Martha McSally
The National Park Service, stymied by a billion-dollar backlog in restoration projects, would be directed to reevaluate its current strategy to prioritize maintenance funding under legislation introduced by U.S. Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ).
The National Park Service Transparency and Accountability Act would direct the National Park Service to submit a plan to prioritize maintenance project funding to Congress for review after reevaluating current practices.
“Natural beauty is all around us in Arizona,” McSally said. “The problem is that a backlog of needed restoration projects on our public lands is restricting Arizonans and tourists from accessing our parks and public areas. Unfortunately, this billion-dollar backlog has only been growing.”
The maintenance backlog grew from $10.2 billion to $11.9 billion from fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year 2015, and Arizona’s $580.2 million project backlog is among the largest in the nation.
“Obviously, the National Park Service strategy to tackle their staggering amount of maintenance and service requests is not working,” McSally said. “My good governance legislation is an important step towards addressing systemic problems and ensuring that limited resources are invested wisely on all park units — not only on the ‘crown jewels’ of the park system.”
The new legislation would codify a previous Government Accountability Office study that found that reviewing the National Park System’s current strategy could help reduce the current maintenance backlog.