EDITOR’s NOTE: Mark Stiles submitted this article before word came Friday that government would be reopened. We think its points about the effects are still valid.We’ve all become accustomed to hearing the news of yet another government shutdown.
But how do those shutdowns really cost all of us who pay for our federal government?
During my career as a federal employee, I experienced a dozen government shutdowns. Most of those were relatively inconsequential when it came to disruption of work or expense to the taxpayers, sometimes being resolved in less than a day or over a weekend. But the current shutdown has now surpassed even the extremely costly shutdowns of 1995 and 2013.
At the outset of each government shutdown, the news media tends to focus on federal workers not being paid, or national parks and monuments closed to entry or overflowing with trash. Those are the stories that we can immediately feel and see, but they only represent a small part of the overall impact and costs of government shutdowns.
The costs take many forms: delayed or displaced work, repeating partially completed work, financial losses to contractors and permit-holders, costs of preparations and follow-up for the shutdown itself, negative public perception of their government, disruption of employee finances, reduced employee morale and the eventual payment to employees who aren’t allowed to do their work.
In the days and weeks leading up to potential shutdowns, it becomes apparent whether the issues and differences can be worked out, or that a prolonged shutdown is likely. In the latter case, expenses start adding up even before a shutdown begins.
Affected agencies begin to learn of the guidance emanating from the administration. Senior officials at department and bureau levels enter a mad scramble to interpret the guidance for the rest of their organizations. Thousands of lower-level managers spend hours on conference calls to work through the details. Personnel offices hustle to put together instructions and letters to employees, contracting officers rush to complete, cancel or extend contracts and payment, and managers at all levels leave behind their normal duties to identify “essential” employees and put shutdown plans in place.
Discussions range from whether ski areas situated on national forests can be allowed to continue operations, how timber sale contracts and ongoing logging operations might be suspended, whether fuels reduction contracts can be suspended or will require the process to start over, whether job offers or change-of-station actions must be canceled, how statutory or regulatory time frames such as public comment on environmental impact studies can be extended and hundreds of other questions that must be resolved before the doors are locked.
Holiday season has become the most popular time for federal shutdowns despite the federal fiscal year, and the now-theoretical budget year, beginning Oct. 1. A shutdown during the holidays might seem less disruptive: many federal employees are taking annual leave and Capitol Hill all but empties, but shutting down the federal government at the start of the year hits public land management in Colorado and other western states at a particularly bad time.
Long-time wildland firefighters told me many years ago that if Colorado will experience a particularly bad fire season, you’ll know it by May and be fully into it in June. We all witnessed that last year with the 416 Fire, and we witnessed it in 2002 with a string of large Colorado fires beginning as early as April and peaking in early June with the Hayman and Missionary Ridge fires. We learned last year that the response to the 416 Fire was greatly aided by the additional firefighting resources that our Federal land managers wisely shifted from surrounding states to southwestern Colorado.
We learned in 2002 that many national firefighting resources – particularly aircraft and hotshot crews – were not yet available to us in June. That experience taught federal and state agencies to get started sooner.
January is a very busy month for fire managers. Firefighter vacancies are either on the street or being readied for announcement. The positions requiring more experience or developed skills, such as engine captains or crew leaders, are typically the first to get filled; they need the time to get situated, begin preparations for the season, and to help with the rest of hiring. Early on-boarding is essential to give time for training, preparation of equipment, physical fitness and fitness testing, and developing crew cohesion. Not only is there the direct setback of the length of a shutdown to delay hiring, there is also the inevitable catch-up work and new work resulting from the extended shutdown, especially for the personnel officers who are processing the vacancy announcements.
National contracts for fire aircraft, like the many we all watched here last summer, are typically in negotiations this time of year, as are contracts for fire caterers, fire-retardant delivery to air tanker bases, agreements with state and local fire cooperators, mutual aid agreements with counties, and rental agreements for critical equipment like bulldozers. Those contracts and agreements will likely be delayed by at least several weeks due to the shutdown.
Incident Management Teams, like the teams here last summer, are typically being built this time of year and would be preparing for the upcoming season. These are made up of state, federal and local fire managers. Nearly all hold regular jobs, too. Shutdowns compress or delay their team preparations as well as the federal employees’ regular work, in turn delaying state and local team member preparations. Wildland firefighting is an intergovernmental effort, delay one and you delay all.
Government shutdowns negatively affect all of us in many different ways, but wildland fire preparations and response are perhaps one of the most impacted. On the heels of a year in which we clearly witnessed the benefits of early, effective wildland fire preparations, we may be about to take a major step backwards.
Mark Stiles spent more than 32 years in public land management with the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. He retired in 2013 after serving as the forest supervisor for the San Juan National Forest for 11 years. He lives in Durango.
