Posted on 11/01/2013 9:15:43 AM PDT by george76
Taxpayers shell out $52,000 a year to maintain the home of Black History Month founder Carter Woodson. Yet the tiny, dilapidated row house in northwest Washington D.C., with a "No Trespassing" sign and iron bars blocking the front door and windows hasn’t seen a visitor in the seven years since the National Park Service bought it for $2.1 million and designated it a National Historic Site.
Senator Tom Coburn, R-Okla.,points to the house as one tiny symbol in a sea of dysfunction in the National Park Service. The Service, with its comparatively small budget, is, he says, a microcosm for wasteful spending in the federal government.
A report released Tuesday by Coburn's office finds the National Park Service devotes huge portions of its budget to the purchase of more and more federal properties and land, even while the country’s most treasured national parks are falling into disrepair and neglect.
His report documents a federal agency that is top heavy with bureaucracy and management, but badly mangles its spending priorities.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Coburn attacks National Park Service for wasteful spending while parks themselves fall into disrepair
I understand that the National Park Service paid $3.7 million for the house owned by the guy who started National Talk Like a Pirate Day. /sarc
Sadly, this makes the argument to turn much of the National Park Services real estate portfolio over to the states. Perhaps this can be done in an omnibus bill that will designate the the proceeds and savings from these sales or transfers be dedicated to specific improvement projects at the various more popular National Parks - like the National Mall.
Another empty symbolic gesture by someone who could not be bothered to summon up the courage to stand with Ted Cruz during the ObamaCare defunding effort.
Coburn is nothing but a Collaborator with the Democrats.
and to private groups like the ladies who run Mt. Vernon.
Absolutely no reason for National Parks. They should all be under the authority of the State or states in which they lie, lay, are...or whatever...
arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Back there in the 50's when Ike negotiated the Submerged Land Act(Offshore drilling), in order to get the interior states to support the act, they had to come up with some funding acts that would be funded by offshore royalties.
The first of those was the Land and Water Conservation Fund(60s). Then the park funding money(70s) and then the historical and cultural site preservation funding money(70s).
All these are used to buy land by the feds and the states. They have different funding formulas as to fed money, stste money, local money, and private money.
Well, I was going to pay a visit, but the family wanted to see the "World's Largest Ball of Mud," instead...
Big Bend National Park in Texas began as a state park, but Texas gave it to the feds in 1942.
If they paid 2 million for that row house they got screwed.
Why would a home of somebody whose claim to fame was starting Black History Month be so important anyway./
It’s not like he was Frederick Douglas or someone who actually did something.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.