Mr. HORN. We hear about the Everglades. It was mentioned this morning. I was in the Everglades yesterday, going around for the afternoon with the Superintendent, meeting with the South Florida Water Management Board people, talking about water flows and what I could do to help, since the Secretary has a relationship with the Governor's office and others to help solve some of the problems of water flow in the Everglades.

When I think of the times I have traveled to Yellowstone, 2 years ago it was the Yellowstone people who apparently could not get through to somebody between the Director and the Superintendent. They were complaining that their bear money had been cut out. We restored the bear money after it was brought to my attention.

So the system basically has professionals at all different ranks bringing things to the Director's attention, to my attention, and obviously, as you point out, there are going to be some folks who don't like the decisions made by Bill or myself and they will ask Congress to take a look at it.

I find that to be a healthy system.

Mr. VENTO. The Secretary went out of his way to denounce the staff of the Grand Canyon National Park for the aircraft management plan. He termed it an embarrassment to the service and has now apparently changed his view that it is compatible with the original National Park Service views, is that correct?

Mr. HORN. We negotiated this aircraft overflight management plan that we submitted to the FAA. The Secretary has endorsed it. The concern in the first go-round was that allegations were made that this initial report prepared at the park level was not a fair and equitable report, and that is what the Secretary was responding to.

Mr. VENTO. Has the public reprimand

Mr. HORN. There was no public reprimand.

Mr. VENTO. Has the public record been changed or modified by the Secretary?

Mr. HORN. There was no public record. Basically, we had this inquiry. The Inspector General did the examination, the investigation. Nothing was found. The case was clean. The case was closed, and subsequent to that point we have put together this carefully negotiated aircraft overflight management plan, which we have submitted to FAA, and that has been endorsed by the Director, myself, the Secretary, and others.

That is our current position.

Mr. MARLENEE. If the gentleman would yield.

There is not anything that we do in this committee or the Director of the National Park Service or the Assistant Secretary does that is not public.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. HANSEN. We had the budget function as one and the professional question seems to come up. Personally, with Lorraine Mintzmeyer, you have in Denver a very professional person. All of the people we have dealt with in the State of Utah are very professional.

But every time an issue comes up, like how are you going to put the utilities through Canyon Lands or Capitol Reef, what are they going to do in the parks with concessionaires?

In Zion that was a big issue.

The Director and I went through Glen Canyon. As we sat there, we had a whole room full of professionals, you may recall, and they were all very strong and felt strong about their opinions.

It just seems to me if one didn't win out, I don't know where that is a lack of professionalism. To me that is the American way, to work something out by somewhat debating the issue and coming up with the best decision.

I say, very respectfully, I think in a way this kind of attacks the system if a person who does not agree with you is not being professional, and personally, in my humble opinion, what I have seen in the Park System in the State of Utah, where we have probably more parks than any other State-I think that is correct-I have never seen a lack of professionalism.

I don't set myself up in any way as a professional in saying that, but having been on this committee for 8 years, I have certainly worked with a lot of them, and I am very proud of what you folks have been able to do there, and the people we have in the National Park System in our State are doing an outstanding job.

They are like the rest of us who sit up here. We are strongwilled, strong-minded people, and we have our own opinions and we do not have any hesitation to give them, and I find the same thing in the National Park System. But somewhere there has got to be a General who makes the decision. Whether or not we agree with that General I guess is the question.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. VENTO. Mr. Cheney.

Mr. CHENEY. I have no questions at this time.

Mr. VENTO. Mr. Marlenee.

Mr. MARLENEE. Mr. Chairman, I would hate to be overlooked in this hearing, especially when we have two witnesses before us that I have been adversarial with a number of times.

I heard my colleague from Idaho talk about FERC and state that that necessarily must be an independent or quasi- independent group that deals with large amounts of dollars from private investments and investors.

The chairman of the subcommittee obviously had referred toand correct me if I am wrong-to FERC being-to the position we are about to take with the National Park Service as being analogous to what we have in FERC.

Well, I hope that the chairman of the subcommittee's memory is not so short as to recall that just a short while ago we had before this committee groups testifying as to the lack of inclination, if any inclination, of FERC to follow even the mandates of Congress, and here we are about to set up another board, another group, another agency in the same kind of a position.

I find it incredible that we would allow a quasi-independent group-and maybe if we could even call it an independent boardto submit a budget to the U.S. Congress.

What are we doing, giving away the store?

Then if we think that works so well, we can always refer to the efficiency and the responsiveness of the U.S. Postal Service, which is quasi-independent, and with regard to the National Park Service we are dealing-let's not forget-with hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in people's services by private groups. The concessionaires that deal in those parks serve the U.S. public, and they cannot be left willy-nilly to management decisions of a quasiindependent dictator group.

I am going to ask you to respond to some of the charges that I have seen here in the briefing on the bill. Political appointees were substituted for professionals at various levels and at different times, including the Deputy Director of the National Park Service. Bill Horn, could you respond to that?

Mr. HORN. Back in, I think it was 1983 through 1985, Mary Lou Grier, who had been the Deputy Director, I think, of the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, was brought in as the Deputy Director of the National Park Service for a period of time, and upon Mr. Mott's arrival he selected his own Deputy, Mr. Galvin.

Mr. MARLENEE. The Assistant Secretary's Office changed performance ratings of professional employees for political reasons.

Mr. HORN. We have been through this at great length with the committees in the past. There is a privacy thing that attaches to all of this.

All I will say is that we are dealing with the performance standards handed out to senior executive employees under the Civil Service Reform Act, passed as one of the domestic flagships of the prior administration. It established the SES system, and that law established that Assistant Secretaries within the Department of the Interior, not Bureau Directors, are the rating officials for all senior executive employees, and in some limited cases the Director and I at least on initial preliminary ratings-did not see eye to eye on the ratings. We discussed it and worked it out and came to our conclusions.

Mr. MARLENEE. Within the National Park Service, Bill, how many actual political appointees do we have?

Mr. HORN. In senior management positions there is only one schedule C, Mr. Wallace, head of congressional affairs.

Mr. MARLENEE. One?

Mr. HORN. We have special assistants to the Director, three or four others, doing—

Mr. MARLENEE. There is one political appointee?

Mr. HORN. One senior level political appointee, who used to be a ranger in Grand Teton.

Mr. MARLENEE. I say this facetiously, but let's eliminate him at all costs.

[Laughter.]

The National Park Service personnel-let's go on to this next

one.

Are you telling me that the Assistant Secretary ordered the National Park Service to allow seismic exploration over 85 miles of Big Cypress Preserve by Shell Oil Company, overruling the professional opinion of the National Park Service personnel that an EIS was required?

That is the charge. Now, are you telling me that basically this action was mandated by the Congress of the United States?

Mr. HORN. We had a disagreement between myself and the National Park Service over whether or not an environmental impact statement, a full-bore, full-dress EIS, needed to be prepared. There was no disagreement in our discussions that the law required that we give this type of access, and there was no discussion or disagreement that the stipulations provided by the National Park Service would ensure appropriate levels of environmental protection.

The service negotiated something like 26 or 27 stipulations that attach to the permit.

Mr. MARLENEE. The actual exploration of seismic activity and the leased work was mandated or directed by Congress?

Mr. HORN. The 1974 act created the Big Cypress Preserve, established the split estate, and said that the people who retained the mineral estate shall be given reasonable access to the mineral estate. Basically, seismic work is part of that reasonable access. If we didn't do that, our lawyers told us we better get $2 billion check out to condemn and take that mineral estate.

Mr. MARLENEE. This question is directed to Mott. I would like you to comment on the charge that the National Park Service personnel appear before House committees, present testimony written by low level political appointees in the Assistant Secretary's Office that rarely reflects the professional views of the National Park Service.

Is it not true that those professional views within the Park Service itself with the professionals often vary widely and are often conflicting in themselves, in the view of the professionals?

Mr. MOTT. I think that is probably true. The Secretary has said to me when I have been asked questions by Members of Congress in hearings of this kind that I am to answer honestly and how I personally feel about that particular subject.

Mr. MARLENEE. You certainly have. I have to give you an A rating on that, Mr. Mott.

Please continue.

Mr. MOTT. I think that the written testimony that we present is reviewed by the Secretary and by OMB and others and is presented in that manner as the official document of our testimony.

When I am asked a question, I answer that question on a professional basis, as I see it.

Mr. MARLENEE. How much consultation do you do with other professional management

Mr. MOTT. That is true with our Superintendents. They have been told that they are to answer the questions that they are asked honestly and as they see it.

Mr. MARLENEE. I think this kind of legislation may actually fly in the face of the credibility of the National Park Service personnel, professional personnel, and the professionals, the Superintendents, and the National Park Service itself.

What we seem to be saying is we don't trust the judgment of the professionals within the Service. I think we have a system that has worked very well, and if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. VENTO. With regard to a reference concerning the Big Cypress. Obviously, there is a split estate there. We understand it is a national preserve and what the problem was when it was established in 1974 and recently been added to.

The question is, of course, on the requirement of the EIS and the professional judgment, as stated in the Regional Director's position, that Superintendent Fagergren and himself actually favored that and they have the letter here soliciting the Director. There is no disagreement that the Assistant Secretary opposed it, and that was the policy that was put in place some 3 or 4 weeks ago, which is apparently now under review again.

I am just suggesting that it is an example of what the concerns

were.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman-

Mr. VENTO. Mr. Horn.

Mr. HORN. I would like to respond to that.

The nature of the issue was a procedural one, and that involved whether or not we should do an environmental assessment or an environmental impact statement under the appropriate CEQ regulations, the 1500 series, that lay out the NEPA documents.

The recommendations from the National Park Service were that, in order to look forward to future cumulative effects, the service wanted to do an EIS, and the Superintendent's representations, among others, were that we want to be able to predict and begin to get a handle on it. If the seismic work leads to drilling and the drilling leads to discoveries and the discoveries lead to production, we want to be able to assess all of that down the road.

I pointed out that the CEQ regulations state that we only do that type of work on activities that are reasonably foreseeable and that the consequences of production, being the reasonably foreseeable consequence of only 85 miles of seismic work, were in my mind highly speculative, and I think in any geologist's mind highly speculative, and in that sense it was not necessary to go ahead and do an EIS at that point, that if they wanted to come back and they wanted to do any further work and they wanted to drill, we would look at NEPA compliance at each particular step. That was the nature of the issue.

It had to do with the procedural consequences, whether to do an EA or an EIS.

Mr. VENTO. You made a decision to deal with each particular step of this seismic activity, is that correct, Mr. Secretary? They would have to come to you for approval on any of these types of activities?

Mr. HORN. Every subsequent step would have to go through independent NEPA compliance.

Mr. VENTO. It is important that they come back to the Assistant Secretary in this particular instance.

Mr. HORN. Not to me, sir. I only have at most 7 months left.

Mr. VENTO. I know that, but your idea of having a coherent professional service, that comes back to you for every step and then if they get dispensation from the White House, then we can move on this. This is the way we will operate. This fosters professionalism, in your judgment?

Mr. HORN. That was not the intent.