Congress gives homefolks pricey perks

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 23, 1998 | by Sean Paige

Roughing it isn't as affordable as it used to be, thanks to last year's dramatic hike in national-park entrance fees. This was a form of double taxation resulting from cries of poverty from the Interior Department and will be expanding to many national forests just in time for this summer's tourist migrations to the wide-open spaces.

One among many reasons why the U.S. Park Service is perennially strapped for cash is the additional spending forced down its throat each year by certain members of Congress, each of whom seems to believe they have the eighth wonder of the natural world in their state or district. Congressional appropriators added at least 193 items not requested by the Park Service to the fiscal 1998 Interior Department spending bill, according to the Pig Book, Citizens Against Government Waste's eighth annual pork-barrel report. That's $355 million (or 57 percent more than last year) which, instead of going to maintain recognized national treasures, will be spent on places or projects of a lower national priority.

Some of the add-ons include:

* More than $9.7 million for six projects in West Virginia, the home state of Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd, including $3 million for land acquisition at the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge and more than $4.5 million for land acquisition and access trails at the New River Gorge National River;

* More than $5 million for five projects in the home district of Rep. Joe McDade, a Pennsylvania Republican, including $800,000 for the Partnership for Wildlife Program in Bradford County and $3.5 million for the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area -- home of the now-infamous $300,000 outhouse;

* $600,000 for rehabilitation of the Sotterly Plantation in the district of Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat;

* More than $5.1 million for projects in Arkansas, the home state of Democratic Sen. Dale Bumpers, including $3.4 million for the Fort Smith National Historic Site and more than $1.2 million for land acquisitions at Ouachita Na-tional Forest, Arkansas Post National Monument and the Ozark National Forest; and

* $200,000 for Colorado's Caddo Lake Institute, a group founded by and underwritten in part by activist rocker Don Henley to build grassroots support for wetlands protection.

Even as maintenance and repair backlogs mounted at existing parks, congressional add-ons for unrequested construction projects (just $5.5 million in 1981) rose steeply through the late 1980s and early 1990s. Members no doubt were inspired by the example of McDade, who used roughly $70 million in federal funds to build Steamtown, a Scranton, Pa., tourist trap of dubious historic significance, according to some experts.