CNPSR Executive Council Member Rick Smith's Remarks to NPS Southeast Region Superintendents

REMARKS FOR SE REGION
SUPERINTENDENT’S CONFERENCE
MARCH 15, 2007

It’s exciting to be invited to participate in this region’s superintendent’s conference. It reminds me of the ones I attended when I was the Assistant Superintendent at Everglades so I feel at home. It is also an honor to share this time with my distinguished colleagues, Bob Stanton and Deny Galvin. Both made significant contributions to the preservation and protection of the areas of the National Park System and the programs of the National Park Service. We owe them a great deal.

During last year’s public debate over the management policies—a struggle, I thought, for the very soul of the NPS—I had a chance to send every superintendent in the system, including many of you, several emails regarding the attempt by Department to overlay a partisan political agenda on the Service’s management policies. I sent these messages on behalf of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, an organization upon whose Executive Council I am privileged to serve. The Coalition had its beginning in 2003 when three former SER employees, Mike Finley, Bill Wade and I, appeared at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The purpose of the press conference was to draw public attention to several programs at the Department of the Interior which we felt were inconsistent with sound park management. Following the press conference, we decided to send a letter to the President, repeating our concerns about the Department’s failure to properly care for the areas of the system. As other former employees heard about the letter, they asked if they could add their names.

Following press reports of our letter, we were surprised to be contacted by additional retirees who asked if they could join our efforts to defend the parks of the system and the programs of the NPS. Apparently, many former employees were very worried about what was happening to the parks in which they had worked and to the agency which they had served. They didn’t like the fact that the whine of snowmobiles shattered the natural quiet of Yellowstone, disturbed park wildlife and posed a threat to employee and visitor health and safety. They didn’t see how programs like outsourcing maintenance, resources management of science positions contributed to the effective management of parks. They felt that park visitors were not being adequately served as parks were forced to reduce visitor center hours, curtail or eliminate interpretive programs, cut back on resource protection patrols, postpone cyclic maintenance programs, and leave key positions vacant to save money. What troubled many the most was the attitude of the political leadership of the Department and the Service who were fond of saying that there was more money per park, per visitor and per employee than ever, especially during the 2004 election campaign. No one is the Service believed that was true except in the most literal sense. And they were seriously disturbed by efforts to muzzle, or even to take punitive action against career employees who attempted to “tell it like it was.”

Membership in the Coalition continued to climb, rising by some 20% almost every year. We started to notice a new phenomenon: people began to join on the day they retired. As of today, there are almost 600 people who have lent their name to the Coalition. The obvious question is, what fuels this growth? We have never actively recruited new members. Remember, this is the first time in the 90-year history of the National Park Service that its retirees have ever felt the need to join together for any reason other than the social and education goals of the Employee and Alumni Association.

There are a couple obvious reasons. One has to do with the sorry record of the Bush administration regarding parks. Until his administration’s recent show of interest in the Centennial and his 08 budget proposals—which aren’t quite as good as they appear to be, there has been little to cheer about in the last 6 years. Another is attention that the national media has paid to the Coalition. There is barely a week that goes by that one of us on the Executive Council is not contacted by someone from the media asking for our take on a park issue. They want our opinion for two reasons. First of all, the Coalition represents something like 17,000 years of park management experience. We know what we are talking about. The second reason is that we get out information from current employees. We have a network of employees who keep us informed on critical park and program issues. They talk to us because of the climate of fear and intimidation that existed until recently. The media knows this and appreciates how current our inside information is.

Another factor that has led to strong growth is that several major publications have published extensive articles on the Coalition and its work. Articles in National Geographic, Vanity Fair, Men’s Journal, and High Country News have either featured the Coalition or contained extensive quotes from its members. Coalition spokespeople are routinely cited in major newspapers such as the NY Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, and in numerous local newspapers and we been interviewed extensively on national and local public radio.

Perhaps, however, the most important motivation for former employees to join the Coalition has to do with the title of this panel: the past, present and future of the NPS. It is clear to me that most former employees consider their service to the NPS to have been an avocation, not a vocation. They care deeply about the traditions of the NPS and believe strongly in the management policies that have evolved over 90 years. They think the Organic Act is something to be respected, not an Act to be ignored when convenient to do so. They take seriously former Director Albright’s challenge to not let the National Park Service become “just another government bureau.” They don’t like it when the Service’s senior managers are ignored or bullied. They honestly believe that NPS decision-making should be transparent and based on the soundest science available. They believe that the public should always be told the truth, even if it is inconvenient to do so. They truly believe that parks strive to be effective in three areas: preserve and protect resources; provide quality visitor services; and maintain productive relationships with park interest groups. They do not much care for the current emphasis that seems to prize efficiency over effectiveness.

Does this mean that Coalition members want to go back to the “good old days”. I don’t think so. Most of us recognize that today’s employees are far more skilled than we were in many areas. We recognize how changing demographics have altered the way many people visit parks. We know that our population is much more diverse than it was when we worked. We are aware of the budget pressures created by Iraq and Afghanistan. And besides that, the good old days weren’t so good anyway. Many of us went through the first version of outsourcing. We lived through Jim Watt. We choked on Take Pride in America and endured Hootie the Owl. Most of us wish there had been a Coalition of NPS Retirees then to help us make it through.

What we share with you is the hope that on August 25, 2016, the National Park Service will enter its second century of public service reinvigorated and renewed. The Coalition has a vision for the NPS of 2016. It looks something like this:

• Preserves and enables visitors to enjoy the truly special places of our common heritage—the inalienable patrimony—of our nation, without confusion about its mission.
• Is deeply involved with the American people in what it means to be American and with the people of the world about what it means to be human.
• Educates visitors through deeply personal experiences of profoundly important places.
• Leads, encourages, and assists all others in our country who pursue similar goals; and on behalf of the United States assists all others in the world who pursue similar goals.
• Is free of burdens that impede accomplishment of its mission, and has leadership that is free of inappropriate constraints and conflicting goals.
• Is well-funded, well-staffed, sophisticated, professional, value-driven, motivated, innovative, daring, and excellent, within a context of long-term continuity.
• Provides education, training, and career opportunities that maximize fulfillment of the professional potential of each employee.
• Is managed as a coherent system rather than as independent areas and programs.
• Is driven by a current and constantly-renewed vision, nationally and in each individual park.

Aldo Leopold once said that the key to successful tinkering is to save all the parts. That’s what you and your staffs are doing now: saving all the parts. You’re saving the parts that those of us in the Coalition saved, the ones that were passed on to us by earlier generations of NPS employees. And you will pass them on to the next. It’s a continuous loop, but we have to remain ever-vigilant that the loop doesn’t get disconnected some place along the line. That’s what the Coalition has tried to help you prevent.

I heard former Director Bill Mott say that the reason he believed in national parks is that they represented stability. He saw it this way. Each generation of Americans gets to add, speaking through their elected representatives, the places that they feel merit protection in perpetuity to the National Park System. Our park areas represent an unmatched record of what generations of Americans, since 1872, have valued as places or ideas. We should be proud of our part in preserving that legacy for future generations.