Calif. Debate Illustrates Problems of Funding Our Parks

LOS ANGELES (Feb. 15) – Critics call it an "oil-for-parks" ultimatum, but a proposal to use offshore oil revenues to finance California parks highlights an issue plaguing states from coast to coast: How do you keep parks open and maintained during a financial crisis that has gutted state budgets?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to tie funding for the state's extensive parks system to new drilling off the picturesque Santa Barbara County coast – near the site of a massive oil spill a generation ago, an incident that still ripples through state politics.

Cutting money for parks doesn't carry the same emotional impact as slashing social services for the young, the poor and the elderly. Still, parks advocates say the crisis threatens public recreational and preservation systems that have been generations in the making.

Visitors on the beach at Crystal Cove State Park

George Rose, Getty Images

People visit the beach at Crystal Cove State Park in California, where funding for the state park system is at risk.

Parks are targeted because state and local governments view them as "mere amenities" and don't recognize them as economic engines that draw in sales tax revenue, user fees and retail sales for nearby businesses, said Stacey L. Pine, government affairs officer for the National Recreation and Park Association.

"The withdrawal of general funding support and the subsequent closure of state parks could result in not just a loss of business tax revenues and related economic benefits from visitors, but also a loss of tax revenues from the devaluation of land, homes and businesses in areas adjacent to parks," Pine said.

And then there are the unseen costs: possible loss of grants tied to maintaining parks space, loss of park lands under deeds that require them to be used for the public and increased liability risks from unmaintained public property.

State officials overseeing the scale-backs view them as necessary given the severe economic contractions. The problem is critical in states such as:

Arizona, where parks officials last month voted to shut down 13 parks. The state earlier closed four parks, and soon there will be only nine state parks open – those that bring in the most money.
Georgia, where the state parks suffered a 40 percent cut in the past year, leading to closures and loss of about 90 field staff jobs and shutting down of such amenities as lake beaches and campaign cottages. With revenues still weak, officials there fear even more cuts in the next budget cycle. "We're exploring outsourcing golf course and lodges, which are basically hotels inside five of the state parks," parks spokesperson Kim Hatcher said.
Idaho, where Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter proposed killing the state parks department altogether, though he granted the department a reprieve after the director promised to slash her budget and cut at least 25 jobs as she seeks to make the division self-sustaining through such strategies as increased user fees.

And in Pennsylvania and Ohio, state officials have considered expanding gas and oil drilling on public lands to bring in revenue – just the kind of trade-off that has many environmentalists fuming in California.

Schwarzenegger wants to license Plains Exploration and Production Co. (PXP) to drill the undersea Tranquillon Ridge just off the coast of Santa Barbara County. The Tranquillon Ridge site is north of the 1969 site from which 3 million gallons of crude oil spilled before a blown-out well could be capped six miles off the small coastal town of Summerland. Thirty miles of beaches were coated with tarry oil, and the slick covered hundreds of miles of ocean. Images flew around the world of ruined shoreline and oil-soaked animal carcasses – helping to launch the modern environmental movement.

Drilling off the California coast has been a tough sell ever since. A Field Poll in July 2008, as gasoline pump prices were skyrocketing, still found only 43 percent of California voters approved new offshore drilling. Yet environmental groups in Santa Barbara have backed the Tranquillon Ridge proposal, believing it will ultimately hasten the closing of four existing offshore wells.

Schwarzenegger's administration argues that the proposal would use new slant drilling technology to reach oil within the state's three-mile coastal range from an existing well in federal waters five miles off shore. Currently, those royalties go to the federal government, said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the state's finance department.

Palmer said the proposal does not affect Schwarzenegger's continued support for a federal ban on new drilling off the California coast. But it would give the state a mechanism for raising $219 million in the current and next fiscal years, of which $140 million would be earmarked for state parks.

PXP says the Tranquillon Ridge oil lease could generate up to $4 billion to the state over the next 14 years.

"We have sought ways to generate additional revenues for the state in a manner that doesn't have the kind of negative economic impact of a broad-based tax increase," Palmer said. "That oil is on state land, seeping into federal lands."

But the state Legislature and the State Lands Commission have both rejected Tranquillon Ridge proposals in the past. Schwarzenegger's proposal would rely on the Lands Commission changing its mind.

If the Lands Commission doesn't approve Schwarzenegger's request, the state would be forced to find the $140 million elsewhere in a state budget already groaning under the weight of increasing costs, mandated expenditures and declining revenues – or start closing parks.

"I'm extremely skeptical" it will be approved, said Elizabeth Goldstein of the nonprofit California State Parks Foundation. "This is setting up an extremely nasty trade-off between parks and coastal protection that is really unnecessary and undesirable."

The Parks Foundation has its own plan, trying to qualify the California State Parks and Wildlife Conservation Trust Fund Act for the November ballot that would add $18 to annual vehicle registration fees to raise an estimated $500 million a year for a wide range of parks and recreation programs. In return, all California-registered vehicles would have free access to parks, which now cost $10 a day or more in parking and use fees.

The plan is backed by the Sierra Club, Audubon California and other environmental groups. While the oil-drilling plan would bring in cash for the parks for 14 years, the vehicle fee would be permanent.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, one of the most visible of the state's anti-tax groups, opposes the initiative as yet another tax in an already heavily taxed state. The group recommends user fees be increased instead. And it supports Schwarzenegger's proposal for drilling at Tranquillon Ridge.

And voters also have balked in the past at raising their own car fees. It was a vehicle registration tax issue that helped propel the 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis and sent Schwarzenegger to the governor's office. Palmer, the finance department spokesman, said Schwarzenegger, while supporting new ways to finance state programs, has not taken a position on the vehicle registration proposal.

The state parks already have been sharply curtailed. At one point last year, Schwarzenegger recommended shutting more than 100 parks. Ultimately, more than $14 million was cut from the current budget, forcing 60 of the 278 parks to be closed on certain days or seasons, and leaving another 90 suffering from such reductions as shuttered restrooms, Goldstein said.

Maintenance across the system has been curtailed, as well.

Goldstein argues that without reliable funding such as a dedicated tax and trust fund, the parks will continue to twist in the fiscal wind.

"We have already seen our future," Goldstein said, "and it can only get worse if it doesn't pass."