Changes to the Budget May Affect Your Next Visit to the GSMNP
A GSMNP hiring freeze could ruin your next trip to the park … here’s how
A political battle in Washington D.C. is leaving the most visited National Park in the country stuck in the middle. Here’s what you need to know.
Let’s start here: The Great Smoky Mountain National Park is enormous. It is 4/5ths the size of Rhode Island and attracts more people each year than the population of Belgium. It is, by any stretch of the imagination, a massive operation.
So, how many people are needed to operate the park efficiently and safely? We may all soon find out the hard way. The Smokies, along with the rest of the country’s national parks, forests and lands, are caught amid a political battle. This battle may determine the nation’s course moving forward. But it could also end up as a blip in the grander scheme of things. Of course, we can’t know the future. However, this season in the mountains may be unlike any we’ve known in the 90-year history of the park.
IN THIS ARTICLE
A budget battle hitting close to home
To be clear, we didn’t get into the business of blogging about the Smokies to wade into national politics. We certainly find the mountains a great respite where cell signals can’t find us. It is a place where we can unplug and enjoy the wonders of the mountains. But, if we’re being honest, there were politics at play in the creation of the parks. And those politics have never gone away. Over the generations, the parks have served as a political football kicked back and forth in the endless – and often mindless – game that is politics.
The latest kick – if we continue our football metaphor – has experts across the country – and right here in the Smokies – questioning just how beloved our mountains and national parks are in general.
What is causing the issue?
President Donald Trump has positioned Elon Musk as the head of a new agency called DOGE, an acronym based on the failed cryptocurrency Musk played around with. And DOGE is charged with rooting out rot and bloat in the federal government. It is a task that has been taken swiftly and seemingly indiscriminately in the days since Trump was inaugurated for the second time. There have been hiring freezes and widespread offers of buyouts designed to reduce the number of federal employees drastically.
While controversies abound, the issue that will directly affect the Smokies is massive cuts to the National Park Service and other organizations under the umbrella of the Department of the Interior. The numbers are changing somewhat day-to-day as adjustments have been made. Currently, there are 1,000 full-time seasonal NPS workers affected by the hiring freeze. Also, per USA Today, other positions affected include about 3,400 in the U.S. Forest Service, 800 in the Bureau of Land Management, and 400 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
In addition, the recently passed spending bill would cut about 6% of the park’s service budget. And it’s not like the park service was over-funded before the cuts.
What does that mean?
It is not good. According to experts from national park support organizations, if the hiring freeze isn’t lifted in time, services at national parks across the country will be affected. Informational services could be affected. There may not be enough workers to staff campgrounds, monitor fires – and everywhere but the Smokies – ticket booths. Longer lines should be expected and more traffic delays. Last summer in the Cove, whenever there was a backup around a bear sighting, the team quickly arrived on the scene. Traffic was directed to keep people from endangering themselves or the wildlife.
Under the new plan, the park may not have enough staff to provide that service. Or even keep the Cove open at its current schedule. Another affected area could be law enforcement. According to a source, some of the park’s law enforcement is of the seasonal full-time variety. Infrastructure and maintenance could be affected as well. Toilets will be pumped less. Trash pickup will be less often.
But wait there’s more
The hiring freeze also comes in the wake of across-the-board firings of “probationary employees.” Federal employees taking a new job or accepting a new position are placed on a 1-year or 2-year probationary period. These can be new hires or long-term federal employees being promoted or moving to a new position. The president – apparently at the behest of Musk, who recently made a bizarre public appearance yielding a chainsaw – convinced 77,000 federal employees to resign with a deferred resignation offer.
However, reports have been mixed about whether or not that offer included a “buyout.” It appears a buyout was offered in some instances. But it’s unclear whether the president is authorized to make such an offer. Or whether those who accepted a deal have or will receive the payments through the end of September.
After the deferred resignation offer deadline passed, the administration announced plans to lay off nearly all employees who were in their probationary period. This includes employees with decades of service who’d recently moved to new jobs. The exact numbers have not been released. But the AP reports there were about 220,000 federal employees with less than 1 year on the job as of March last year. Because of the relative lack of transparency provided, it’s hard to nail down home many more employees – in addition to the hiring freeze – have been affected in the Department of Interior, which includes the NPS. The Associated Press quoted Stacy Ramsey, a ranger at the Buffalo National River in Arkansas. She was in the first year of a four-year contract.
“Did those who made the decision know or care that the main objective of my position is to provide preventive search and rescue education, to keep park visitors safe?” the AP quoted her as saying.
Were the cuts needed?
Supporters of the cuts have said it’s a sorely needed reduction in government. However, others are questioning the prudence of cutting in a manner that can best be described as willy-nilly.
“There is nothing ‘efficient’ about indiscriminately firing thousands upon thousands of workers in red and blue states whose work is badly needed,’’ said Sen. Patty Murray. D-Wash., vice chair of the Appropriations panel, blamed both Trump and Musk.
“Two billionaires who have zero concept of what the federal workforce does are breaking the American government — decimating essential services and leaving all of us worse off,” Murray said.
The impact of a reduced staff
Phil Francis, chair of the Executive Council of The Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, told the Mountain Press, “That’s going to be a significant reduction in the number of permanent staff or staff that might be available to do the whole wide variety of jobs that you find in any National Park. Whether interpretation, law enforcement, maintenance, or it could be administrative employees.”
Francis worked for the NPS for 41 years and was both acting and deputy superintendent of the GSMNP.
“It’s going to have an impact on customer service,” Francis said. “It could have an impact on the ability to protect and preserve those natural and cultural resources that are found in the park.”
Tim Whitehouse, executive director of the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, painted a bleaker picture in an interview with the Federal News Network.
“It will depend on the park. But certainly, most visitors will see dirty facilities. They’ll see canceled performances. They might find unsafe campgrounds. They’ll find overflowing trash,” he said. “They’ll find fewer staff to provide interpretation services and historical stores to the visitors. And there’ll also be major impacts on the surrounding communities. They rely on these seasonal workers who both live and spend their money in these communities.”
Is the park service budget that big of a part of the problem in Washington that it’s worth damaging our National Parks? I wouldn’t think so. Francis said the NPS is less than a 16th of 1% of the federal budget.
An already lean workforce
Multiple sources added that the park has already endured a 20% reduction in employees from 2010 forward. The Blue Ridge Parkway saw a more significant decrease. However, it should be noted the parks employ about 20,000 people. This means the 1,000-position hiring freeze represents 5% of the workforce.
I spoke with Danny Thomas, former Mayor of nearby Morristown and former full-time seasonal park ranger who retired a while back. Thomas – who called the park service budget lean – said it’s been almost like a skeleton crew for the last 10 or 12 years.
“They’ve been lean for a long time,” he said. “It would be hard to be leaner.”
Thomas concurred mostly with the prevailing opinion of the impact of losing the seasonal workers. Unless the hiring freeze is lifted, he said, it’s going to be hard for the park to offer its usual programming. He pointed to traffic and law enforcement as areas likely to be affected. One perspective that Thomas added was that while the freeze will be an issue if not lifted in time, the parks have long been at the center of political arguments. They have been used by both sides to try and drive public opinion.
What’s next?
Hard to say. The way DOGE is just hacking its way through the federal budget – like a blindfolded monkey with a scythe – is being applauded by some but lamented by others. Francis called the move arbitrary and capricious and is among those against the cuts. While we hope for a more thoughtful, surgical approach, it doesn’t seem like one is forthcoming.
However, those at DOGE – or whoever is applying their decisions once made – have shown a willingness to reconsider. It’s a cut-first, respond-to-outrage-later kind of operation. Originally, there were an additional 5,000 part-time seasonal positions frozen, but that freeze may have been thawed. Also, some employees with years of service were rehired within the last few days.
How can you help?
Maybe, if enough people object, the powers that be will decide the current hiring freeze, which doesn’t affect the federal budget much, should be lifted. If so, life in the Smokies and beyond will move forward as before through the spring and summer seasons. Or maybe this year national parks will see more trash and waste, less safety and shorter hours that they can be available to the public.
Francis and others are calling for the public to reach out to their elected officials and try to influence them to get the powers that be reverse course. This method is evidently somewhat effective. While writing this piece, according to the AP, According to the AP, ‘dozens’ of NPS jobs were restored following an ‘uproar.’ And there may be a plan to hire seasonal workers.
“It’s a real concern to me, and it should be a real concern to those folks that are visiting the parks,” Francis told the Mountain Press. “It would be great if the public were to say, ‘You know what? These are special places. I love going there. My family has been going there for 50 years, and look at what’s happening.’ I wish the public would speak up to protect the property that they own.”
And as always, it helps to be good stewards of the park.
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