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New report makes case for privatizing state parks

Using his considerable private-sector experience, Commissioner George Ward is making progress in introducing innovative practices to stop the bleeding in the Kentucky State Parks system. Yet Kentucky’s parks continue to lose vast sums of money and are saddled with large deficits.

Years of neglect have created a “two steps forward, one step back” operating environment that attempts to deliver private services by public employees. According to a report published today by the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, succeeding in this Herculean task is simply not possible.

“Mousetraps and stale coffee: Making the case for privatizing Kentucky State Parks” is authored by Joel Peyton, a senior economic major at Western Kentucky University and an intern with the Bluegrass Institute.

While Ward has introduced some beneficial changes, Peyton says the only way Kentucky State Parks will flourish is by utilizing the magic of private incentives, which will occur only when the delivery of park services are contracted to private vendors.

Peyton worked for three summers at the front desk at Cumberland Falls State Park where he observed an inefficient operation indicative of most government-run operations.

“The Kentucky State Parks system is a bungling and uneconomical agency,” he says. “It’s the equivalent of a worker filling a hole followed by a second worker who re-digs it and a third worker who fills that same hole back up.” 

In this new study, Peyton shows how other parks systems – including those in Georgia, British Columbia and Ontario – turned deficits into profits and returned smiles to customers’ faces by privatizing services, including park operations, maintenance and online reservations.

“As long as Frankfort is in charge, our state parks will continue to waste taxpayers’ dollars and operate inefficiently,” he writes. “Kentucky State Parks can be a national treasure and do not deserve to be operated so poorly. When private incentives are allowed to work, our parks system can turn today’s rough lump of coal into a beautiful diamond.”

For a clean color copy of the entire report, click here.

The Bluegrass Institute is an independent research and educational institution offering free-market solutions to Kentucky's most pressing problems.

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