Congress will examine misconduct and unethical behavior at the National Park Service just days before the Obamas celebrate the service’s 100th anniversary with trips to two national parks.
The House Government Oversight and Reform Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday examining accusations of misconduct in the National Park Service. Director Jonathan Jarvis and Mary Kendall, the deputy inspector general of the Department of Interior, are expected to testify.
The committee plans to examine how the service handles misconduct and unethical behavior and how the national parks can improve accountability practices. According to the oversight committee, the National Park Service does not hold its employees accountable for their actions. The committee cited multiple incidents in which employees have been able to move laterally within the department or retire to avoid being disciplined.
There have been problems regarding sexual abuse and harrassment among park service employees. Earlier this year, the Department of Interior’s inspector general found that 35 women were sexually abused or harrassed at Grand Canyon National Park on canoe trips down the Colorado River. Three of the four culprits, who all work at the park, were punished.
According to the watchdog’s report, the one man who was not punished was accused of raping a woman while she slept.
“Concerns exist that ongoing misconduct issues have fostered a culture where employees fear retaliation for reporting misbehavior,” stated a committee document, “while wrongdoing by management and senior officials is tolerated.”
Jarvis’ conduct already has been examined by a House subcommittee this year. In May, Jarvis was pilloried in front of a subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee for failing to seek ethics guidance for a book he was publishing. The plan was for Jarvis to write a book and have it be sold by a nonprofit organization at bookstores in parks around the country.
Jarvis was punished for not seeking guidance, but he kept his job.
The Department of Interior “does not do well in holding accountable those employees who violate laws, rules and regulations,” Kendall wrote in her prepared statement to the Natural Resources Committee subcommittee.
“We see too few examples of senior leaders making the difficult decision to impose meaningful corrective action and hold their employees accountable. Often, management avoids discipline altogether and attempts to address misconduct by transferring the employee to other duties or to simply counsel the employee.”
While Congress investigates the service, the White House is gearing up for a much more celebratory look at the national parks.
President Obama announced Thursday his family would be traveling to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and Yosemite National Park in California June 17-19 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Park system. The actual centennial of the National Park Service is on Aug. 25.
In addition to celebrating the centennial of the National Park Service, the Obamas will be celebrating Malia Obama’s graduation from Washington’s Sidwell Friends school. She graduated from the prestigious private school on Friday.
The trip is another moment for the administration to highlight Obama’s public lands works, which has included declaring 265 million acres of public lands and waters as protected areas. That’s the most of any president in history.
“President Obama has taken unprecedented action to invest in America’s natural resources, to protect our public lands and to help ensure that all Americans – no matter their background – have the opportunity to experience our nation’s unparalleled national parks, monuments, forests and other public lands,” a White House official said about the trip.
