I had run Forest Service campgrounds for a good part of my career.
Some have been contracted to concessionaires and others are run directly by the Forest Service. As with anything, it depends upon the quality of the company and personnel running the campground (whether USFS or contracted).
It also depends upon the specifics of the concessioner agreement. A campground with low attendance will often not attract a quality concessionaire. Sometimes, the agreement is watered down to encourage a contractor to take the site and still be able to make money at doing so. These are the sites which tend to suffer the most.
As to the deferred maintenance, all national forests went through an inventory and analysis exercise during the past 10 years or so. This identified the amount of deferred maintenance and also the use levels and priority for maintenance. In the analysis for the forests that I am familiar with, the deferred maintenance was PRIMARILY for replacing vault toilet facilities that were installed in the 1960's and therefore failed to meet ADA (Americans with Disability Act) requirements. Most USFS campgrounds are primitive and have few developed facilities, other than vault toilets and a well for potable water somewhere within the campground.
If the national forest had people who were on the ball, the opportunity for eliminating much of their deferred campground maintenance (replacing those outdated, non-barrier-free vault toilets, some with cracked vaults) presented itself during the last recession. The ARRA program (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) was designed to let contracts (get people back to work quickly) for many projects, such as road improvement, etc. We took that opportunity to apply for and receive ARRA funds to replace nearly all the outdated and in need of replacement vault toilets at each of the nearly 40 campgrounds on the national forest. This not only modernized the toilets (less smell, easier maintenance, barrier free access, better locations) but served to eliminate much of the deferred maintenance of the recreation program.
Of course, not all national forests were ready to move forward so quickly (the turnaround time to compete for ARRA funding was incredibly quick).
I agree with Korby's comment. It really depends upon the concessionaire agreement, the quality of the concessionaire, and the quality of the federal people administering the agreement. Many such agreements work very well and to the benefit of campers and taxpayers. Some, of course, do not. I believe it is best to have a mix of federally managed campgrounds and concessionaire managed campgrounds. But all campgrounds on federal land should remain in federal ownership with federal oversight, which is the current situation.
I am not as familiar with NPS deferred maintenance, but many NPS sites have far more developed recreation facilities often not tied to their campgrounds. Large visitor centers, historic lodges, and other historic buildings, dining areas, as well as many administrative sites (offices, maintenance facilities, etc). that also figure into the deferred maintenance figures quoted in the article. In many cases, that major maintenance is the responsibility of the federal government and not the concessionaire operating the site. And the NPS's facility maintenance program has not been funded to catch up on that maintenance. (I won't get into a discussion about how NPS or any federal agency spends their money - that is another topic altogether). I was fairly surprised when visiting Yellowstone a few years ago that many of the facilities didn't even come close to meeting barrier-free-access standards, but yet I can understand why they don't, as the cost and funding to do so is enormous.
