National parks plan: Food trucks, Amazon and no senior discounts

At the urging of a controversial team of advisers, the Trump administration is mulling proposals to privatize national park campgrounds and further commercialize the parks with expanded Wi-Fi service, food trucks and even Amazon deliveries at tourist camp sites.

Leaders of the Interior Department’s “Made in America” Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee say these changes could make America’s national parks more attractive to a digitally minded younger generation and improve the quality of National Park Service facilities amid a huge maintenance backlog. As part of its plan, the committee calls for blacking out senior discounts at park campgrounds during peak holiday seasons.

“Our recommendations would allow people to opt for additional costs if they want, for example, Amazon deliveries at a particular campsite,” said Derrick Crandall, vice chairman of the committee and a counselor with the nonprofit National Park Hospitality Association. “We want to let Americans make their own decisions in the marketplace.”

But the group’s proposals face angry opposition from conservation organizations and senior citizen advocates, who call them a transfer of public assets to private industry, including businesses led by executives appointed to the Outdoor Advisory Committee.

“America’s outdoor heritage is on the line,” said Jayson O’Neill, deputy director of the Western Values Project, a nonprofit public lands watchdog group in Montana. “The trouble with these recommendations is that they were written by concessionaire industry representatives vying for more control of national parks.”

The proposal to restrict the use of senior discounts drew a sharp response from Bill Sweeney, senior vice president of government affairs at AARP.

“This proposal is an insulting attempt to push older Americans out of our national parks,” he said. “The cost of a senior pass already jumped in recent years from $10 to $80, and this proposal would further hurt older Americans who want to visit national parks. Enough is enough.”

Crandall and the advisory committee were somewhat surprised by the backlash, especially from groups representing retirees and the elderly.

“If we’d known there’d be a big pushback to proposed blackouts on senior discounts, we might have dropped that off the list,” Crandall said. “All we’re saying is that it may not make sense on peak days like July 4 weekend to let seniors compete with a family with kids for a campsite.”

Since taking office, President Donald Trump and his administration have sought to privatize an array of public services, ranging from parts of the Veterans Administration to the U.S. Postal Service. At the same time, it has sought to reduce spending for many public services, such as its plan to cut the National Park Service’s budget by $481 million in 2020.

Critics say the administration is engaged in a self-fulfilling prophesy, arguing that private industry can deliver better than the public sector even as the White House starves public agencies of resources. But what really angers opponents is how corporate donors and businesses with a vested interest in park privatization have been invited by the Trump administration to offer proposals for further concession opportunities.

According to a memo first published by The Washington Post, business services officials of the National Park Service in 2017 warned that four people nominated to serve on the panel had potential conflicts of interest.

Three of them were selected as members: Crandall, whose association includes some of the largest concessions management companies in the U.S.; Jeremy Jacobs Jr., co-chief executive of Delaware North Cos., Yosemite National Park’s former facilities operator, whose family has donated at least $167,700 to Trump’s campaigns and political committees; and Bruce Fears, president of Aramark, which holds a $2 billion contract to run hotels, eateries and campgrounds at Yosemite.

In 2017, Delaware North hired Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the Denverbased law and lobbying firm where Interior Secretary David Bernhardt previously worked. A few years ago, Delaware North became infamous for changing the name of a historic landmark in Yosemite, the Ahwahnee Hotel, to the Majestic Yosemite. The company made the change after losing out to Aramark in a bid to renew its concessions contract in Yosemite. Delaware North claimed it had intellectual property rights over the Ahwahnee name that could not be transferred to Aramark. Finally this year, the hotel’s name was restored after the U.S. government and Aramark paid the company $12 million to settle the legal battle.

Other committee members include Jim Rogers, former president of Kampgrounds of America, the largest privately owned campground system in the world, and Brad Franklin, government relations manager at Yamaha Motor Corp. USA, a producer of electric-powered bicycles.