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Mr. Hansen. Thank you. Mr. Radanovich from California. 



Mr. Radanovich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Being that Yosem- 

 ite is in my district, Mr. Kennedy, I wanted to go through a few 

 things and then ask you a general question about the contract pe- 

 riod. And it seems to me that to begin with concessions were al- 

 lowed to take a lot of responsibility off the National Park Service 

 so that private business could come in and run the food services 

 and lodgings of the national parks. 



My concern with what happened in Yosemite seems to be under 

 the idea of making the contract more competitive, it has really al- 

 lowed for perhaps a lot more intervention in the National Park 

 Service in those delivery processes in the park. 



As a humorous example, I was in the Wawona Hotel the other 

 day having lunch, and as you know, it is one of the premier hotels 

 in the national parks. It is a very beautiful place. And somebody 

 had mentioned that the National Park Service was in the kitchen 

 determining the size and amount of services that were to go on the 

 plate on each menu, and it struck me that maybe there was a little 

 bit too much going on here that private enterprise might be better 

 off without. What I want to get is your comment about 



Mr. Kennedy. Unless, Mr. Radanovich, the portion got down to 

 zero. 



Mr. Radanovich. Well, I was upset because it was smaller, but 

 my concern, and I would like you to comment, Mr. Kennedy, on the 

 fact that it seems to me that everybody knows that prior contracts 

 for services in Yosemite was a cash cow. It was pretty obvious, and 

 it created a lot of changes in the new contract with the new conces- 

 sioner that is in the Park Service right now. 



But it seems to me that it was really just an issue of price, and 

 that perhaps the government screwed up when they made the con- 

 tractual arrangement over the fee in the first place. And if you had 

 gone back and corrected that without making all the other changes, 

 barring your concept of competitiveness, it seems to me that that 

 would have solved the problem, rather than — I mean, you guys got 

 away with the 17 percent figure which you are not going to get on 

 very many other concession agreements. 



Mr. Kennedy. No, sir. Agreed. 



Mr. Radanovich. But that was an unusual situation. The other 

 comment, Mr. Kennedy, was with regard to being concerned about 

 the prices charged for food and lodging in the Park Service. I would 

 rather think that the Park Service reaction to that would be since 

 most of the services in national parks draw a captive audience, the 

 prices should be directly related to the fee that you get back so that 

 those funds can perhaps stay in the park. 



But my general thought is that I am more concerned about gov- 

 ernment intervention in the concessioner process rather than I am 

 making sure it is competitiveness, because if you make it too com- 

 petitive and unprofitable for private business to go in there, you 

 may be losing some of the benefits that you would get from conces- 

 sioners. I think the argument can be made that Yosemite Park and 

 Curry Company contribute a lot to the park outside of the agree- 

 ment that was there in place for many, many years. So my thought 

 was don't you think that it was really just a question of fees rather 

 than anything else? 



