The National Park Service will not move its regional headquarters to Vancouver after all.
Buried in a nearly 1,000-page federal budget bill, which President Donald Trump signed Feb. 15, are six sentences that effectively block the move.
The legislation provides no federal dollars to rehabilitate a vacant federally owned building at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site as regional headquarters for the National Park Service.
According to KQED, the public broadcasting affiliate in San Francisco, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., inserted language into the appropriations bill to derail the relocation. Pelosi represents San Francisco, where the Pacific West Regional Office is currently located.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., also objected to the proposed relocation once it became public in June 2018.
The legislation chides the National Park Service for proposing the move without consulting Congress and other “stakeholders.”
“The service is reminded that major organizational proposals like this should be disclosed as part of the annual budget proposal so that Congress and the public have opportunity to vet them,” the legislation says.
Relocating the regional headquarters to Vancouver could save the federal government almost $4 million a year by eliminating rent and reducing salary and benefits.
The high cost of living in the Bay Area — and the difficulty that creates in recruiting employees — was one of the reasons the agency proposed to relocate to Vancouver.
About 150 National Park Service employees work in the regional office in San Francisco’s Financial District, where the rent is $2 million a year.
Andrew Munoz, a National Park Service spokesman in Seattle, told KQED that the park service recently signed a lease extension so it can remain in San Francisco until August 2023.
The agency’s previous 10-year lease was set to end in 2021.
The National Park Service’s regional office helps oversee 60 national parks in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington and three U.S. territories in the Pacific. The parks attract more than 65 million visitors annually.
The region includes some attractions that are among the crown jewels in the national park system, including Olympic and Mount Rainier national parks in Washington, Crater Lake in Oregon and Yosemite in California.
