Changes at Mt Rainier -- road closed Tues, Weds

Road not open, clearly. Working plows were visible on camera in the AM (so much for saving THAT money.) Dozens of school districts (including Seattle, Bellevue and Northshore) have vacation today still. Look at the Stevens Pass cameras and the fairly full lots there to see how many families would have been out and about for winter recreation today had Paradise been open.

Oh, and the weather's great today. Tomorrow the weather will probably be all fogged in and there will be low visitation. [Edit: well I am wrong about the Thursday weather, another nice day after all, but still ...]

NPS: You Are Doing It Wrong.

In these troubled times, our local NPS leaders are falling back on Franklin D. Roosevelt's proven technique to reassure the masses.  Starting this Wednesday, there will be weekly "Fireside Chats" in Longmire to enlighten us on the intricacies of National Park management.   The first program is to be on Wilderness; I might even have to attend to hear the party line on how helicopters and chainsaws are the "minimum tool":
blog.thenewstribune.com/adventure/2013/0...eside-chat-programs/

"This confusing duplicity is nothing new.  The National Park Service (NPS) did not support the inclusion of national parks in the Wilderness System when the Act was signed in 1964 and the agency has never demonstrated a commitment to the Act. NPS Historian Richard Sellers has written: 'Although many of the National Park Service’s rank and file enthusiastically supported the wilderness bill, the bureau’s leadership seems to have drifted from outright opposition to reluctant neutrality.' The NPS has made this shift by conveniently writing inordinate flexibility into its management standards."  wildernesswatch.wordpress.com/category/national-park-service/

That's when they bother to write them down at all.  Olympic NP has yet to produce an approved Wilderness Management [now Stewardship] Plan during the decades since Wilderness designation there.

Future chat topics might include "A Fat Contingency Fund Depends On Not Filling Critical Vacancies" and "Keeping Your Budget Secret"   

When I first spent the winter in 1974, I recall being surprised how many locals used the shorthand phrase 'those crooks' rather than the tongue-twisting 'Mount Rainier National Park management'.  I was a typically idealistic new NPS employee and originally thought of it as just a culture clash like the college towns I'd previously resided in.  It took a few years to realize the locals were referring to a long and consistent pattern of nepotism and favoritism in hiring and contracting by the park.

I should have figured it out sooner.  The first roommate I met in Longmire seasonal housing was the son of a DOI bigshot who ran the Border Patrol in Texas.  My first day on the job, I learned I was a last-minute replacement for Tom Erlichmann, whose father was in a bit of a political pickle called Watergate.

Olympic National Park had this petty corruption down to a science when I worked there years later.  Most of the various shop foreman in the Maintenence Division were from the same local high school clique.  They avoided the national OPM register and hired seasonal laborers off an obscure 'Student Hiring Authority' register that only their kids, relatives, and friends knew to get on.  Similarly. the road foreman's brother almost always seemed to submit the winning bid on surplus sales and small contracted jobs.

The first park superintendent I ever spoke with was William Briggle.  He rode up the old Tahoma Creek trail, tucked his flask quickly into his hip pocket when he saw me, and began bellowing that his horse was slipping on the cedar boardwalks and that they should be covered in gravel.  I was happy to direct him further up the trail to where my boss was working.

Briggle had previously been superintendent at Glacier Nat'l Park.  His outrageous antics there fill a couple chapters in Michael Fromme's Re-Greening The National Parks.  He had the road crew spray chemical defoliants rather than use mechanical or hand brushing; his denials were exposed as lies when purchase receipts were produced.  He fired the entire trail crew and the Resource Management ranger for questioning his idea to build boardwalks around the new Visitor Center at Logan Pass.  The snowpack broke and twisted the boardwalks; ground squirrels moved in underneath, and the tourists created multiple braided and parallel paths avoiding the damage and photographing the squirrels.

MRNP's Administrative History must have been running short of whitewash when it described his tenure here: 
"In 1983, an operations evaluation team interviewed 23 employees on the subject of employee-management relations. The team found that there was a significant employee morale problem which appeared to stem from the management style of the superintendent and the administrative officer. The interviewees made two principal complaints. First, the superintendent's method of giving employees direct and specific orders, by-passing intermediate levels of supervision, had a demoralizing effect on some lower level supervisors and employees who complained of being "caught in the middle" between their supervisors and the superintendent. Second, and more seriously, some employees complained of mistreatment by the superintendent, "management by intimidation," and "flagrant personal assassinations." Perhaps in tacit acknowledgement of how mercurial and subjective the problem of management-employee relations could be, the operations evaluation team did not recommend any specific action to the regional director, and none was taken."    www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/mora/adhi/chap18.htm

A fellow seasonal laborer bragged about pulling a drunken Briggle's vehicle out of the ditch after an annual park Christmas party in the 80's.  He was trail foreman within a few weeks and a Maintenance Supervisor within three years.  He used to also brag that he was "untouchable", and apparently was, until he finally got a month's suspension for flying his wife and her skis to Camp Muir.

Briggle was trying to be the first in NPS history to achieve fifty years 'service', when he retired suddenly after 48 years because a subordinate was brave enough to file sexual harrassment charges against him. 

Following Briggle was Jon Jarvis, one of the first NPS superintendents with a background in science and resource management rather than the traditional law enforcement track to NPS management.  I had moved on to a permanent job at Olympic, but heard from friends that he spent very little time in the park. 

His deputy, Dave Uberuaga, was criticized for conflict of interest in selling his Ashford residence to the owner of RMI for three times it's value, a transaction that many saw as a bribe.  Jarvis whitewashed the original internal invesigation as superintendent, then Uberuaga assumed  the Rainier superintendent's job.  Jarvis became pope of this cult, then covered up the Inspector General's subsequent report as NPS Director.    The Seattle Times endured years of FOIA delays before exposing the scandal in 2011:   
seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2016356020_rainier02m.html   
Author Ron Judd said he was only able to put the story together because the NPS had failed to black out the Whittaker's names on one document.  Jarvis subsequently promoted Uberuaga to superintendent of Grand Canyon, where there are concessions worth fifty times those at Rainier to be shaken down.

Jarvis' tenure as NPS Director has been a stormy one.  He has pushed an agenda for corporate "partnerships" that many see as a sellout of National Park values:
www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2012/01/pe...ate-partnerships9370

He has also failed to correct past incidents of corrupt and unaccountable NPS management & law enforcement ruining peoples lives; here are two prominent examples amoung many:
www.nationalparkstraveler.com/review/201...ell-trading-post8015
www.nationalparkstraveler.com/review/201...-worth-fighting10009

An agency that thinks its budgets & documents should remain secret is fundamentally dishonest, no matter how many good people work in the ranks.  The Park Service was riddled with posers and ethically-challenged managers during my career.  It appears to me that things have only gotten worse in the past decade and that this is an organization that has its own self-serving agenda. TAY 'moderates' should keep this history of dishonesty and numerous public closures in mind when MRNP next turns up the heat in their long-running campaign to boil our access frog.

It's not just me who has a low opinion of NPS management.  Their own employees continue to rank their job satisfaction near the bottom amoung all federal agencies in management catagories :

"Overall, the agency's cumulative score of 61.3 placed the Park Service 166th out of 292 agencies surveyed for the 2012 report.

Looking at how the Park Service compared to other federal agencies in specific areas paints a gloomy picture for life with the agency.

The results show the agency's employees struggle to find a balance between work and personal life (the Park Service ranked 280 out of 290 agencies surveyed in this category), and don't view the Park Service's approach to strategic management highly (258 out of 290), and don't hold their immediate supervisors or senior leaders in high esteem (235 out of 290 for both) when compared with other agency scores.

The survey also placed the agency low compared to other federal agencies in teamwork (265 out of 290), training and development (254 out of 290)...

The Park Service's high-water mark, so to speak, in the survey came the first year, 2003..."

www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2012/12/na...ederal-agencies22574

Mount Rainier is not alone in having a history of toxic management.  Olympic National Park has the unenviable distinction of being sued by their own cooperating association, Olympic Park Associates:  rdpayne.drizzlehosting.com/opa-news.html#gmp   Scroll down for the full story.  Summaries here:
www.peer.org/news/news-releases/2006/08/...tchanges-wilderness/
www.peer.org/news/news-releases/2006/04/...ilderness-violation/

www.freehurricaneridge.blogspot.com/  has detailed  ONP management's resistance to, and sabotaging of, weekday road openings at Hurricane Ridge:
"Due to political pressure from Representative Norm Dicks on Bruce Schaeffer, the Comptroller of the NPS, a trial period was established in 2010 and 2011 to weigh the demand for weekday access. Local ONP officials begrudgingly cooperated.

ONP officials determined the cost to keep the road open four additional days would be $325,000 and the NPS happened to have $250,000 they could appropriate from another source, if the local community could raise the additional $75,000. This was done for the past two years, including about $50,000 of personal contributions, and community fund raising parties.

Despite this show of community support, ONP was not able to start seven day a week access the first year until after the New Year. Both years the road was late to open (it is supposed to open at 9 am) or closed 50% of the time. The average late opening was 10:15 am. There were about 70 days of no new precipitation both years, and the road opened on time about 70 days.

By the standards of those that donated their hard earned cash to give to the Park Service in exchange for more access, the Park did not fulfill their end of the bargain.

The result of the the two year trail period was an average of 5,500 more people during the formerly closed days, and a total increase of 9,318 people per year over the previous two years. This represents a 35% increase.

This increase was not enough for ONP; they declared the trial period a failure..."

I hear the gold-plated trail bridge currently under construction in designated Wilderness near Staircase has cost overruns that have pushed the pricetag from $1.1 to $1.5 million, so far.  I think the contractor is the same one doing the Elwha dam removal; sounds like the historic NPS cronyism is alive and flourishing.  Four hundred grand would more than keep Hurricane Ridge open full time for a winter, even for the profligate Park Service.

ONP was given jurisdiction over the former reservoir site of Lake Aldwell outside the park for 'rehabilitation'.  The NPS had a couple million to throw themselves an invitation-only party for high-rollers celebrating the  start of the Elwha dam removal project, but they now claim to have no funds to even study adding this culturally important location to the tiny Elwha reservation.

Relevant editorial and comments www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/01/gu...-business-usual22681] from National Parks Traveler]:

www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/01/gu...-business-usual22681

"Great article. I have a suggestion for how to improve the NPS and get it ready for the 2016 centennial. My suggestion will improve the low employee ranking AND save money. It's called STOP PROMOTING INCOMPETENT AND POOR PERFORMING NPS EMPLOYEES. I could provide 5 examples for every year that I have worked for the NPS, of this phenomenon. The Park Service is no different from the Catholic Church. Someone is abusing a park, we will just transfer them or promote them to some where else. Instead of holding upper management accountable, people are just shuffled along. This concept of not dealing with problem children has led to the low rankings, poor morale, and poor management of national parks. If you want to have a more effective, more protected, and more efficient NPS for the 2016 centennial, quit playing whac-a-mole with poor management. If you don't dump the moles, they're just going to pop up some where else. If you are a poor superintendent in the lower 48, than you are going to be a poor superintendent in a cushy new job at Katmai National Park. The demise of the Park Service will not be from what ever political party is in the White House, it won't be from a lack of funding, and it won't be from a lack of visitors, it will be from the enemy within. The call is coming from inside the house, NPS. The enemy is you."

"Mundsy is correct about the biggest problem facing the NPS. The agency seems to be run by, and for the personal and professional aggrandizement of, an incompetent and corrupt itinerant manager class. They come to a park for a few years, change everything around so they can document their “leadership,” then move on after 3-5 years, at taxpayer expense, taking an entirely undeserved promotion and leaving a shambles in their wake. In some ways the NPS is divided between local staff who are focused on a particular park, and transient staff focused on the NPS as a whole. In general, the parks function because of the locals and in spite of the transient managers.

If there is any accountability for management, I haven't seen it in 20 years in the NPS. Nobody has ever come to me, or any other field employee that I know of, and asked what I think of management's job performance. I have seen managers utterly destroy the program they are supposed to be running, and just continue to move up as if nothing had happened. The NPS has a super accelerated Peter Principle thing going, where people move far and fast above their level of incompetence, based entirely on connections, sucking up, and not rocking the boat. The rot seems to be working its way down, as incompetent yes men hire incompetent yes men, to the point where we even have them in the field now.

There needs to be a serious accounting in this agency. It needs to be done by an outside organization that doesn't have connections to NPS insiders, and that has some kind of dispensation from OPM for expedited firing of permanent employees. After cleaning out the Washington and regional offices, they need to go park to park, talk to everyone, and decide who stays and who goes. A lot of expertise could be lost, but if it was done well, it would mostly be the dead weight. It would be traumatic, but the NPS would come back much stronger.

After that, there needs to be continuing oversight to ensure that this doesn't happen again. Competent, ethical, dedicated managers need to be hired, and encouraged to stay in their jobs. Hiring needs to be reformed so good people can move up. The NPS needs to stop paying employees to move, unless a position really can't be filled locally. Park operations need to be audited regularly, on the ground. The patronage networks must be prevented from forming again. Upper managers need to be told to stay away from Congress. End the Bevinetto Fellow program, and when someone's career track doesn't appear to reflect their abilities, investigate. This kind of oversight would be a drag on an organization with good managers, but it is absolutely necessary with the current crop. Maybe someday we will get to the point where we have a self sustaining, well functioning agency, but we are nowhere near that today."

I agree that NPS priorities are warped, and seem focused on political and financial gain for the agency and its highest managers, at the expense of the parks themselves. I disagree that resource preservation should be formally placed above visitor services, not because I don't think it is important, but because in practice it already is, and I think the balance needs to move back toward the visitors a little bit.

Where I have worked, nobody in authority speaks for the public. Visitor services and public safety have almost collapsed. The ranger division is a shell, and roads, trails, and campgrounds are falling apart. The one division that is thriving is resource management. They dominate the planning process by sheer numbers, and tend to have tunnel vision. Since they see no value in visitor services, even the most temporary, insignificant “impact” of a project is too much.

The idea that the NPS should expand its scientific capacity sounds good, but if it means expanding what it currently has, I don't think it is really a good idea. Currently there is a great deal of research being conducted by park staff, sometimes for the graduate work of permanent RM employees, with large crews of seasonal employees doing the field work. I think research is better left to the universities. They are better at it, and have a large supply of cheap, qualified labor. NPS resource management should focus on environmental protection and compliance, and project work like invasive species removal. Hire competent generalists for planning and compliance positions, and maintain relationships with universities. Make small grants and logistical assistance available for graduate students willing to do specific research the park needs.

"The NPS is an agency funded by the public, and it gets its legitimacy from serving the public. There is certainly infrastructure that could be removed or abandoned, but biologists should not be deciding what the public needs. Their instincts could run toward making the parks into research reserves where the public is not really welcome. There has to be give and take. Roads, trails, and campgrounds are expensive, but they allow the public to enjoy the parks, and without them, public support for parks and the NPS would rightly fall."

Relevant editorial and comments www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/01/gu...-business-usual22681] from National Parks Traveler]:

www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/01/gu...-business-usual22681

"Great article. I have a suggestion for how to improve the NPS and get it ready for the 2016 centennial. My suggestion will improve the low employee ranking AND save money. It's called STOP PROMOTING INCOMPETENT AND POOR PERFORMING NPS EMPLOYEES. I could provide 5 examples for every year that I have worked for the NPS, of this phenomenon. The Park Service is no different from the Catholic Church. Someone is abusing a park, we will just transfer them or promote them to some where else. ...

LMAO!

Interesting pieces, thanks. As a former federal employee and ecologist (who did go thru an interview with the NPS in the PNW) I tend to give the Parks a break give their lack of funding - but I'd agree that the lack of cohesive mgmt is pretty stunning in the Parks, and quite frankly, in most federal natural resource agencies. Because I still work in the field (as a consultant) I work with the feds (including NPS on occassion). Poor management is an amazing de-motivator and turns folks into clock-punchers.

One of the values of the internet and sites like TAY and NPT is that the true scope of the problem can be seen and sunshine let in. While I am busy fighting my fight with ONP, it is useful to know that others have the same issues throughout the NPS. For example freehurricaneridge.blogspot.com/2012/10/...hy-all-turnover.html. Although it is possible that it is still just a handful of outspoken kooks making all the noise, some of the NPT comments especially lead me to believe that I am not alone and crazy.

It is also gratifying in a sick way the number of current and former NPS and ONP employees that have the same issues. Speaking from my experience, I have quite a few current ONP employees privately agree with the Free Hurricane Ridge movement regarding access, Waterhole removal, and lift upgrades. Unfortunatly, I have also heard that many current employees have been "strongly suggested" not to speak with me.

Has anyone had any sort of success effecting change? My experience is that feedback/efforts in this cause result in an amazing amount of canned-speech lip service and zero net effect on the direction.

"Thank you for your feedback. It's very important to us as we make decisions."

But the decisions seem to be exactly what they were going to do anyway. Stefan even slipped up during the fee increase meeting a couple years ago at Marmot when he told everyone they wanted to tie the climbing fee to inflation so they didn't have to "do this again" (gather public input).

The system is maddeningly rigged to allow graft and incompetence to flourish. Dave Uberuaga, after being written up for selling his Ashford property for triple its worth to RMI, was promoted from manager of contracts, to MORA Super, to Grand Canyon Super afterward. I contacted the offices of Sens. Murray and Cantwell about this and heard nothing back.

seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2016356020_rainier02m.html

Where is the accountability??

Edit to add: I see that they are opening the gate today, Thursday the 30th. At NOON.

...
It is also gratifying in a sick way the number of current and former NPS and ONP employees that have the same issues.  Speaking from my experience, I have quite a few current ONP employees privately agree with the Free Hurricane Ridge movement regarding access, Waterhole removal, and lift upgrades.  ...

I recently talked to some adult/blue collar type seasonals about the need at MRNP for plow drivers.  There are lots of people in the Ashford area with broad practical experience, experience working in the park, and great recommendations who could do the plow driver jobs.  The attitude I heard is that the park is not interested in hiring locals, more interested in promoting from within, hiring from other parks thru an old-boy network, or just plain old cronyism.  It is disheartening to see very good workers very disappointed in the park.

@CascadeClimber  "Has anyone had any sort of success effecting change?"  Yes, in the cases of ensuring access to the park by judicial levee maintenance and river management; took a lot of effort by a dozen or more people backed up by a non-profit created specifically for that purpose that recruited several hundred members.  Things have to be organized and an effort must be concerted.

The main resistance I see to a concerted effort is that most people believe the closures were due to a much bigger, gov't wide budget issue; according to the Park Supt., they were not.

There are some rumors that our ex Gov. Christine Gregoire is up for Secy of the Interior; is this occurs then the time will be really ripe for a concerted effort to reform park management in general and address MRNP and ONP access issues in particular.

The main resistance I see to a concerted effort is that most people believe the closures were due to a much bigger, gov't wide budget issue; according to the Park Supt., they were not.

"According to Park Supt., they were not." They were not - due to budget issues? I attended the public meeting in Enumclaw, and Randy King stated the closure was due to vacant plow driver positions and the needed LEO shifts to cover both early morning thru late evening. King stated MRNP did not fill those positions due to possible upcoming budget issues.

Did you hear something different?

"According to Park Supt., they were not." They were not - due to budget issues? I attended the public meeting in Enumclaw, and Randy King stated the closure was due to vacant plow driver positions and the needed LEO shifts to cover both early morning thru late evening. King stated MRNP did not fill those positions due to possible upcoming budget issues.

Did you hear something different?

In a face-to-face one-on-one conversation with me, and in a TNT interview, he said the closures were due primarily to vacant positions not  to budget issues.  Note in the meeting you recall he did not say he had a FY13 budget shortage but alluded to "possible" upcoming budget issues. I mentioned the sequester in my conversation with him, he shook his head no.  But what he did expound on was how they were monitoring visitation, feedback from congresspeople, and impacts on concessionaires--to me, that sounds more like a "test" of the feasibility of closure during the week in the winter, again not a result of inadequate budget.  Note that the savings from not opening are bound to be minor because they have to plow anyway to manage and protect infrastructure and they lose gate receipts.  He did not allude to any vacant LEO positions. 

The Park has been really weasely on this issue.  Not the early emphasis on how this would allow them to concentrate resources to ensure timely openings etc. and the situation has been worse.  This week is typical: closed M, T, W, opened at noon (might as well be closed for bc people).  What was done was to concentrate resources on weekends when the snowplay area was open to maximize visitation by snowplay kids & families and by sightseers.

BTW, Randy has  been quoted a couple of times saying they were trying to recruit a plow driver; they did fly an announcement in November.  And if he was reluctant to hire a full-time driver, he could always arrange an inter-park loan or an-interagency loan or bring back a retired driver part-time or hire a part-time/temporary driver or a hundred other ways to make do in a period of uncertainty.

Here is the official, in writing version, from the website:

"We are strategically deploying available park staff and resources to provide access to Paradise Thursday through Monday, the five days of the week with greatest visitation," King said.

Visitation statistics show that Tuesday and Wednesday are, on average, the park's least visited days, with fewer than 60 visitor vehicles coming through the Nisqually Entrance on a typical day. By focusing staff on fewer days, the park will be better able to provide access and services during times of greatest visitation, including more consistent road plowing and emergency patrols for visitor safety."

Now, that is in writing and published. No mention of vacancies or budget issues.

I'm not at all surprised that the story is altered based on what is perceived to be most palatable to the current audience. This also is nothing new.

Once I get done being pissed off about it, this whole situaiton just really bums me out.

I hate to say this but I believe this issue is going to get a lot worse.

www.nbcnews.com/travel/itineraries/loomi...cates-warn-1B8219074

I hate to say this but I believe this issue is going to get a lot worse.

www.nbcnews.com/travel/itineraries/loomi...cates-warn-1B8219074

"Failure by Congress and the White House to avert a budget sequestration by March 1 will force the National Park Service to reduce visitor services, shorten hours of operation, and possibly even close areas to the public, according to Park Service Director Jon Jarvis."

Possibly?  I'd bet on it, especially for our winter-phobic local bureaucrats.

"To help attain the 5 percent cut, parks were directed to immediately halt hiring permanent employees (though hires already in progress may continue). While they may continue planning for seasonal workforces, they were directed not to extend any offers. Non-essential travel is to be halted, overtime suspended, acquisitions of supplies and equipment are to be reduced, and on-staff employees who are subject to furlough should have their furlough periods extended to "the maximum length allowed..."

Travel is a huge overhead expense in the management ranks of the NPS.  All that community outreach and green Visitor Center designing and promotional filmmaking and international "sister" park advising takes a lot of conferencing while on expense account:   
www.schundler.net/Travel.pdf

"As others have pointed out, this is mostly about making a big show of being underfunded. The NPS could cut 5% from its budget without having a significant impact on visitor services or the rest of its mission. It could probably do it while improving operations overall. The problem is, it can't do it at a moment's notice while under the gun from congress. The only thing it can do short term is not bring back a bunch of its seasonal workforce, which is a bit like a fat man cutting off his arms and legs to lose weight. Since budget problems aren't exactly a surprise, the NPS needs to immediately start what it should have been doing all along. Get rid of under performing or nonperforming employees. In addition to personally being a waste of money, they are a huge drain on morale for the rest of the workforce. Stop encouraging employees to move between parks every few years, and stop paying for their moves. People who stay in a park long term are usually more effective workers, and the paid moves are just indefensible. Evaluate what programs and staff are really needed, with a bias toward retaining the field programs and reducing the back office. The tendency in a bureaucracy is for the upper ranks to be built up over time, and periodically they need to be cleaned out. In a given amount of money, increase the percentage defined as an operating budget, and reduce the amount doled out as project funds. Projects are commonly overestimated, then used to pay for basic operations. In addition to being short sighted and unethical, there are substantial unacknowledged costs associated with this. A huge amount of staff time is spent chasing and administering projects that are really just operations under a different name. The amount of clerk positions in NPS maintenance has leaped in recent years, usually at the expense of people doing the actual work. Also, project funds can't be used to hire permanent employees, so there are a lot of temporary and term people out there who are doing the jobs of permanents. Nobody who hasn't worked in government would believe how much pointless administrative effort on the part of supervisors and HR staff goes into just keeping those people around year after year. In short, a lot of money could be saved, but it will take major changes in how the NPS does business. Those changes seem unlikely unless they are imposed from outside the agency. This is all pretty obvious to people who see it up close, but nothing seems to change."
www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/01/up...-hours-operatio22751

Park Service management has done a thorough job of brainwashing their employees and the public about how underfunded they are.  They're already spending millions just planning their celebration of the NPS centennial in 2016.  Expect much more of this propaganda as the sequestration deadline of March 1st approaches.  The NPS is a fundamentally dishonest organization.  They'll always say they need more money, but they'd really rather not show us their budget details.

"Some superintendents operate with very little or virtually no public oversight in the budgeting process; they make management decisions with very few public hearings and/or meetings; they 
offer no financial or accounting information on their web sites; and they make no attempt to 
make available the basic records and documents concerning how the park is spending its 
authorized funds, or the process by which it has made significant or even minor decisions. 
Decisions are made that may seem arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable, but citizens and park 
employees have to no way to challenge them or appeal them.  Occasionally, people are asked to 
write comments on an issue but then they are told to send them to the same superintendent 
whose decisions they are trying to question or appeal.”   
 
"One of the easiest ways to gauge how a superintendent is acting or how a park is being managed 
is to check how it responds to requests for information.  How willing is it to open its books and 
make available minutes of meetings, budgets and expenditures, and to make available any and all 
records and documents that should be made available according to the Freedom of Information 
Act?  Just as important, do they make the records and documents and financial information 
readily available without a formal FOIA request, or do they force requestors to go through a long, 
frustrating, and overly legal FOIA process to obtain the most basic information?" 
 
"Unfortunately, when tested this way, many parks fail.  Many superintendents and park 
administrators not only try to avoid any notion of openness and transparency, they discourage it, 
they frustrate it, and they work against it.  Often park employees say they just don’t give out “that 
kind of information”; they feel they shouldn’t give financial or managerial information to the 
public; and they act as if the Freedom of Information Act was never passed."

"The problem within many of our national parks may be getting worse. Because of preferential 
hiring policies, many of the leaders of the National Park Service increasingly are coming from 
among former military veterans and military officers accustomed to a chain of command style 
of leadership instead of a collaborative style of management; many were trained in an 
atmosphere where no one questions or challenges the decisions of officers or of those higher up 
the chain of command. "  

www.schundler.net/Monocracy.pdf

I used to really admire the NPS and the staff at MORA and I've become increasingly disillusioned over the last few years. My experience is that they do not want public involvement in the management process, and that any contact, including the public input meetings, is done out of requirement and at minimum standards. The decision to hold both of the meetings on the 30% winter closure in locations far, far from Puget Sound population centers (one was in Enumclaw of all the remote places) during work hours on weekdays is just one example of them checking the box, but utterly failing in the spirit of the rule.

And I also don't believe it will change until we, collectively, get organized and force change.

I used to really admire the NPS and the staff at MORA and I've become increasingly disillusioned over the last few years. My experience is that they do not want public involvement in the management process, and that any contact, including the public input meetings, is done out of requirement and at minimum standards. The decision to hold both of the meetings on the 30% winter closure in locations far, far from Puget Sound population centers (one was in Enumclaw of all the remote places) during work hours on weekdays is just one example of them checking the box, but utterly failing in the spirit of the rule.

And I also don't believe it will change until we, collectively, get organized and force change.

Timothy Egan suggests Sally Jewell , if confirmed, might be a Secretary of Interior that would be a change agent; an organized, thoughtful group letter/white paper/petition might influence her (and our Congressional representatives as well).

Timothy Egan suggests Sally Jewell , if confirmed, might be a Secretary of Interior that would be a change agent; an organized, thoughtful group letter/white paper/petition might influence her (and our Congressional representatives as well).

Emphasis added Like that's going to happen -- the current senate seems intent on filbustering pretty much all appointments -- I think they confirmed Kerry as SOS only because they hate Billary so much.

Is it just me, or did the MORA twitter feed go dead today?

Is it just me, or did the MORA twitter feed go dead today?

I had to re-log on on my computer.

Thought some might be interested in views of the Sally Jewell nomination from outside the Washingtons.  Her resume is impressive, but I wonder if she is ready for the Sodom & Gomorrah that is the Interior Department, and increasingly, the national part of the National Park Service?

"Interior is bloody political turf because the stakes are high and the money is big..."

"...our public lands are increasingly understood to provide a priceless setting for business owners and other investors. Economists are getting better at putting dollar signs on that, but it still represents a shifting mindset. The glimmering chrome-and-wood temple of REI in downtown Seattle is testimony to the fact that recreation and quality-of-life dollars add up to real money."

www.hcn.org/blogs/range/sally-jewells-adventure-of-a-lifetime

"...Does any of this make her qualified to be secretary of the Interior? Not especially. Unlike most secretaries of this or that, she has no government experience whatsoever. For a Cabinet post, that’s not a disqualifier, but it’s not helpful either."

www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/...0214,0,5684972.story

It's interesting how different National Park managers respond to the challenge of winter.  I think Rainier and Olympic may be the only parks that exclude the public from plowed roads.  At Denali, they're holding public meetings on expanding the number of miles they plow!

Other national parks where snow removal is an annual job have announced their response to budget cuts will be to delay opening popular attractions such as Going-To-The-Sun Road in Glacier and Tioga Pass & Glacier Point roads in Yosemite.  This traditional tactic of NPS management is called the 'Washington Monument Strategy' and has usually been successful at pressuring Congress to restore their funding.  That management strategy seems more like extortion to me:  'Hey, nice park youse got's dere; it'd be a real shame if somethin' happened to it, eh?'

Yellowstone management has caved to political pressure from Dick Cheney and other politicians and will continue to do expensive ($1250 per visitor) avy control with 105mm howitzers each winter so that a few hundred snowmobilers can ride over Sylvan Pass from the east entrance:

www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/02/ye...ver-snow-access22855

Gotta love this Twitter post from a few days ago:

"The park's OPEN, though the rd to Paradise isnt. LOTS of snow in Longmire. Why not explore the lower elevations on snowshoes? -ls"

Yeah, because I'm going to spend five hours driving down there and back and burn $60 in gas to go snowshoeing in the woods. Yeah, MORA, you've cornered the market on that activity; if only there was somewhere closer to Seattle where I could snowshoe in the woods in the rain. The level of apparent self-delusion is unbelievable.

I wonder if the special access MRNP grants to the climbing concessions when Paradise is closed to the public might offer grounds for a lawsuit challenging their weekday closure policy?

A section of the National Park Service Organic Act states: "no natural curiosities, wonders, or objects of interest shall be leased, rented, or granted to anyone on such terms as to interfere with free access to them by the public.."

www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/03/gr...e-draws-lawsuit22887

The Organic Act also states the purpose of the NPS is to "...preserve and render accessible...", but I couldn't find anything about saving us from ourselves.

Theodore Catton's book Wonderland - An Administrative History of Mount Rainier National Park makes for interesting reading, especially if you like to read between the lines.  Among many topics, he discusses Larry Penberthy's (founder of MSR) lawsuit against the Park, where the basic outcome was that the Park was forced to employ objective criteria in it's decisions (see Chapter 19 and Backcountry Management Plan )

I've reached the conclusion of agreeing with those who feel legal action may be the most effective course to ensure winter access.

Thanks, David, I'd forgotten the Penberthy lawsuit and how it shook up Rainier officials at the time.  Perhaps the NPS brass has grown so toxic that even more direct action is required.  Folks in Vancouver WA are so fed up with the arrogant management at Fort Vancouver Historic Site that their Congresswoman has introduced a bill to remove seven acres from NPS control: 

"On Wednesday, Elson Strahan, the Trust's president and chief executive officer, said key to the dispute was the Trust's view that the museum and surrounding grounds were made possible through community's donations -- the city of Vancouver built the museum -- and should be operated with the community's best interests in mind.

"Our position is that the community in good faith simply asked the Park Service to restore the museum and actually enhance the programming at the museum, and did so through a cooperative agreement and never dreamed that the Park Service ultimately was going to claim that the museum was their's," Mr. Strahan said during a phone call. "Yes, the Park Service owned the seven acres of land for which they had paid the city $7,300 an acre, but the supposition was that since this was a partnership park that this would be a community-based asset. And that it was developed as such.

"... The community really regards this as their backyard, if you will," he continued. "It's a very, very active site from that standpoint. The whole issue of events, seemingly to us, was just an excuse for the Park Service to really appropriate the community-funded museum, is really what it came down to."

  www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/03/co...l-historic-site22912

So, do the [climbing] concessionaires really have access to Paradise on Tuesdays and Wednesdays?  What is the basis for this (never mind the revenue to Park), and the justification vs. general public access.   We can suppose some level of preparedness, but that doesn't seem quite objective.

Has Whittakers' critical tweets been about these days, or others with late or non-openings..  and why would they complain if they have access?  Is road condition the determining factor?  If so, then we're back to why them and not us..   

RMI certainly had access to Paradise  for their multi-day winter-climbing seminars during the prolonged closures in 2007 and 2009.  They have also had access earlier than the public on late-opening days in the past and earlier this winter for their van pulling a cargo trailer.  I've not seen them on cam on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, but I think they may be camped out somewhere up there at times on closed days. I'd bet they have the key/combo if they need to bailout.  Don't know anything about the other guide concessions.

The road reply tweets concern theoretically open days only and are coming from Whittaker's Motel, managed by Lou's younger son Win (also the film festival, I think.)  It's probably a separate business whose coffee shop and lodging are more directly affected by the weekday Paradise closures.  To be fair, they also have sent quite a few past tweets thanking the park for clarification or updates.