Monday, October 7, 2013

Letter to Secretary Jewell

  
Dear Madam Secretary (Department of Interior)

The National Park Service employees 24,645 people and during this shut down 2,139 park police, EMS and fire personal have remained on duty.  It's clear the park system needs to be closed, however some closures were politically motivated and gives one insight to how populations can seemingly rise up against their government.

From the closing of 24/7 open-air memorials, to highway overlooks of Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon being blocked off, to reports from Park Rangers saying they have been instructed to make the shutdown as painful as possible... You Madam Secretary, have taken the government shutdown too far.

The Park Service has closed venues that simply aren't designed to be closed.  They have closed outdoor, normally unmanned, monuments, government roads, parking lots and in some cases individual parking spaces.  The NPS has prevented citizens from accessing their homes which happen to be on government land.  You have closed roads you don't maintain, marinas you share, entire waterways and even large areas of the ocean.

After past shutdowns, Congress has authorized government workers to receive back-pay.  This time I've asked my Representative to exempt NPS employees from back wages.  I know this is "unfair" to thousands of dedicated civil servants but a message needs to be sent and heard by you and the entire Department of the Interior.  Our national treasures, our monuments, roads, highway overlooks and parking lots are not to be used as political fodder and the NPS should have done everything within it's power to ensure as much access was granted as budget constraints, park police, EMS and fire personal staffing would allow.

Expending resources and man-hours to close things that aren't closeable was such bad form it underscores why many citizen believe that their government is at best out of touch or at worst fails to understand who government serves.  This country belongs to the people and "What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance" - Thomas Jefferson