AARP, Conservation Groups Oppose New Plan For Parks
Editor's Note: This news item was retrieved and first published through the Los Anheles Times' website.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the Trump Interior Department’s “Made in America” Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee, which made recommendations for changes to increase profitability at America’s National Parks this year, faces strong opposition from AARP and other interested parties to its proposals. These plans include privatizing national park campgrounds, further commercializing the parks with expanded Wi-Fi and other services, and canceling senior pass discounts during busy holiday periods. Concessions, including ones for electric bikes, digital services, utilities, equipment rentals, mobile camp stores, food trucks, kayaks, tent rentals, even flush toilets and hot showers, would be privatized under a plan that would allow concessionaires to sidestep environmental rules and reimburse them for investment in the parks. Bill Sweeney, senior VP of government affairs at AARP, described the proposal as “an insulting attempt to push older Americans out of our national parks.”
The advisory committee includes industry insiders: chairman Derrick Crandall, a representative of the nonprofit National Park Hospitality Association whose members include the nation’s largest concessions management companies; Jeremy Jacobs Jr., co-chief of Delaware North; Bruce Fears, president of Aramark, holder of a $2-billion Yosemite concessions contract; Jim Rogers, former president of Kampgrounds of America; and Brad Franklin, a head exec at Yamaha Motor Corp. USA, which produces electric-powered bicycles. The program to privatize the parks is driven by an enormous $12 million maintenance backlog. However, the Center for American Progress claims the administration is “strategically inflating the Park Service’s maintenance backlog to … scare the public into accepting privatization as necessary.” A 2017 analysis determined that the NPS considers only $1.3 billion of the backlog to be priority maintenance while about $389 million would go to concession facilities within national parks.
Crandall declared himself mystified by the opposition. “If we’d known there’d be a big pushback to proposed blackouts on senior discounts, we might have dropped that off the list,” he told the LA Times. Read the whole LA Times story here.