Did you help writing the CFR?
We helped. If I went to CFR, I could probably see my words in some of it, yes. Now, when you say that, you may well write it, send it up to the solicitor, and of course you have a Park Service part of the Solicitor’s Office; you had a Park Service man there, too and he would say, “You can’t do it that way”. And we worked in close concert. It was not harmony by any means, as we fought most of the time. But we did work together a lot on those. And we might write entire parts of the CFR. It might get thrown out, too but we would write them. Say Yellowstone wanted to have a specific thing for, like bears or something like this. They would formulate it there and they would send it to region. Somebody at region would look it over and say, “Well, I don’t think so,” or, “Yeah”, it’s o.k., send it on to us.” And then we would check it over. Sometimes this is too many layers, it really is. But, nevertheless, it’s still the way the service worked, and still works. And then we would be the final one that would put it into the final form and send it to the solicitor for his O.K. Sometimes it would take you six months to get something like that. It was not unusual. “How did expansion affect the NPS during the various decades I worked for the agency?”
That’s kind of a broad question.
It sure is. For one thing, there’s less funds for a lot of areas. I mean, we got a lot of areas. We were given a lot of areas, not all that Park Service wanted. But still, we got the same amount of money for all the ones that we had. And so somebody had to split the money out. The same amount of money instead of going of four places, goes to six places, type of thing.
So, would it affect small units?
Generally speaking, yes.
Oregon Caves, or John Day, or Fort Clatsop would have to really cut a very small piece of this.
That’s the way I look at it, and that’s the way I looked at it when I was in region. The smaller areas, unless the regional director or associates or the deputy had a real feeling for certain place, and could some way steer a little bit extra that way. And we were able to do this occasionally.
