WASHINGTON – It came a little late, but National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis has apologized for unethical behavior that he was investigated for last year.
The behavior was connected to a book about national parks he wrote for a nonprofit organization that has a cooperating agreement with the agency. The Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General said he had the book published without getting approval from the department’s ethics office.
Jarvis received no pay for writing the book. It was published by Eastern National, a nonprofit that operates stores in many parks.
“We found that although Eastern National did not pay Jarvis to write his book, he did ask that any ‘royalty’ he would be due as the author go to the National Park Foundation, a nonprofit that fundraises for NPS, and that the book’s copyright be filed in his name so that he could later donate it to the Foundation,” the IG’s office wrote in a report dated Feb. 25. “In addition, Jarvis approved Eastern National’s use of NPS’ ‘arrowhead’ logo on the book’s cover, believing that one of the nonprofit’s two agreements with NPS allowed this; neither did, however.”
In an email to employees sent on the Friday afternoon before the long Memorial Day weekend, Jarvis said, “I made an error in judgment for which I want to apologize. I wrote a book to celebrate the National Park Service’s Centennial without appropriate appreciation and regard for my responsibility to follow established processes, including consulting the Department of the Interior’s Ethics Office, before it was published. I have been held accountable and I have learned a valuable lesson.”
That lesson apparently took time to sink in. “I failed to initially understand and accept my mistake,” Jarvis wrote. “That was wrong.”
Jarvis recently came to Maine to attend public forums on a proposed North Woods national monument on land that would be donated by the family of entrepreneur Roxanne Quimby.
Michael Connor, the deputy Interior secretary, disciplined Jarvis about his book, saying he “did violate Federal employee ethics standards,” in a Feb. 23 memorandum to Mary L. Kendall, the deputy inspector general. That memo cited a Nov. 19 IG report about its investigation of Jarvis.
Ironically, Jarvis was manager of the Park Service’s ethics program and the name of the book is “Guidebook to American Values and Our National Parks.”
Jarvis received a written reprimand, he was dismissed as manager of the ethics program and he is required to attend monthly ethics training.
Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, raised questions about the apology. “This apology,” Ruch said, “coming months after the facts, suggests that it is not a voluntary act, but was ordered from above.”
The apology comes as the agency pursues a controversial plan to allow recognition of Park Service donors in a way that looks like corporate advertising. Park banners feature logos for Budweiser and other companies. The Government Accountability Office published a picture of a Park Service car with advertising for Subaru.
“Beyond his personal misconduct, the episode illuminates the potential array of ethical problems posed by having Park Service employees, down to the superintendent level, involved in fundraising and acting as fundraisers – as Mr. Jarvis proposes,” Ruch said. “Our concern about both his book and his new fundraising plan is that they cheapen the Park Service brand but yield nothing in return.”