Our environment and national parks are so well protected, apparently, that Sierra Club can find time to worry about who operates the campgrounds on National Park Service properties.
So, let me tell you a story. In 1995 I worked in a campground in Yellowstone National Park. Until the previous summer it had been operated by the Park Service, but in the dead of winter in early '94, they asked the company that operated the hotels to take over the campground. That is, they have a lease, or a contract to run it for a set number of years, at which time the contract goes up for bidding.
The Park Service's funding is politically determined. The revenue they receive isn't theirs to keep and spend on park operations, but goes back to the federal treasury. (At least it used to be so.) And If it doesn't meet their needs, they don't have many options for increasing revenue. Their primary response is to cut expenses. Their top priorities (again assuming my memory is correct) are such things as policing, trash pickup, and staffing visitors centers.
Two perverse consequences were that the Park didn't always staff the entry booths, so if you came at the right time you could get in free, and they didn't have much incentive to keep campgrounds open. So, in the campground I worked in, when a bathroom in one loop needed expensive repairs, they couldn't afford it and just shut down the loop (for a number of years, I believe). The official word was that a grizzly frequented the loop (it was loop G, so we called it Grizzly Loop). Given the adjacency of other loops, this isn't very believable, but a non-functional bathroom is.
The contracts the firms bid on contains language requiring them to dedicate a certain percentage of gross revenues into property maintenance (in the past, it wasn't so, and sometimes historic buildings were not well maintained). So the lodging company had a pot of money it had to spend on taking care of its various properties, and if it fixed the bathroom so it could open up G Loop, it could capture the additional revenue from it.
So guess what happened. Yes, the bathroom was fixed because the greedy corporate profit maximizers wanted more money.
The corporation also had a computer reservations system. Under Park Service management, there were no reservations. If you wanted a camp site you got there early and waited in line. Now you can reserve it long before you leave your home to go to Yellowstone.
In the end, what matters is the benefit received by the camping public. If private management gives the most benefits to the public, that's the way we should go.
The Sierra Club even tries to scare us with the claim that food trucks might show up at the campground! Dear god, how awful would it be for campers to be able to buy food! I mean, except from a campground cafe, snack bar, or gift shop - which, by the way, are frequently also privately managed. Of course if few campers want a food truck in their campground, the food truckers will soon realize they're not making money and will stop going. If they are making money, it means the campers do want a food truck in their campground. In which case, fuck the Sierra Club elitists. It's our national park or monument, not theirs.