The National Park Service announced earlier this month that it will accept input from citizens in deciding how to refurbish the National Mall.
This is what passes for democracy in 21st Century America. Instead of following directives, a bureaucracy announces it will deign to entertain suggestions. But given the agency’s behavior in recent years, even that is an improvement.
Recall that the Park Service began using surveillance cameras on the National Mall four years ago before developing or submitting to Congress a policy for how the system would operate. If the newly elected members of Congress are serious about changing direction, one of the first abuses they should curb is the power of executive-branch police forces.
For starters, lawmakers must insist that the Park Service follow the law. Title 16 of the U.S. Code directs that the “protection, management, and administration of [national parks] … shall not be exercised in derogation of the values and purposes for which these various areas have been established, except as may have been or shall be directly and specifically provided by Congress.” The National Mall was established as an open space to reflect the values of an open society. When the Park Service puts up fences and surveillance cameras and limits access to monuments and parking, it isn’t just creating needless inconvenience; it is defying the intent of the law.
Certainly, in the age of terrorism, reasonable precautions are justified. But walking the Mall, one is hard-pressed to find any security measures that make sense. What is the point of roping off the west side of the Lincoln Memorial? Why must visitors pass through checkpoints (a word that should not even be in the American vernacular) merely to enter a Smithsonian museum? Perhaps the Park Police should write this down: We are at war with Islamic radicals, not schoolchildren and tourists.
Or consider the Park Service’s recent practice of cordoning off the Mall on the Fourth of July and requiring anyone who wants to enter to submit to a police search. Individuals bent on wrongdoing could step right over that flimsy fencing, so it achieves nothing except to inconvenience the law-abiding and to jeopardize their safety: If something did go wrong, they would be trapped in an enclosed area with limited routes of escape.
Robert Hershey, president of the D.C. Society of Professional Engineers, has described the Washington Monument as “the safest place in town.” Its 15-foot thick walls are virtually impenetrable.
Nonetheless, the Park Service continues limiting access to it — for example, closing to the public the monument’s historic stairwell. In a commendable moment of clarity, Congress did refuse to fund the Park Service’s proposal for an underground visitors’ center that not only would have been costly, but could have undermined the monument’s stability.
Yet Congress needs to do more —such as demand that the Park Service reopen the parking lots it has recently confiscated.
Vikki Keys, superintendent of the National Mall, has acknowledged that the Park Service intentionally makes it difficult to reach the Mall’s monuments by car. The agency is trying to force visitors to use public transportation but social engineering is not the Park Service’s role.
Using security concerns as an excuse doesn’t wash, either.
The parking lot off Constitution Avenue between 15th and 17th streets was too far removed from anything for a truck bomb to present a threat. The parking lot now closed at the Jefferson Memorial is nearer that structure, but a truck bomb is still a remote danger. Nonetheless, it would be easy to eliminate the risk entirely by installing a bar at the parking lot’s entrance to allow in only sedans. Alternatively,the parking lot could be moved closer to the street, where it would be 300 feet from the monument — three times the distance the State Department says is adequate for blast protection.
Congress has been remiss in not requiring that the Park Service justify its practices in recent years. Instead, the agency has enjoyed largely free rein, and the results are disappointing: a National Mall desecrated by barriers and fences and increasingly inaccessible.
Perhaps it is a step in the right direction that the Park Service has invited comment from citizens. Here’s hoping it hears — and heeds — a call to preserve not only the National Mall, but the national values it represents.
Melanie Scarborough is a writer living in Alexandria.
