Mr. VENTO. Thank you. Thank you very much, Howard, for your statement outlining some of the points. We may get back to you for a few questions.

Last night, from about 10:30 to 12, I was reading that first copy of Battling for the National Parks, and frankly I think the first time we met, George, my impression was, "Who's this guy with the cowboy hat," or whatever he was wearing here. I thought, he seemed to have a curious attitude about things, but I have come over the years to learn to respect and to really admire the work that you have done.

In writing the book, you will provide some of us with more institutional memory than we otherwise would have by our chronological age. So I started to read other parts of it. I started about five different places.

But I had as a motivation to understand your relationship with— your fate when you were dealing with Bebe Rebozo. We can laugh about it today, but at the time obviously it meant that because of that problem you lost your job as National Park Service Director, and which of course was commented upon, I think by Mr. Reed, although he didn't use names. He was more discrete than I am willing to be or you are in your book. A lot of people are getting in trouble these days writing books about inside the White House.

Mr. HARTZOG. I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman. I thought maybe the kiss-and-tell part had been old enough that it wouldn't create any flames.

Mr. VENTO. I don't know. I am certain that that will attract a lot of attention. I hope it does. I think it is that kind of inspired effort you put in that is going to be helpful in terms of real awakening of folks to the fact that things do not have to be like they are, that we can indeed make some changes.

I note that you are not even in agreement with everything that I am trying to do, but I think that you recognize that it is a goodfaith effort.

We intend the board that we create to in fact act as a counterweight to some of the other budget decisions. Maybe we are preoccupied with the budget and with the designation decisions. Any time we make an appointment of the Director and we are keeping him in the Department of the Interior, providing this more autonomous group that would report, to the President and to Congress may be more or less effective. But we think it would be a counterweight and it would have some clout behind it because of the staffing provisions that are in it.

If you make them dependent on the Interior Department, you immediately call into question what they are doing, and we do have such boards, incidentally, that are active boards that do exist in other areas. Some would even have the actual power to make the decisions. We don't do that in this instance, but I think there is a need for this kind of a group. We have had the advisory board. You are saying-and I am certain you are concerned, as I am, about the plight of the advisory board, what it has been, are you not?

Mr. HARTZOG. Mr. Chairman, what I have expanded on in my statement, it has been the wisdom of the Congress that such a board is desirable, and I would certainly not take much persuasion

to say that it is because you either need to strengthen the existing advisory board and give it a new charter and a new mandate or you need the kind of mechanism that you are talking about in this bill.

My concern with this bill is in several respects. No. 1, it is a three-person board. The professional disciplines in the National Park Service range from archeology to zoology, 17 identifiable professions when I was there. I think, therefore, in order to respond to the professional aspects of the National Park Service, the board reasonably could be somewhat larger in number, to represent a broader variety of the professional disciplines in the Park Service and, therefore, better understanding its mission.

No. 2, the bill provides for full-time permanent paid staff and a full-time permanent three-member board. I question the necessity for a permanent full-time board if you have the permanent fulltime staff. In the full-time board then you will lose eminently qualified people such as Lawrence Rockefeller, who certainly is not going to give up his business endeavors to serve the Government on a permanent three-man, five-person, or whatever size, board.

Gil Grovner, president and chairman of the National Geographic Society, who could not afford to surrender his avocation to come and serve full-time on this board, but as a matter of fact is eminently qualified to serve, and since you only require six meetings a year, could certainly spare that amount of time.

So, I am saying that if you are going to have a permanent board such as this, I would not resist that at all because you've got to go one of the two ways: either strengthen the advisory board, or have this board.

But if I had this board, then I think I would go the second step and perhaps eliminate the advisory board because I think there is duplication there that is unnecessary. And of course, the advisory board today is about as effective as a three-dollar bill at a Treasury countdown: they really only show up, they don't do anything because they're not qualified to do anything. It has been more politicized than has the National Park Service.

Mr. VENTO. I am going to reexamine the charter of that board. I am not discounting it. I have not come to any conclusions about it. I obviously am dismayed at appointments being made for other than professional reasons, and to some extent representing every interest group, they are paralyzed and unable to do anything. I am very concerned about that.

Mr. HARTZOG. The other thing is that when I was Director-and that is the last time I am going to refer to that because the way I did it is not necessarily the best or only way to do it but we always invited our subcommittees to go with the advisory board when they went to the field because I felt that interchange between the advisory board and the committees was important.

That not only established their credibility among themselves that the Congress was interested in what they were doing, but it established credibility for them to the committees so that when the committee asked me the question what did the advisory board say, I could say the advisory board recommends it, the advisory board doesn't recommend it. And sometimes the Congress said, to heck with it, we don't care if they recommended it or not, we're going to

put it in, because you have the constitutional power to set the public land policy of this country.

But it did go a long way to establishing the credibility and the authority of the advisory board.

Mr. VENTO. As a point of reference, I have not in the 31⁄2 years I have chaired the national parks and now the National Parks and Public Lands Subcommittee, I do not know that I have had the occasion to have any of the advisory board members before the committee before.

So, it is probably one of my own omissions as well. Normally, if you're going to be effective, you have to make your presence known, and there are a lot of groups that have not been bashful about doing that over these years.

I am grateful for their participation and interest, because if we don't have any interest, obviously there is no way to weld or to create or to maintain public policy.

Mr. Chapman, I have a number of questions. Maybe I can yield to my colleague from California, who is very familiar with your plight, first and see what his questions are.

Mr. Lehman?

Mr. LEHMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am delighted to hear from the two very distinguished witnesses. I would like to ask, Mr. Chapman, you were with the National Park Service about 40 years?

Mr. CHAPMAN. That is correct.

Mr. LEHMAN. A long period of time.

Are the things you believe necessitate taking an action, like restructuring the National Park Service, which this bill does, things that you saw occurring over the length of the 40 years or just in the past few years under this administration? Or are we just reacting? Are we reacting to a crisis, or has this been systemic for a long time?

Mr. CHAPMAN. I would say that it has been building, but certainly over the last particularly 7 years of the 15 years that I served as regional director I definitely have seen a more deteriorated condition today than I saw existing at the time that I became regional director 15 years ago. And even going back in further years, I would say less of that political influence was apparent at the field level in those previous year.

But you can ask any field person today, and they feel that political interference in terms of being able to professionally do the job. I think the statements that were made by Mr. Mott today are really the statements made and the recognition of his past profession that overrides those obstacles that are placed in his path in order to be able to carry out truly a professional job today. Mr. LEHMAN. Would you comment, Mr. Hartzog?

Mr. HARTZOG. I agree completely with Howard Chapman, yes, sir.

Mr. LEHMAN. Do you agree on the three-member commission being broadened?

Mr. CHAPMAN. I think the point is well taken. There is a broad breadth of experience within the service that the three members would have a hard time in being able adequately to represent.

But the main issue-and I would not take issue with the numbers of people-but it is the professional standing and the capability and the interest and the concern that those people have of the whole park effort and the mission of the National Park Service. That is where everything lies, and that they are able to function in the truest mission of what the service is all about or what the system is all about.

Mr. LEHMAN. What about the criteria for selecting those people who serve on the commission? Is the criteria in this legislation adequate? Do you think it should be broadened?

Mr. CHAPMAN. I think you can make it more specific, but again I am not so sure that you can get it down to a very fine science of one, two, three, four, down to a dozen items or whatever else it might be.

The overriding background that is needed is a philosophy and a commitment to the policies and the things that the National Park System was brought in to accomplish. I don't know whether there is any way that you can set a finite group of criteria that will identify when you step back and say, "Yes, that person is committed," because they have shown over their track record over years of time that they are committed to this kind of effort to carry forth the preservation of parks not only today but into the future.

Mr. LEHMAN. Thank you.

Mr. VENTO. One of the points about this board which should be noted is that this would give a President and administration an opportunity to appoint someone to this board that could in fact have an influence and reflect the views that he has in terms of what the National Park System should be doing. So, it is questioned, once you make these appointments, let them do the job, let them make the recommendations that come forward. Once you appoint the director, let them do the job that is expected.

I think the problem that I have today is not with Mr. Mott or with any appointee. It is the fact that they are undercutting in a way that has not been done before.

You mentioned, Mr. Chapman, that in fact the reprimand that the Secretary of the Interior was actually to the employees at the Grand Canyon was in writing and was in the record. Is that correct?

Mr. CHAPMAN. That is correct.

Mr. VENTO. This morning I think Mr. Horn said that it was not. Mr. CHAPMAN. That's correct.

Mr. VENTO. Did I hear right? Was there something that I misstated, or was there a different question that I should have asked? Mr. CHAPMAN. No. The question was very specific and it was very clear, and the response coming back from Mr. Horn was not what is in the record.

Mr. VENTO. We will have to try to clarify that with him. I don't want to probe into something that may be a matter of privacy between the Secretary and the employees. We are trying to point out, though, that there was a statement made here that there has been no effort-obviously, the IG report treated it in a different manner. I think your comments about the land use issue are another concern. All we are suggesting is that once those decisions-there is a great deal of effort that is made with the National Park Service to

do assessments to deal with maintenance that deal with construction, that deal with land acquisition, that deal with planning. Isn't that accurate, Mr. Chapman?

Mr. CHAPMAN. That is correct.

Mr. VENTO. There are literally millions of dollars that go into these planning processes and into these decisions. And they are very tough decisions at the regional levels, are they not?

Mr. CHAPMAN. That's right.

Mr. VENTO. What happens when you go through an assessment in law that is by policy spending millions of dollars in terms of making decisions about land acquisitions and then the policy at the national level, you cannot even present that particular plan.

In other words, the policy is that we are not going to purchase any lands, for instance, in Yosemite, where there is a top priority and you are being asked to sign off on that. Why was it their insistence that you sign off on that issue? What possible purpose could there have been that you were supposed to say that in your professional judgment it is not necessary to purchase this on a "willing seller, willing buyer" basis?

Mr. CHAPMAN. I think it was primarily aimed at carrying out the short-term objectives of this administration, which was to reduce the level of land acquisition, feeling that they could perform the elements of land protection sufficiently through other mechanisms than outright acquisition.

Mr. VENTO. There can be people who can differ on that. But why did they want you to sign that? What was the purpose of you signing some statement that you didn't agree with, apparently? I don't know if you did. I guess you didn't agree with it.

Mr. CHAPMAN. No. I did not sign it. My feeling was that because I was the park professional that the finger could be pointed to later on and they could simply avoid the responsibility because their signature would not be on that plan.

Mr. VENTO. They could professionalize an opinion or a political view with regards to this by virtue of your signature? You are supposed to use your professionalism, your credibility, to underline what they were trying to do? Is that they way you felt?

Mr. CHAPMAN. That is correct.

Mr. VENTO. You were being asked to, in essence, spend your credibility on a view that you did not share and that you did not think was professional?

Mr. CHAPMAN. That is correct.

Mr. VENTO. Was there any way that that land could have been done in terms of an exchange, in your view?

Mr. CHAPMAN. Not necessarily, because there were already people in the Wawona area that were coming forth to the National Park Service saying that they were willing sellers because they wanted to see that land protected by the National Park Service. Mr. VENTO. Do we own that land today?

Mr. CHAPMAN. Some of that we do not own because we still do not have the funding nor the approval by the Assistant Secretary's office to proceed with that acquisition.

Mr. VENTO. Mr. Lehman, did you have a question on that?

Mr. LEHMAN. I could bring up a very similar situation we have right now with respect to housing for park employees. We know