itself; just on the study to see what privatization might save. The conclusions that these very well-paid contractors came to: privatization could save taxpayers a whopping $600,000. Subtract that from the $16 million spent on the study, and total net cost to the taxpayer: $15.4 million.

"President Bush's privatization program is taking money out of our parks and public lands and putting it into private contractor's pockets-with nothing gained for our taxpayers or our lands," says CPAL spokesman Chris Fitzsimon.

The tune is largely the same over at the US Forest Service, which has spent $18 million on outsourcing studies to come up with $1.2 million in savings spread over the next six years. And it only cost us $18 million to find that out.

This kind of fuzzy accounting puts Enron to shame.

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