National Parks can give 99-year leases to current operators without new bidding.
S. 2498 — National Park System Long-Term Lease Investment Act · Filed by Thom Tillis (R-NC) · 1 cosponsor · Introduced Jul 29, 2025 · Passed chamber
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What it does
The bill lets the Interior Secretary extend leases for lodges, food shops, and stores in national parks. Leases can last up to 99 years. The current operator can keep the lease if they held it for at least 5 years. They must follow the rules. The Secretary must tell the public for 60 days that the lease might be renewed. If someone else offers better terms, the lease goes to auction instead. New leases for big projects costing over 100 million dollars can also last up to 99 years.
Who it affects
National Park visitors and the public use parks with lodges, food shops, and stores. The firms that run these places can keep their leases for a very long time. Congress must be told about renewals over 10 years and new leases over 60 years.
One thing to notice
A 99-year lease locks in one firm's control of park places for almost 100 years. It is hard to change the rules, prices, or food and shop quality for decades.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
1 cosponsor: 1 Republicans.
- Jul 29, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jul 29, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources”
- Jul 21, 2026 — Hearing held · Congress.gov: “Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks. Hearings held”
- Jul 29, 2026 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Ordered to be reported with an amendment favorably”
- Sep 30, 2026 — Passed the Senate · Congress.gov: “Passed Senate with an amendment by Unanimous Consent”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 2 reports from Dec 2025 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $100,000 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 5 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 0% of bills with any report.
Thom Tillis, who sponsored the bill, received $973,475 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- Tripadvisor LLC — $100,000 in 2 reports
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- Interior Secretary — The federal official who runs the Department of the Interior and oversees national parks.
- lease — A contract that lets a firm run a business like a lodge or food shop on public land.
- operator — A firm or person that runs a business.
- lobbying — Trying to influence lawmakers about a bill. Companies and groups pay people to do this.
- PACs — Groups that collect money and give it to candidates for office.
- sponsored — To sponsor a bill is to introduce it in Congress and put your name on it.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (5,287 characters) on Aug 20, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,778 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 19, 2026 · page rendered 2026-11-01.
“National Parks can give 99-year leases to current operators without new bidding.” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s2498/simple Report an error
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