Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Independence National Historical Park & Independence Visitor Center Corporation - Congressional Oversight Needed

Overview
In an April 3, 2008 editorial entitled "Mall Madness", The Philadelphia Daily News said that, "For nine years, the [Independence] visitor center and [National] Park Service have failed to come up with an agreement to run the center that might make the rules governing tour companies more consistent and less arbitrary... This is a shameful state of affairs." http://www.theconstitutional.com/news/inhp/mall.madness.pdf

Commentary (written by The Constitutional Walking Tour of Philadelphia)
Why is it that it took less time for America to land a man on the moon than it has for the National Park Service and the Independence Visitor Center Corporation ("IVCC") in Philadelphia to enter into an Operating Agreement? President Kennedy announced in May 1961 that he wanted to land a man on the moon and achieved that goal in July 1969. In contrast, on December 7, 1999, President Clinton signed the Gateway [Independence] Visitor Center Authorization Act (Public Law 106-131) which required that the IVCC enter into an Operating Agreement with Independence National Historical Park ("INHP"), a unit of the National Park Service. As we mark the law's ninth anniversary, no Operating Agreement has been signed, in spite of being statutorily-mandated.

The lack of an Operating Agreement is counter-productive and detrimental to the mission and effective transparent implementation thereof for both the IVCC and INHP. Without any written, detailed and publicly available Operating Agreement, then specific management activities and services are impossible to objectively track. Additionally, the flagrant non-compliance of the INHP and IVCC to execute this Operating Agreement has been detrimental to The Constitutional Walking Tour and other vendors since that Operating Agreement would presumably set some formal ground rules for the equitable treatment and rights of vendors at the Independence Visitor Center. In the absence of any Operating Agreement, The Constitutional has been unfairly treated and has been beholden to the wide discretionary powers of the INHP and IVCC that are used randomly, arbitrarily and capriciously.

Our Founding Fathers taught us that checks and balances are required for our system of government to work. However, a closer look at the IVCC reveals that there are few, if any, checks and balances with the IVCC and the National Park Service to ensure that the taxpayers' investment in these public trusts is effective, efficient and fair such that the Independence Visitor Center works as the United States Congress intended it to work.