SALT LAKE CITY — Governor Spencer Cox said the state is actively negotiating to keep Utah's "Mighty 5" national parks open during the forthcoming government shutdown, with the state government stepping in to fund park workers' wages.
"We're very optimistic about our ability to keep the parks open. Not so optimistic about the federal government staying open," Gov. Cox told reporters on Tuesday.
The governor said he had people in Washington D.C. negotiating to keep the parks in Utah open. In a letter the governor sent to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that was shared with FOX 13 News, the governor asked her to declare park employees "essential" to allow them to keep working throughout a shutdown. He said the state would temporarily fund the park operations and their salaries.
"I would be surprised if they rejected that," he said. "I think it would be very unpopular if they rejected it."
FOX 13 News reported last week that House Speaker Brad Wilson and Senate President J. Stuart Adams had indicated the legislature was willing to spend money to keep the parks open. Utah has done this before. In the 2013 and again in the 2018-2019 federal government shutdowns, the state stepped in to pay for the national parks to stay open. But Gov. Cox warned in his letter that the money was a loan — not a gift.
"We are willing to temporarily use state funds to keep the parks and recreational areas operational. However, I request that you first use the portion of the $1,665,700 that Utah paid to the parks during the 2013 shutdown that was never repaid to our state. If we do spend state funds, we expect to be reimbursed. In the same way federal employees ultimately receive back pay for the duration of a federal shutdown, whether they were actually working or not, it would be appropriate for the Department of Interior to ensure any funds used by the state of Utah to keep national parks and other areas open be returned to the state when the shutdown concludes," he wrote.
For Utah, there are significant advantages to paying to keep the parks open. According to the National Park Services' visitor spending report in 2022, Utah was in the top three states for total economic output from national park visitor spending at $2.6 billion. Gov. Cox said he was concerned about protecting communities that depend on national park visitation.
"There are entire communities that dry up if this doesn’t happen. It’s not just one or two jobs, it’s literally entire communities," he said Tuesday.
At the Utah Tourism Industry Association's conference in St. George, tourism officials were bracing for a shutdown.
"We have visitors that have been planning the trip of a lifetime. We’re projecting a million visitors at our national parks in October," said Vicki Varela, the managing director of Utah's Office of Tourism. "Some of them are coming internationally. They may have been planning and saving for this for years. We’ve got to do right by them to make sure they have some semblance of the experience they came here for."
Varela said the state and community partners are hopeful the parks will remain open and they can communicate to visitors that Utah will remain open.
"The most important thing for us in the visitor economy is that we do right by our visitors and we do right by our local communities," she said.
