In Washington D.C., members of the U.S. House of Representatives are in gridlock over legislation to fund the federal government, and Gov. Spencer Cox said Utah is planning for a shutdown. Republican U.S. representatives are in disagreement over proposed funding measures and their deadline to resolve it is Sept. 30th.
Cox said he and the leaders of the Utah Senate and House of Representatives want to keep national parks open if that happens.
“We are all in agreement that it's worth keeping the parks open,” he said, “It's so important to these shoulder communities that rely on the parks as the lifeblood, and so we are going to step up and do that.”
He said Utah also paid to keep its national parks open during the 2013 government shutdown, and the cost to fund the parks for about a month was around $1 million. He said the federal government never reimbursed the state.
Cox said the national parks department has enough money to fund the parks for the short term, but maybe not if it lasts multiple months.
“Obviously,” he said, “if this was a situation where a shutdown extended for several months, we would have to reevaluate and potentially call a special session for that. But we think we have enough right now that we can do that, and then and then we can adjust the budget next year.”
The most recent government shutdown happened in December 2018 and lasted 34 days, the longest in U.S. history.
