B and B

Express-News features Texas state parks

The Express-News has much of their Sunday Travel section devoted to Texas state parks this week, including profiles of two specific parks:  Pedernales Falls in the Hill Country north of San Antonio, and Palo Duro Canyon in far, far northwest Texas.  The former I've been to a few times; the latter I've never been to since I can't figure out a convenient way or time to get up to Amarillo.  The idea of this spectacular and rugged canyon in the middle of the drearily monotonous plains is intruiging. 

The newspaper plans to do further profiles of the remaining parks, so this will apparently be an ongoing feature for quite some time.

Other articles in yesterday's paper include The state of our state parks and New Texas state parks funds prompt call for repairs, more staff.

Of course, whle reading about our parks may be enjoyable, actually going to them is even more so. Sometimes it just doesn't work out, though.  Last weekend we tried to visit South Llano River State Park, near Junction, a couple hours west of here--a park in an area that is part Hill Country and part West Texas.  We hadn't been there since shortly after we moved to this area more than eight years ago. 

But thanks to all the rain that we've been having, the river was a bit high, and covered the low water crossing of the road that enters the park.  So the park was closed to all for the July 4 holiday.  Fortunately, thanks to the new funding for our parks system, we don't have to worry about it being closed for good eventually.  So we'll have to try again soon.

Parks funding: "a tremendous short-term victory", but long term is "unfinished business"

The Houston Chronicle and the Tyler Morning Telegraph have provided useful summaries of what the parks funding bill that passed the legislature at the last minute actually contains.  Here are a couple substantial excerpts, though if you care about Texas's parks, it is worth looking at the entire articles.

From the Morning Telegraph, May 31:

"It appears that we will receive more than 90 percent of what was recommended by the State Parks Advisory Committee and requested by TPWD's commissioners," George Bristol, president of the Texas Coalition for Conservation wrote to supporters.

According to Bristol's group, the department fell short $3.4 million in its request for transportation and equipment, $1 million in division support, $5.9 million in major repairs and $14 million in acquisition and development. The local park grants appropriation was $3.5 million less than requested. The department will receive almost double what was requested for Battleship Texas.

TPWD will also see an increase of $10 million in Texas Department of Transportation inter-departmental fund. That money will be used to improve state park roads. The last budget included $5 million.

In all, the department is expected to get about $180 million of its $195 million request.

But the good comes with restrictions and strings. According to a Texas Coalition for Conservation summary the major repairs are to be funded with bond money. The department has $17 million it can issue from an old bond program. The remaining $27 million must come from a new bond package that has to be approved by voters in November.

TCC had hoped Legislators would have approved a pay-as-you-go plan or, if requiring a bond package, authorize the entire amount needed for repairs in a single bond. Department officials have said that the peaks and valleys of having to repeat bond elections makes long-term planning for repairs more difficult.

Also $17 million of the $36 million appropriated for the local parks' fund has already been mandated to projects in select House districts and will not be required to go through the normal competitive bid process.

Actually new money for acquisition and development is only $4.3 million, and $2.5 million of that is mandated for purchasing land next to Palo Duro State Park. The remainder of the $13.9 million for land purchases will come from the sale of Eagle Mountain Lake State Park and several small parcels, leaving the department only enough money to buy one park designated west of Fort Worth and add several small areas to existing state parks.

The budget is also built around the department raising an additional $16 million in park user fees. Although the department doesn't have a plan outlined yet, there has been some talk that it may have to start charging youth an entrance fee.

From the Chronicle, June 3:

And no one at TPWD or in the Legislature believes this one-time increase in funding will address park problems that took decades to create.

For example, the agency's backlog of needed repairs to state parks — repairs necessitated by the wear from millions of visitors and years of deferred maintenance — is estimated to be $430 million.

To address that backlog, the agency would need the Legislature to appropriate for that purpose at least $40 million each year for 10 years.

"We had a tremendous short-term victory," Hilderbran, through a news release, said of the Legislature's actions on park funding. We secured record appropriations for the next two years; however, a long-term funding solution is unfinished business."

Parks funding passes amidst dramatic final days of legislative session

I tuned in to the Texas House proceedings Sunday night just after midnight (hence Monday morning, officially) in anticipation of seeing action on the parks funding bill, HB 12, in the final hours of this legislative session.  Instead, I saw quite a dramatic display, as the latest battle in the attempt to dislodge Tom Craddick from the Speaker position was launched. 

A fellow GOP representative from El Paso, Pat Haggerty, in the middle of a brief speech, started to take a roll call on a motion to declare the speaker position empty -- the exact motion that Craddick had spent the last two days furiously trying to suppress, ever since the original Friday night uproar that prompted the resignations of two parliamentarians and their replacement by loyal Craddick-ite former legislators, Republican Terry Keel and Democrat Ron Wilson.  The new parliamentarians interpreted every rule to Craddick's benefit in order to run out the clock on the attempt to oust him.  Immediately prior to starting his roll call, Rep. Haggerty asked the chamber about Keel and Wilson:  "Where did they go to parliamentarian school that somehow makes them better than God?"

The Craddick forces eventually halted Haggerty's impromptu roll call and Haggerty then stormed out of the chamber, with over 50 other representatives (out of 150; most of those walking out were Democrats no doubt) joining him, breaking the quorum and forcing the House to adjourn for the night.  All this with only a single day left in the session, and numerous bills still waiting for final approval.

Not being very familiar with how the House operates, I was worried that this action would doom a major part of the increased state parks funding, which was contingent on passage of HB 12.  That could be acceptable if it helped to depose Craddick, but he was still as entrenched as ever despite the walkout.

Fortunately, that worry seems to have been misguided.  The House returned to session today for the final day and unanimously passed HB 12 (as I found out first via Charles Kuffner), thus ensuring that Texas' state and local parks systems will be well funded for the next two years.  Unfortunately, based on what I read, modifications made to the bill in the state Senate suggest that we will probably have to go through this all over again in 2009.  Fortunately, parks obviously have extraordinarily wide support so odds of success are good.  One area to target:  more money for acquiring new parks.

From the Express-News online, hot off the wire late Monday night (emphasis added):

Texas lawmakers gave final approval Monday to increasing spending for state and local parks but stopped short of using all of the sporting goods tax revenue supporters said is necessary for the long-term vitality of parks.

"This is mixed. Short term, we did great, but long term is very much a question," said House Culture, Recreation and Tourism Chairman Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville, a longtime champion of state and local parks.

A special parks advisory committee last year recommended a 10-year plan and urged lawmakers to allocate all of the sporting goods tax revenue for state and local parks.

The bill would increase funding for state and local parks by $156 million, and it includes a $44 million bond issue that requires voter approval in the November election.

"It's a good, solid package, and it's a good first step," said George Bristol, vice chairman of the parks advisory committee. "Basically, we got almost everything we wanted for the first two years. Obviously, it will take longer than two years to fix up the parks."

Senate leaders insisted on a study of the sporting goods tax to determine from which items the sales tax should flow to parks. For example, Hilderbran asked if billiards equipment tax revenue should continue to be eligible for parks funding. The tax revenue from canoe sales currently does not go for parks, he said.

Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, who pushed the parks bill through the Senate, said the $156 million increase for state and local parks over the next two years is "very generous."

"It's going to make it very difficult to go back. This is a great step in the right direction," Estes said.

But he added that state leaders must spend more on park acquisition, considering Texas' rapidly expanding population.

The parks committee recommended that Texas spend $15 million a year to develop new parks. The budget calls for less than half of that.

Investing in new parks, Estes said, "is something that we need to work on in the future."

Meanwhile, though, today is a day to celebrate.  It's been a truism ever since I arrived in Texas in 1998 that our parks, while great places, just don't get much money.  This looks like it's about to change, at least for the next couple years. 

Parks funding comes down the wire, as state House descends into chaos

As the hours tick down on this biennial session of the Texas legislature, the state house has devolved into chaos due to a renewed, so far unsuccessful, attempt to oust the current dictatorial GOP House Speaker, Tom Craddick.  The Dallas Morning-News has more on last night's quite unusual events.

Meanwhile, though, the status of the bill to lift the cap on funding of state parks via the sales tax on sporting goods and the final total that our long neglected parks will receive over the next two years are both still up in the air.

State Rep. Harvey Hilderbran of Kerrville is lamenting that no one in the state Senate is championing parks, leaving that job up to him.  (Jeff Wentworth, GOP senator from San Antonio and the hill country and presumed parks advocate, where are you?)  From the San Antonio Express-News:

"I'm championing it here, and I champion it in the Senate, too," Hilderbran said about his efforts to lift the sporting goods tax cap on revenue that flows to state parks. "I'm going over there, bursting into meetings with the lieutenant governor and other people on other bills, saying, 'What in the hell's going on? You promised this.'"

More than 20 of the state's 31 senators originally signed on to legislation to remove the cap, but questions about the funding and a study of the revenue are dividing lawmakers.

"I'm confident that we are going to have an agreement that's going to be good for our park system," said Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, who is the Senate's chief negotiator for House Bill 12.

...

Lawmakers are proposing to increase the operating budget for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department from about $50 million to $157 million for the two-year budget cycle.

But $16 million of the increase is a "phantom," Hilderbran said, because it relies on such changes as charging scouting groups and church organizations admission into state parks. And an additional $74 million of the increase hinges on HB 12 passing, he said.

"So it's not quite as good as it sounds," Hilderbran said.

HB12 is the bill to lift the cap on funding via the sporting goods sales tax -- a variant of the original one co-sponsored by a huge majority in both the Senate and House.  It passed the House virtually unanimously.  It passed the Senate, but in an altered form that Hilderbran called "crummy" according to a report from the Texas Observer earlier this week.  Now the differences need to be worked out in a conference committee, and there's only a couple days left to do so. 

And with the House in chaos due to this last minute battle over the speakership, our parks may be left by the wayside yet again.

Parks funding all up to Lt Gov Dewhurst. Will he come through?

The latest on the state Senate's machinations to restrict funding to restore Texas' parks, from the Austin American-Statesman (emphasis added)

[A] Senate version of an appropriations bill had appeared to give $142 million more to the state parks department over the next two years, but that number drops to about $8 million when corrected for money already in the department's base budget, federal grant money and other sources that [parks advocate Rep. Harvey] Hilderbran's office says do not amount to additional funding.

"The next two days are real critical to give us some indication of what parks will get," Hilderbran said. "This is in the lieutenant governor's hands [Dewhurst]. He can set up funding for parks that will consistently fund it better than we have been, or he can stop short of leading us to a restored Texas parks system that provides the visitor experience we all want."

What will it be, David Dewhurst?

Leading parks advocate claims parks funding bill is stalled by Senate leadership

The Kerrville Daily Times reports that the leading parks advocate in the state legislature, Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, is speaking out about the state Senate's lack of action on the bill to fully fund our state parks system.  The bill passed the state House recently with an overwhelming margin.  Now it needs action in the senate, and it isn't getting any from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and other GOP senate leaders.

“We’re concerned about its status in the Senate. The leadership in the Senate is not taking an active roll in passing it. In fact, they’re sitting on it,” Hilderbran said.

House Bill 12, which removes the $32 million cap on the sporting goods tax used to fund Texas parks, passed in the House 139-4 last week. Despite that overwhelming majority, the measure has seen no movement in the Senate.

Hilderbran said Senate members are touting their own plan, which would appropriate a one-time $140 million allocation for parks. That’s more than the $105 million allocations allowed in Hilderbran’s funding plan with the cap lifted.

“But, what that takes is for you to have confidence that the Legislature is going to appropriate that level of funding every year, and that isn’t going to happen,” Hilderbran said.

This has been one of my primary concerns all along -- that, despite the sudden and apparent overwhelming support for funding our parks, state GOP leaders would quash the bill in the state Senate.  Will they come through on their promises to lift the funding cap?

“I’m going to stick to this,” Hilderbran said. “We’ve got to get the lieutenant governor and the Senate leadership to do what the people have asked and pass this.”

Texas Observer runs down the good and the bad in the parks funding bill

The blog of the Texas Observer magazine has an informative rundown of the good and the bad in the state parks funding bill passed out of the Texas House by a 141 to nothing vote yesterday.

Parks advocates are now closer to achieving one of their main goals of the session: busting the cap on the sporting goods tax, which could potentially free up an extra $80 million a year for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

However, some troubling provisions remain in in the bill. For starters, HB 12 taps more inmates to do the grunt work on Texas state natural areas, picking up trash or digging foundations for new buildings, as Hilderbran explained today.

...

Also left in the bill is the controversial transfer of historic sites from TPWD to the Texas Historical Commission, an agency headed by Craddick crony John Nau III. A wholesale transfer of historic sites, such as Sebastopol House in Seguin and rock climbing mecca Hueco Tanks near El Paso, is opposed by parks advocates, visitors, and many of the local communities.

“It’s unfortunate that there are some sites that do not want to go to the historical commission that will be going,” said Beth McDonald, president of Texans for State Parks. McDonald fears that the Historical Commission will not have sufficient state money to maintain the sites - some of which receive few visitors - and will turn to outsourcing, increased entrance fees, and privatization schemes to generate revenue. Of course that may be the whole point of Nau’s - and Craddick’s - gambit: starve the sites of funding and then turn them over to private sector control.

Even with these concerns, 141 to nothing is a pretty impressive margin.  But exactly how much cash our legislators will provide in the end remains to be seen.

Bill to remove funding cap on Texas parks is on the move at last

The state parks funding train may be moving again, after apparently being stalled for months.  The Texas House finally gave "preliminary approval" to Rep. Hilderbran's bill to remove the cap on funding for our parks via the sales tax on sporting goods -- a bill which amassed the vast majority of representatives as co-authors months ago.  I'm not quite sure what "preliminary approval" means exactly, but apparently full passage at this point is a mere formality.

From the Houston Chronicle today:

Texas' crumbling public parks system could get a much-needed financial boost under a bill given preliminary approval Wednesday by the state House that frees up millions of dollars lawmakers have spent elsewhere in recent years.

State parks officials and environmentalists have lobbied for months to ask lawmakers to pump more cash into the state's 600,000-acre parks system of lakes, rivers and trails.

The bill still needs a final vote Thursday before it is sent to the Senate for consideration.

Parks officials want the state to spend all of the estimated $105 million collected annually on sporting goods sales taxes to revitalize the parks system.

The sporting goods sales tax fund for parks was created in 1993, but lawmakers limited how much money could be spent on parks at $32 million and spent most of the money elsewhere. Just $20.6 million from the fund went to state parks last year.

The bill passed Wednesday removes the $32 million cap, allowing lawmakers to spend more of that money on parks.

How much money still depends on House and Senate budget negotiations, although leaders on both sides have said it will be substantially more than what parks get now.

Unfortunately, current funding is so pitiful that "substantially more" could still mean nowhere near enough. 

Legislature falling down on the job of restoring Texas parks?

With the time remaining in the Texas legislative session rapidly dwindling, our legislators are on the verge of a massive failure to restore funding to the crumbling Texas state parks system.  The Lufkin Daily News reported on Friday:

So far, the Legislature has appropriated $33 million to fund state parks for the next biennium, according to state Rep. Jim McReynolds, D-Lufkin. That's $1 million more than what they had to work with until the last biennium, when the Legislature reduced funding to $27 million.

After all the promises, all our legislators can do is bring the system to where it was a few years ago, when the system was in the middle of being slowly, rather than quickly, starved? The Houston Chronicle wrote in an editorial a couple days ago:

Bills passed by the Texas Senate and House would increase funding for the Parks and Wildlife Department. However, the proposed increases would be nowhere near enough to reverse decades of decline or pay for the system's expansion, which a growing population requires.

The Texas State Parks Advisory Committee reports that, even in their deteriorated condition, Texas state parks annually account for 10 million visitors. These visits generate $793 million in sales and 11,928 jobs.

When conference committee members meet to resolve the House and Senate bills, they will have another chance to avert the loss and spoilage of Texas' state parks and put them on a path to attain the minimum standards expected of a proud state.

The final bill must reflect the advisory committee's recommendation that the parks receive $106 million annually for 10 years. This should include $16.8 million for operating expenses, $15 million for land acquisition and development and $25 million for local park grants. The grants should be awarded according to the proposals' merits, not according to the whim of the legislators earmarking the bill.

Unfortunately, rather than concentrating on giving the parks system adequate revenue, legislators are squabbling over whether to transfer some of the park system's historic sites to the Texas Historical Commission. The transfer proposals are a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.

The issue is the chronic underfunding of the parks.

It has been well documented that our parks need and deserve $100 million per year or more to restore them and ensure that the system can meet the needs of Texas' growing population.  Based on the public uproar over the state of our park system when its rapidly-deteriorating condition became widely known last year, most Texans agree.  The logical funding source, the sales tax on sporting goods, provides well over that amount of money.  Yet all the legislature apprently can provide so far is a mere $33 million, which would ensure the continued deterioration of a once grand parks system?

They only have a few more weeks to do better. 

Will there be funding for new parks as Texas' population continues to grow?

One of the major ideas behind increasing our spending on Texas state parks above the starvation budget they have been on is to enable our state to acquire and develop new parks.  Maintaining the parks we have will not be enough to meet the needs of our state's growning population even into the near future.

But apparently, GOP state Rep. Warren Chisum, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee (and the same Chisum who was recently caught passing around  nonsensical anti-Copernican literature a few weeks ago), may not support this idea.  So Luke Metzger of Environment Texas claims in an email urging that parks supporters call our state representatives to urge them to ask Chisum to support funds for new parks.

Note that Chisum is one of the many, many co-sponsors of Rep. Hilderbran's bill to fully fund our parks system.  This fact emphasises, as Charles Kuffner recently pointed out, that Hilderbran's bill is only a partial solution--albeit a crucial first step.  We have to also make sure that the full amount of money actually gets appropriated--not just for this legislative session, but on into the future as well.

Otherwise, Texas' parks will continue to wither away, little by little.