The AP has a headline worthy of a drama queen: Feds Could Seize Calif. Parks If Closed By Budget! Oh noes! Shades of the Fifth Amendment's takings clause!
The reality is different. The state will abandon these parks and 200 more, thanks to an insurmountable budget crisis. The specific parks being eyed by the NPS have been bought and paid for by the federal government and/or they're on federal land, donated by the federal government on the condition that the state keep them as parks; if the state can't, then the parks revert back to the feds.
Besides the legalese, there's a better reason for the NPS to take back California state parkland: the NPS can take better care of the lands than the state. California is utterly dysfunctional. The NPS is proposing an intervention.
If you haven't been reading Calitics or Paul Krugman, here's the FAQs: California has a huge budget crisis. Tomorrow it'll start issuing IOUs to pay its vendors, and it's running a $24 billion deficit. Gross oversimplification: 51% of the (Democratic) legislature can promise worthwhile causes, a world class education system, a functioning infrastructure, and ponies to voters, but, thanks to Prop 13, 67% of the legislature must agree to pay for the causes, schools, roads, and ponies; we can never round up 67%, so for the last 30 years we've been borrowing to pay for ponies we've already ridden, we've used up all our good credit and then some, our credit ranking has dropped like a paralyzed falcon, and this year we're borrowing from loan sharks. To save $140 million, or less than 1% of the deficit, Schwarzenegger proposes to close 80% of the state parks.
Two classes of parks are being eyed by the NPS.
First, there's six parks given from the feds to the state, on condition that they be kept as parks:
Angel Island, a former immigration station in San Francisco Bay;
a beach and parking lot at Point Mugu State Park near Malibu;
the summit of Mount Diablo in Contra Costa County, which was once a Naval microwave relay station;
four miles of sandy state beaches at the former Fort Ord near Monterey;
Point Sur in Big Sur;
and Border Fields, a 418-acre state beach on the San Diego-Tijuana border
A 1949 federal law allows surplus federal government property to be transferred to state parks. For example, when the Cold War ended and military bases were closed, the best part of Ford Ord became a public beach.
Big Sur needs to be saved from Grover Norquist, Howard Jarvis, and their proteges.
Second are 69 parks (out of the 220 proposed to be closed) that have received federal money since the days of LBJ. The federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, created by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, is the leading source of federal money for state parks. It collects royalties from offshore oil drilling and uses them to buy land for national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges. The fund also issues grants to state and local parks to pay for land acquisition, new trails, visitor centers, and restrooms. So far, the fund has paid $286 million to California. There's only one catch: Parks that receive the funds are required to remain open to the public.
State parks that have received the federal funding -- 69 out of the 220 slated for closure -- include Henry Coe, Fremont Peak, Big Basin Redwoods, Castle Rock, Ano Nuevo, Bodie Ghost Town, Mono Lake, Andrew Molera, Humboldt Redwoods, Point Lobos, Hearst San Simeon State park, Anza-Borrego Desert, Sutter's Fort, Mount Diablo and Fort Ord Dunes. Under the law, the feds can't demand back the $286 million, but they can shut off future payments.
Speaking as an avid user of local national and state parkland, federal parkland is generally better maintained, managed in a more environmentally sensitive fashion, and less prone to annoying user fees.
Some weeks ago I proposed that President Obama declare national monuments in California (at the request of the Democratic state legislature) as a way of saving the state parks from the worst impulses of our crazed minority-veto government. The NPS action is the next best thing. The California State Parks Foundation agrees that NPS control is far, far better to outright closure.
In the meantime, back at the Capitol, the Governator is ordering an emergency session, and this LA Times story can give you as much detail as you can stomach, complete with loan sharks. It ain't pretty. In the meantime, I'll be cheering on the NPS, much as I'd be cheering a social worker removing a baby from alcoholic abusive parents who propose to stop feeding the baby. Because the last thing California needs is to lose tourist revenue from Lake Tahoe's Emerald Bay: