National parks authorized to use entrance fees to pay for upkeep during shutdown; Democrats question legality

"The National Park Service will take the unprecedented step of tapping entrance fees to pay for expanded operations at its most popular sites, officials said Sunday, as the partial federal government shutdown threatens to degrade some of the nation’s iconic landmarks," Juliet Eilperin reports for The Washington Post.

Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt authorized the move Saturday, in a memo obtained by the Post. Bernhardt said park managers can hire more staff to clean up and patrol highly visited sites such as Yosemite National Park. Since the bathrooms have been closed but the parks left open, visitors have left human waste and trash in open areas to such an extent that park managers at Yosemite had to close several campgrounds for public safety reasons. The problem is unprecedented, since in earlier government shutdowns, national parks were closed to the public, Eilperin reports. At least seven people have died at national parks since the shutdown. 

"Congressional Democrats and some park advocates question whether the park-fee move is legal because the fees that parks collect under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act are expressly designated to support visitor services instead of operations and basic maintenance," Eilperin reports. "The secretarial order authorizes parks that have 'available balances' of these fee funds to spend them on operations that include trash collection and sanitation, road maintenance, campground operations, law enforcement and emergency operations, and entrance staff 'as necessary to provide critical safety operations'."