Government Shutdown and Privately Operated Federal Parks

The government shutdown in October was an interesting chapter in the business of private operation of public parks.

For years I have said that one of the advantages of private operation of public parks is that these parks are sheltered from budget shenanigans.  If the park  is operating with no public money, they can’t be closed when budgets are cut.  In fact, in all past Federal shutdowns, such as the two under President Clinton, private concessionaires in the US Forest Service stayed open.

Well, I guess this Administration was dead-set on making a liar out of me, because private Forest Service concessionaires were shut down in the recent budget battle.  In the early days of the government closure, we were told that we would stay open, as in the past.  Then we got the fateful call from a senior US Forest Service executive telling us that the decision had been made “above the Department of Agriculture” (ie in the White House) that we had to close.  So we did.

However, we filed suit in Federal court to block the closure, and on the last day finally had our day in court, where the Federal judge excoriated the Forest Service for closing us.

If you are interested, I documented the whole saga at my other blog, with all the articles on the shutdown collected here.

By the way, in the interest of fairness, if you want an opposing viewpoint from someone who seems thrilled that we were closed, see here (along with some of my responses in the comment section, if they have not been deleted).