Don’t Worry About that Yosemite Vacation

National Parks will remain open even if the government shuts down, the Department of Interior announced Thursday in a move that could help assuage public anger at Republicans if Congress fails to agree to a budget.

From the Lincoln Memorial to the Grand Canyon, more than 400 National Park Service parks and properties have been the most visible faces of past government shutdowns.

The last time Congress failed to agree on a budget, in 2013, a group of veterans aided by Republican lawmakers ignored barricades at the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., to visit the site. In southeastern Utah, county commissioners decided to reopen Natural Bridges National Monument in an act of self-declared civil disobedience.

“We fully expect the government to remain open, however in the event of a shutdown, national parks will remain as accessible as possible while still following all applicable laws and procedures,” Heather Swift, an Interior Department spokeswoman, said in a statement.

She noted that some services that require staffing and maintenance, like campgrounds and full-service restrooms, will not operate.

“The American public and especially our veterans who come to our nation’s capital will find war memorials and open air parks open to the public,” she said.

Jacque Simon, public policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, said federal workers have not yet been given any instructions about how agencies plan to operate or whom will be sent home if a shutdown occurs. Keeping the parks open, she said, is a smart political move.

“The White House is very conscious of what’s popular and what’s not, and I think one of the memorable images from the last shutdown was World War II veterans who had come to D.C. to visit the then-relatively new World War II Memorial being turned away. It was not a good visual,” she said.

Simon said a shutdown would be an “economic disaster” for federal employees, and said she is concerned that national parks may remain open by the government paying contractors while sending federal workers on furlough. That, she said, would amount to an illegal privatization of the workforce.

“We will be watching that very closely,” she said.

Environmental activists criticized the plan to keep open the national parks, calling it dangerous to visitors as well as illegal under the Anti-Deficiency Act of 1998 that mandates the government can’t spend funds that haven’t been appropriated.

“It’s nothing more than a baldfaced attempt to divert Americans’ attention away from the GOP’s extreme agenda,” Scott Slesinger, legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement.