| OCR Text |
Show don't look for funds Hopes for federal funding for development of newly added portions to national monuments in our area were dimmed this week as Congressional sentiments on the January Jan-uary 20 action began to be heard before the House Appropriations Appro-priations Committee. Chairman Wayne Aspinall of the House Interior Committee Com-mittee told the Appropriations Committee that no funding should be granted for development of the newly added sections until Congress has ample time to study the action in light of whether or not the additions should have really been made. Not only should funds be withheld this fiscal year, Mr. Aspinall said, a specific prohibition against developing any of the newly added lands should be written into the general appropriations bill. Mr. Aspinall's reaction, we are sure, is not aimed at specific areas, but at the relationship between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government a relationship that can only suffer as a result of the last-minute presidential action. Park development funds have been difficult enough to obtain the past several years as it is, due to social welfare program growth, the Vietnam war and other factors, without with-out the added problem of strained relations between the Congress and the White House. The testimony this week, which included a statement by Mr. Aspinall that Congress in the past has been friendly toward the reasonable expansion of the national park system and that this attitude made the action untimely, just prove? what we have maintained since January 20: It wasn't what was done that was so bad, it was just the manner in which it was done. Park development, not only in these areas, but in other deserving areas such as the underdeveloped, understaffed, but potentially great Needles section of Canyonlands. may suffer for a number of years through withholding of funds, as a result of the presidential executive order. |
