Parks Jobs on the Block-Only a handful in Glacier, Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks

As part of its push to privatize federal workers, the Bush administration has identified about 70 percent of full-time jobs in the National Park Service as potential candidates for replacement by private-sector employees.

BY JULIE CART
LOS ANGELES TIMES

Interior Secretary Gayle Norton, who oversees the Park Service, has earmarked 11,807 of 16,470 full-time positions for possible privatization. They range from maintenance and secretarial jobs to archeologists and biologists.

Interior Department managers emphasized, however, that the number of people replaced would not be nearly that high. They said law enforcement personnel, managerial positions and most park rangers would keep their jobs.

But some of the people who have come to embody the institution’s 86-year-old tradition of public service, as they greet visitors and lead them on nature walks, could be replaced by volunteers.

Critics say the outsourcing of federal positions, including the Park Service’s entire corps of scientists, could undermine protection of the nation’s vast inventory of archeological and paleontological sites within parks and hand over the care of forests, seashores and wildlife to private companies not steeped in the Park Service culture of resource protection.

"This is about respect for professionals. It is about a recognition that people spend a lifetime learning their profession and how to resist pressures — political or commercial — in the public interest," said Roger Kennedy, who directed the Park Service during the Clinton administration.

The potential cuts are part of the Bush administration’s effort to identify as many as 850,000 federal jobs that could be performed by private-sector employees.

Park Service Director Fran Minella said she wants to maintain uniformed personnel in the parks as a "public face" to visitors. Still, some duties performed by rangers, such as nature walks, could be conducted by volunteers, Park Service officials said.

The Interior Department says there is little likelihood that all of the jobs identified by Minella will be outsourced.

Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Scott Cameron said he expects no more than 4 percent of the current workers would actually lose their jobs because much of the changeover would occur as current employees retire. Cameron estimated that about 20 percent of the Park Service staff will reach retirement age in the next five years.

The positions identified by Norton will be examined to determine whether they can be eliminated or filled more cheaply and efficiently with nongovernmental contract employees.
Park Service employees would be given a chance to argue why they are better equipped to perform their jobs than private-sector workers.

Backers say the injection of free market-style competition would bring out the best in employees.

"This is a way to capture the benefits of competition to produce better performance and better value," Cameron said. "Competition makes for a much more exciting Lakers game than if only one team were on the court."

But critics say the responsibility of overseeing the country’s 388 parks and monuments is too important to entrust to people with little or no preparation for working in the nation’s park system.

"There is a fundamental ideological binge that the free enterprise system will heal all wounds and solve all problems," said Frank Buono, a former assistant superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park and a former manager of Mojave National Preserve. "Ask Enron about the efficiency of the unregulated private marketplace."

Randy Erwin, assistant to the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said he was "outraged" by idea of privatizing Park Service jobs. "It’s a travesty to turn the Park Service into a profit-making center."

But the trend to outsourcing is inexorable, said Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based free-market advocacy group.

"The private museum system has been using docents for years," he said. "It’s about time the government caught up."

http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Jan/01272003/nation_w/23811.asp

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Only handful of park jobs to go private

By Jim Mann
The Daily Inter Lake

Glacier, Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks have identified a relative handful of jobs that might be turned over to the private sector, contrary to national press reports that the agency could privatize most of its jobs.

A Los Angeles Times story indicated the National Park Service was targeting 70 percent of its jobs for "competitive sourcing," raising concerns among park advocacy groups that the service’s resource-protection-minded ranks could be gutted.

National Park Service Director Fran Mainella issued an internal memo Tuesday that refuted the Times report.

"A figure of 70 percent has never been used as a measuring stick for privatizing National Park Service jobs, nor will it be," Mainella said.

The agency, however, is required by the Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act to "identify a list of commercial functions it performs that are not inherently governmental."

The National Park Service conducted such an inventory, and it came up with 11,524 jobs, or roughly 70 percent of the work force.

"The agency doesn’t have to (competitively bid) every function, however, and with the (Secretary of Interior’s) approval, the National Park Service has identified 1,700 positions" that will actually be "studied" over the next two years for possible privatization, Mainella said in the memo.

In Glacier National Park, around 50 positions were identified about a year ago, said Gary Brandow, the park’s financial administrator.

The jobs are mostly seasonal positions in campground and vehicle maintenance, as well as fee collection, Brandow said.

"There is certainly an initiative to go to this competitive sourcing work," Brandow said. "There’s some concern (among employees), but it hasn’t really hit us directly yet. It’s still out there in the future."

Brandow anticipates the park will offer a description of duties and solicit bids from its own departments as well as private contractors interested in performing those duties.

"The results will be compared and we’ll get a winner and losers, I guess," he said.

The Associated Press reported that Yellowstone National Park has identified 16 maintenance and custodial jobs, 22 fee-collection jobs, 31 clerical workers and 16 fleet-maintenance employees for possible privatization.

In Grand Teton National Park, 10 maintenance jobs, 23 fee collection and five mechanical positions will be considered.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at [email protected]

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