Public Lands Need Congressional Funding Now
Appalachian Trail. Photo credit: Madalyn Cox
If there’s one change that could make the biggest difference for protecting our public lands and waters, it is ensuring adequate funding for land management agencies.
For decades, Congress has starved land management agencies, including the National Park Service, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management, of the funding they need to care for our public lands and waters. These budget shortfalls have strained agencies, leaving them short-staffed and low on resources. Many of the problems currently facing public lands and waters are the direct result of years of underfunding. Most agencies have lost a huge number of staff, and do not have enough capacity to accept volunteers because of a lack of coordination capacity; agencies are slow to do analysis, must spend increasing amounts of their budgets on wildfire suppression, and cannot keep up with routine maintenance like rebuilding bridges or opening campgrounds. With outdoor recreation in high demand and public land visitation setting records every year, agencies need increased funding more than ever to keep up with these needs and support local economies.
While the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) – passed last summer – provides a critical targeted funding stream to address some of the maintenance backlog, there is an urgent need to address the problem that got us to the maintenance backlog in the first place and to make sure the agencies have long-term capacity, capacity that they need to take advantage of GAOA funding in the first place. The long-term solution is better appropriations, or annual funding, for land management agencies.
But how do we get Congress to properly fund public lands and waters? In Congress, the process of providing money for land management agencies (and everything else the government does) is called appropriations. Appropriations is both complex and incredibly important, and there are key ways that Outdoor Alliance, our member groups, and individuals who care about the outdoors can be involved in advocating for better funding for public lands and waters.
The appropriations process is long – lasting almost the entire year! – and is supposed to conclude with Congress passing final appropriations bills for each agency (usually due by the end of the fiscal year on September 30). In recent years, Congress has often passed appropriations through a large omnibus bill or through passing a continuing resolution (CR), discussed a bit more below.
An extremely simplified version of appropriations is as follows:
In January and February, the President releases a budget (usually by February 1) to Congress. This budget is more of a political statement than actual policy, since Congress holds the power to actually appropriate funding.
In February and March, House and Senate committees begin to prepare for appropriations hearings. Since appropriations bills have to pass like any other legislation, Congress holds hearings for appropriations bills. These hearings also provide a baseline to the agencies – like the Forest Service – about how much funding to expect. It’s also an important time for the agencies to make the case for their budgets.
March and April is when the appropriations committees are working to compile many budget requests and starting to put together their bills (to fund the government).
In May, June, and July, the House and Senate committees will start to prepare appropriations bills for various agencies, including Interior and the USDA. (This is what Outdoor Alliance recently submitted testimony on, asking the Senate to more robustly fund the Forest Service).
In August, Congress is on recess (which means they are in their home districts and not voting on legislation in DC). The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is a key player involved in appropriations, is ideally putting together a plan for the following year’s budget at this time.
The end of September is when appropriations are due, since the government’s fiscal year runs October 1 – September 30. However, in recent years, Congress has almost always had to pass a continuing resolution (CR), an appropriations bill that basically extends the current funding levels for a period of time, giving Congress more time to work out their final approach to appropriations.
In October, November, and December, if everything went as it was supposed to, it would be a pretty quiet time for appropriations and OMB would be working toward the next year’s budget. However, given Congress’s recent propensity for waiting until the 11th hour to pass spending bills, it’s become an extremely busy time for appropriations, with many advocacy groups and agencies making late-breaking pitches for funding and having intensive negotiations, which have shut down the entire government more than once. It’s also the last time to work with the agencies to make the case for their programs. When a CR expires (usually at the end of December), it’s a rush for Congress to pass funding bills.
There are numerous ways Outdoor Alliance and our member groups are advocating for strong appropriations for public lands and waters during this process, including this recent policy letter to the Senate on their budget hearings and our report making the case for a bold investment in the Forest Service. In our recent letter to the Senate, we advocated for a greater increase in funding to the agencies given the high levels of participation in recreation, the increased stress on lands and waters from the climate crisis, and the urgent need to rebuild the workforce of the agencies.
Individuals can also make a difference by writing their members of Congress and asking them to advocate for better appropriations for land management agencies and other outdoor recreation programs. If your elected official is a member of an appropriations committee, you have a particularly important voice! (Check out the House committee here and the Senate committee here). Over the last few years, legislation like the Great American Outdoors Act and permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund have helped provide targeted funding streams for important funding needs, like establishing new parks and addressing the maintenance backlog. These bills passed because of advocacy from people who care about the outdoors. As we move forward, the outdoor community has a critical role to play in making sure the agencies have secure, long-term, robust funding increases that allow them to steward public lands and waters and provide opportunities for outdoor recreation that so many people in America enjoy.