S. HRG. 105±817 DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 1999 HEARINGS BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION ON H.R. 4193/S. 2237 AN ACT MAKING APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF THE IN- TERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30, 1999, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES Department of Agriculture Department of the Interior General Accounting Office National Endowment for the Arts National Endowment for the Humanities Nondepartmental witnesses Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations ( Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 46±102 cc WASHINGTON : 1999 For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402 ISBN 0±16±057987±2 1 COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS TED STEVENS, Alaska, Chairman THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico ERNEST F. HOLLINGS, South Carolina CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont SLADE GORTON, Washington DALE BUMPERS, Arkansas MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey CONRAD BURNS, Montana TOM HARKIN, Iowa RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire HARRY REID, Nevada ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah HERB KOHL, Wisconsin BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL, Colorado PATTY MURRAY, Washington LARRY CRAIG, Idaho BYRON DORGAN, North Dakota LAUCH FAIRCLOTH, North Carolina BARBARA BOXER, California KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas STEVEN J. CORTESE, Staff Director LISA SUTHERLAND, Deputy Staff Director JAMES H. ENGLISH, Minority Staff Director SUBCOMMITTEE ON DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES SLADE GORTON, Washington, Chairman TED STEVENS, Alaska ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico DALE BUMPERS, Arkansas CONRAD BURNS, Montana ERNEST F. HOLLINGS, South Carolina ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah HARRY REID, Nevada JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire BYRON DORGAN, North Dakota BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL, Colorado BARBARA BOXER, California Professional Staff BRUCE EVANS GINNY JAMES ANNE MCINERNEY KEVIN JOHNSON (II) C O N T E N T S WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1998 Page National Endowment for the Arts .......................................................................... 1 National Endowment for the Humanities ............................................................. 27 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 1998 Department of the Interior: Office of the Secretary ............................................. 39 TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 1998 General Accounting Office ...................................................................................... 231 Department of the Interior: Bureau of Indian Affairs .......................................... 231 THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 1998 Department of Agriculture: Forest Service ............................................................ 309 Nondepartmental witnesses .................................................................................... 443 (III) DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELAT- ED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR FIS- CAL YEAR 1999 WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1998 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met at 9:30 a.m., in room SD±124, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Slade Gorton (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Gorton, Cochran, Bennett, Gregg, and Bump- ers. NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS STATEMENTS OF: HON. KATHRYN O'LEARY HIGGINS, ACTING CHAIRMAN; DEPUTY SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR SCOTT SHANKLIN-PETERSON, SENIOR DEPUTY CHAIRMAN BUDGET REQUEST Senator GORTON. I would like to call this hearing on the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Hu- manities to order. Those of you who are repeat visitors at these hearings will note a slightly smaller attendance this year than last. Partly, that is due to the fact that there are competing Appropriations Committee hearings this morning, including one in which I am interested, that have drawn others. Partly, I believe it stems from the impression that the appropriation for the National Endowment for the Arts this year, at least, is somewhat less controversial than it was a year ago and maybe, I may say, due to the fact that we do not have a permanent head of that Endowment at this point. That may be modestly good news for the defenders of the Na- tional Endowment for the Arts, though it still is a controversial agency out of all proportion to the share of the budget that it occu- pies. I think that Jane Alexander and the people who worked with her did a great deal of very good work in meeting the objections of many thoughtful people to the way in which the Arts Endow- ment was being handled and have certainly dramatically reduced, together with instructions from the Congress, the number of grants that were objectionable to a large number of the American people. I regard that as a major step forward in the work that we do here, much of which has been left up to this subcommittee and the fault of any action on an authorization bill for the National Endow- (1) 2 ment for the Arts. So, I commend the Endowment for the intel- ligent way in which it has operated over the course of the last sev- eral years. I can say that it will be very difficult to provide any significant increase in the appropriation for either of the Endowments this year. Last year, an agreement on the budget was made with the President that froze discretionary spending essentially over a 5- year period. The President has found a way to wiggle out of that commitment, but he is not going meet agreement on the part of the Congress in that connection. The budget resolution that will be de- bated next week does, in fact, call for a freeze. I do not know yet what the precise allocation to this subcommit- tee will be after the budget resolution is passed, but we are operat- ing on the assumption that it will be approximately the same num- ber of dollars as last year. You can see, if your eyes are extraordinarily good [laughter] the chart there on my left, which indicates the general division of the amounts of money that are available to this subcommittee. The long green line on the left represents the various activities we fund in management of public lands: our parks, our forests, our Bureau of Land Management. The blue are the Indian activities that are funded through this subcommittee. The purple, science activities. The orange, the portions of the Department of Energy, mostly re- search, that this subcommittee deals with. The next to the last one on the right, the dark blue there, are the cultural activities, includ- ing things like the Smithsonian, for which we are almost solely re- sponsible, and the Endowments. That is perhaps the best illustration I can give of the fact that the amounts of money that we are talking about are very dis- proportionate to the amount of interest that they create in the pub- lic as a whole. But we do want to give an opportunity today for a report on the stewardship of the Endowment in the last year and its plans for the coming year. PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR BARBARA BOXER We have received a statement from Senator Boxer which will be included in the record at this point. [The statement follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR BARBARA BOXER I am very pleased that the President has requested $136 million for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for fiscal year 1999. This reflects an increase of 39 percentÐapproximately $38 millionÐin the Endowment's current budget of $98 mil- lion. I strongly support this increased funding level. This increase would be used to support programs to target under-represented states, to support national leadership initiatives, and to support partnerships with state and regional arts organizations. They reflect the Endowment's efforts to con- tinue to bring the arts to Americans in every state across the country. Federal funding for the NEA is an investment in the education of our children, the strength of our economy, the preservation of our nation's cultural legacy, and the quality of American life. The NEA makes the arts accessible to all Americans, not just to those who are in cities or who can afford it. The NEA is a great investment. For less than 38 cents per American each yearÐ practically the price of a postage stampÐthe NEA helps bring culture, dance, music, and art to all Americans. 3 For every $1 in grant awards, the NEA is able to leverage $12 by requiring arts organizations and artists to match NEA funds with funds from state and local agen- cies, foundations, corporations, and individuals. Public funding of arts is good for the economy. In San Diego, California, arts and culture spending generated $6.4 million in taxes to the city and state, and contrib- uted almost $68 million to the San Diego economy. A recent study conducted by McKinsey consultants for New York City concluded that more government money should be spent on the arts because it generates taxes, jobs and economic growth far in excess of the amounts invested. There are several projects in my state of California which I believe represent the importance and promise of the NEA. In Long Beach, NEA funding supports an initiative by the city's Public Corpora- tion for the Arts to identify local traditional artists and to develop a series of folk arts presentations in the Long Beach area. A terrific example of public-private partnership launched with NEA funding is the California Cultural Tourism Coalition Initiative, an innovative program designed to promote San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco as cultural destinations through three-to-five day itineraries in each city. This NEA project is fostering exciting new collaborations among the cultural community, the tourism industry, and local hotels and restaurants. In Los Angeles, a group called Inner-City Arts is creating an arts education pro- gram for children in grades two through six in the public schools.