2007 Budget Would Harm Parks and Recreation Interests

National Recreation and Park Association Summary and Analysis of the Proposed 2007 Federal Budget

The President's budget request for 2007 offers mostly bad news for state and local parks and recreation. Again this year, as in the 2006 budget, the President proposes to end support for local and state public parks and recreation by terminating the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) state assistance program, and other federal agency programs of importance to parks and recreation nationally would all sustain cuts.

By way of overview, the President's $2.77 trillion proposed budget for 2007, released February 6, calls for substantial increases in defense spending, homeland security, foreign aid, and certain veteran's affairs. However, discretionary spending in two thirds of all major federal agencies, including all of the departments that fund park and recreation related programs would receive substantial cuts including the Departments of the Interior, Health and Human Services, Justice, EPA, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Justice, and Transportation.

Departmental Summaries

The Department of the Interior's budget would be cut nearly 3% to $10.5 billion. Interior's budget includes funding for the National Park Service which would be cut $100 million to $2.19 billion, although it would increase park operations funding by $24 million. A number of other Interior Department programs would be cut to lesser or greater degree. Interior's budget assumes $7 billion in funds in 2008 from oil lease revenues from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), although the plan to allow drilling in ANWR was rejected yet again in the recently concluded session of the 109th Congress.

Of greatest concern to NRPA in the Interior budget is that the Bush Administration again this year is proposing to terminate funding for the LWCF State Assistance Program, the federal matching grant program that has provided over $4 billion in federal aid for more than 40,000 state and local park and recreation projects in its four decade history. In the 2007 budget proposal, which must be approved by Congress, the President would terminate LWCF stateside, eliminating virtually the entire funding of $30 million approved in 2006, which itself was cut 2/3 from an appropriation of $91.5 million in 2005. The Interior Department 2007 Budget in Brief document states: "Paying for improvements to state and local parks is a decision better left of state and local taxpayers rather than federal taxpayers." There is $1.6 million is proposed for LWCF stateside for 2007, ominously, to "review the accountability and performance of grants provided in previous years." The federal side of LWCF, which funds land acquisition for national parks, national wildlife refuges, and other national public lands would be cut about $20 million to $91 million.

Another valuable and important National Park Service program the Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program (RTCA), which provides technical and planning assistance to states as well as to local park and recreation agencies, would sustain a severe cut in this budget proposal. RTCA is slated for a cut of $500,000 to $7.7 million from a budget of $8.3 million approved approved for FY 2006.

In other departmental budget proposals tracked by NRPA, the important Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG) of the Department of Housing and Urban Development which provides significant funding to local park and recreation agencies, primarily in urban areas, is slated for a whopping 30% cut from $4.2 billion down to about $3 billion. Traditionally, park and recreation programs have received about 5% of CDBG funding which is locally determined. Mayors have already called the proposed cuts "devastating."

The budget for Health and Human Services would increase $58 billion over 2006 to $698 billion due to growth of Medicare and Medicaid, but discretionary funding would decline $1.5 billion from last year. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, would receive a $179 million cut in an $8.2 billion budget of which $819 million goes to health promotion activities. Some CDC programs of interest to park and recreation agencies would receive budget cuts, such as the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity, the Environmental Health and Injury Prevention and Control and a complete elimination of funding for the Preventative Health and Health Services Block Grant. There is one new program proposed by the President entitled "Helping America's Youth Initiative" which is targeted for at-risk youth and gang prevention, and plans to make $50 million available to faith-based and community service organizations. The Child Care and Development Block Grant Program (CCDBG) is flat funded for a total of $2.1 billion, but the $155 million that would go to local communities and state governments to assist persons with developmental disabilities would be cut from the $171 million approved in FY 2006.

The Department of Education budget at $54.4 billion is planned to be cut $3.4 billion from 2006. Included is $981.2 million for 21st Century Community Learning Centers, the same funding level as 2006. Once again as in 2006, the President's 2007 budget proposes to terminate the Rehabilitation Service Administration's recreational program grants funded at $2.5 million in 2006, grants which support competitively awarded projects that provide recreation and related activities for individuals with disabilities to aid in their employment, mobility, independence, socialization, and community integration. The Administration justified termination of this program by claiming that the program has limited impact and that the activities are more appropriately financed by State and local agencies and the private sector. Also on the chopping block is the Physical Education Program (PEP), requested at $26.4 million, drastically down from the $72.4 million received in 2006.

The Department of Agriculture budget which funds the US Forest Service (USFS) and many public lands recreation programs as well as a number of food and nutrition programs of interest to parks and recreation is proposed at $92.8 billion, with $4.1 billion in discretionary funding for the USFS in 2007, down $177.4 million from 2006. Recreation, Wilderness, and Heritage programs would be cut about $10 million, or 4%, in a budget of $250.8 million. Only Forest Legacy, a private forest landowner grant program that taps LWCF as a fund source would see an increase of 9% to $61.5 million.

While the Department of Transportation's 2007 budget would be down in discretionary funding, the programs funded under the multi-year authorization in SAFETEA-LU would all be fully funded at around $50 billion in 2007. Thus, programs of interest to parks and recreation, including the Transportation Enhancements, the Recreational Trails Program, Scenic Byways, the Boating Safety and Fishing Education Trust Fund, Safe Routes to School, and other programs would all be fully funded in 2007.

Analysis:

The 2007 budget proposal by the President reflects the increasingly stark reality of the direct and indirect impacts on federal spending resulting from the costs of the deficit, increased entitlement spending, and the continuing costs of the War in Iraq, as well as significant increases proposed for defense and anti-terrorism spending. Virtually all other federal discretionary spending in other categories of the federal budget are proposed to be cut, and in some cases, drastically cut.

What this budget proposal means to parks and recreation on the national level is that the news is mostly bad, and the fight to preserve important federal matching grant programs for local and state land acquisition, technical assistance programs to local governments, discretionary spending on health and wellness related to active recreation, and community development block grants, will be even more difficult to sustain in this budget year.

In addition, once again this year, this Administration, despite professed support for cooperative conservation initiatives and leveraging of federal investments, inexplicably proposes to terminate the single most valuable conservation and recreation partnership program it has ever had, the LWCF state assistance program. Other proposed program cuts would harm federal programs providing technical assistance or matching grants to states and localities as well.

For programs that fund health, wellness, and promotion of physical activity to meet national goals for reducing chronic disease conditions, preventing obesity, and promoting active recreation, the 2007 budget proposal is a mixed bag. Although there are a limited amount of new program initiatives some targeted at youth at-risk, most agency and program budgets would be cut, and some cuts would be substantial.

On the positive side, new sources of funding and increased levels of funding for parks and recreation related programs in the transportation bill totaling over a billion dollars per year, are fully funded, and innovative, partnership-oriented park and recreation agencies should be able to secure new and existing sources of funding for traditional and emerging needs.

For more information on NRPA's analysis of the President's proposed budget for 2007, and a summary of NRPA's national legislative platform and advocacy goals for the second session of the 109th Congress, go to the NRPA website at www.nrpa.org If you have questions, email mphillips@nrpa.org or call the Public Policy Office in Washington, DC, at 202-887-0290.