No Arctic oil drilling? How about selling parks?

Pombo hopes threat will boost bid to tap refuge's resources

Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Saturday, September 24, 2005

Washington -- House Resources chairman Richard Pombo is circulating a draft of a bill that would sell 15 national parks and require the National Park Service to raise millions of dollars by selling the naming rights to visitors' centers and trails.

Pombo's spokesman said the proposal, written by Pombo's House Resources Committee staff, is intended only to influence lawmakers to support an item in the budget bill that would permit oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

If drilling continues to be banned in the refuge, Pombo's staff argued, the government would have to sell parks as well as advertising space on park buses, trams and ferries to reach the level of revenues expected from oil leases sales in the Alaskan refuge. <snip>

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/24/PARKS.TMP

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Pombo, incidently, is from Tracy CA, where (by some coincidence) there is a company named Pombo Real Estate: http://www.pomborealestate.com/

Pombo is known to have received money from Jack Abramoff ($2000 on January 22, 2003) and from various Indian tribes as well. Here's something I copied out a few months ago from a link that no longer seems to work:

http://www.thecommunityforum.com/PDF%20Files/RReport2004-V3-10.pdf

July 2004

CALIFORNIA REP. POMBO ATTRACTS RISKY INDIAN GAMING MONEY - Congressman Richard Pombo, longtime Congressional champion of agricultural interests in his state’s rural Central Valley country, and chairman of the House Resources Committee is raising so much money with his "Rich Political Action Committee: that some of his admiring supporters are worried. In an election year when his only opposition is a Democrat write-in candidate, Pombo’s PAC has been accepting significant contributions from some 31 Indian tribes, that together contributed some $76,000 according to the Political Money Line tracking service reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. Other contributions to Pombo’s PAC came from gambling concerns and farm groups, all of which, like Indian tribes, have issues that are subject to his Committee’s jurisdiction. As of the end of May, the total taken in since his PAC was organized in June of last year, totaled $300,000.

The Associated Press reported in late June that "at least eight tribes and tribal lobbyists gave the maximum of $5,000 each, including Jack Abramoff, who resigned in March from the Miami-based Greenberg-Traurig law firm" after the Washington Post disclosed enormous fees he had collected from Indian clients. One California tribe, the Barona Band of San Diego’s Mission Indians, contributed $5,000 to Pombo’s PAC during the Primary campaign this year and $5,000 more toward the General Election.