Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 10, 1993 TAG: 9309100182
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-2 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WHITE HALL LENGTH: Medium
Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, R-Richmond; Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Fairfax County; and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, wrote to the director of the park service criticizing the flier "Why Are We Doing Less?" available at park visitors' centers.
It explains the park's response to a budget shortfall, including the closing of campgrounds, reduced hours and delayed response by rangers to requests for help.
In a section titled "What Was Tried," the pamphlet said the park proposed in December closing two sections of the 105-mile Skyline Drive in the winter and spring to save money. When the plan was met with vociferous opposition from tourism businesses surrounding the park, the alternative cuts were made.
"We did not successfully present our case, so special interests and the local public and elected officials prevailed," one version reads.
"We believe the pamphlets unfairly characterize the events surrounding the December 1992 Skyline Drive closure proposal and wrongly suggest that the concerns of communities surrounding Shenandoah National Park, so-called `special interests,' somehow run counter to the long-term well-being of the park," the congressmen's letter responded.
Park spokesman Sandy Rives said the pamphlet was necessary to explain the cutbacks to visitors, who were calling and writing with complaints about reduced services. He said the term "special interests" was used only in an early version of the pamphlet, which has been distributed for almost five months.
"Ninety-nine percent of the public that visited did not receive the term `special interests,' " Rives said.
The congressmen also said the proposal to close the Skyline Drive was "simply a `Band-Aid' approach to budgetary belt-tightening, and, unfortunately, did not prompt a comprehensive, balanced or long-term readjustment of the park's operational priorities."
At the time, park officials said closing the northern and southern ends of the Skyline Drive during the six-month off-season would save $200,000 in a fiscal year 1993 budget of $6.99 million.
"They're going back to the proposal to close the drive and, I think, rehashing that," Rives said.
The congressmen's letter asks Roger G. Kennedy, director of the Park Service, to stop the park from distributing the pamphlets or to correct them. "They are, at best, a misleading interpretation of - as termed by the leaflets in question - `What Was Tried.' "
It also requests that Kennedy direct park Superintendent J. William Wade to work with Virginia's congressional delegation to develop long-term ways of working with budget limitations.
by CNB