CASHLESS NATIONAL PARKS DEBATE

Justin Perrault writes:

Three Americans are suing the National Park Service over the agency's refusal to accept cash payments to enter parks across the U.S.

The Americans - from California, New York and Georgia - filed the lawsuit earlier this month in federal court in Washington, D.C., saying that the park service is violating federal law by not allowing guests to pay cash to enter various parks, monuments and historic sites.

The lawsuit says the park service's police violates a U.S. law that says that "coins and currency ... are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes and dues."

Justin Unger, National Park Service associate director for Business Services, told USA TODAY at the time that in recent years the U.S. Treasury created policies to reduce the amount of cash and checks handled across the federal government and many banks stopped partnering with the Treasury in that process.

The number of formal banks with relationships with the Treasury Department, where we could actually take cash, has really dried up especially in more rural or remote areas, he said.

That combined with the closure of many brick and mortar banks force park staff to take that cash even farther to deposit, costing both time and money. Death Valley spent roughly $40,000 a year on processing and transporting cash, according to the park.

Unger added that visitor behavior also played a significant role in the move to cashless. The amount of cash that we are actually being offered has significantly declined by tens of millions of dollars," he said.

Cashless transactions can also be processed quicker now that national parks have streamlined their various point-of-sale systems down to one system.

"We're not paying for armored car service. We don't have to pay for an employee to be able to shuttle cash back and forth or to have our law enforcement officers doing that," he said. "Instead, they get to focus on doing law enforcement, providing emergency services.

To read the complete article, see:
National Park Service sued over cashless entry at parks, historic sites across US (https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/national-park-service-sued-over-cashless-entry-at-parks-historic-sties-across-us/ar-BB1kf0vE)

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