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No shutdown for Hoover site
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · December 18, 2014
Neither the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site nor the Hoover Presidential Library-Museum heard from higher-ups regarding the threat of another government shutdown last week, possibly a sign that few in Washington felt it would really come to that.
Over the weekend, the U.S. Senate approved a $1.1 trillion spending bill that avoided a repeat of the 16-day shutdown in October 2013 of “non-essential” government agencies.
That shutdown included the two agencies in West Branch. The historic site is part of the National Park Service; the Library-Museum is part of the National Archives and Records Administration.
Neither Library-Museum Director Tom Schwartz nor Historic Site Superintendent Pete Swisher reported receiving communications from their respective parent agencies just before the initial Dec. 11 deadline for reaching an agreement. That deadline got pushed back first for 48 hours and then until Wednesday (Dec. 17) to give the two sides more time to reach an agreement.
“They’ve given us no guidance in terms of a shutdown,” Schwartz said the day before the deadline. “All I know is what I’ve heard in the news.”
Swisher said the same.
“I’ve heard nothing from up high,” he said. “Not at all. … I don’t even have a talking point on this. There’s literally been no word.”
Both Schwartz and Swisher said they took some steps themselves to prepare, but since they went through an actual shutdown in October 2013, they knew most of the procedures already.
Schwartz said he was a bit concerned by the uncertainty in the media about the outcome of negotiations between the two chambers.
“Given the atmosphere at this time, things are changing by the minute, so I’d have to see what happens after all the dust settles,” he said. “But I think if there had been serious undercurrents of disagreement (there would be a cause for concern) but we should probably take it as a good sign.”
Swisher said park staff did not seem overly concerned.
“There doesn’t seem to be any real panic in the staff,” he said.
Swisher did call a meeting to tell them about the lack of shutdown talk coming from NPS.
“It was better to go to them and say there is no news than say nothing,” he said. “Even though I haven’t heard from our regional or Washington offices, my staff deserved to hear from me that there wasn’t any news, and they remained fairly calm.”
Schwartz and Swisher said they were aware that their staff members were following the news just as much as they were.
“The sense that everyone has is that no one wants a shutdown,” Schwartz said.
Because of that sense, one thing the Hoover leaders did not do was warn scheduled visitors of the possibility of a shutdown.
“If things went sour, we would immediately contact those folks by e-mail to let them know,” Schwartz said. “In retrospect, what happened last October, when we were shut down for 16 days, there was a lot of warning ahead of time and it looked like a government shutdown was likely. Many schools automatically decided to take preemptive action and reschedule.”
Swisher agreed that the desire to avoid a shutdown “seems to be genuine.”
“I don’t believe it to be posturing,” he said, and part of that could have been because it is so soon before the Christmas holiday.
Schwartz said he thinks November voters and polls may have played a role in avoiding a shutdown.
“Just when you think you’ve hit bottom, there seems to be another low in the public’s perception of how they rank elected officials,” he said. “The polls keep putting members of Congress lower and lower. Everyone who ran talked about restoring voter confidence in government.”
Swisher noted that the park service is still under a hiring freeze — of sorts — from the sequester.
“I’m not encouraged to fill permanent positions now,” he said. He has lost three full-time workers in the past year — ranger Kristen Gibbs, gardener Michael Edwards and Chief of Maintenance Mark Denker — and has had to take additional steps to hire people, even if he cannot give them the same titles and pay and call them replacements.
“I can fill key positions, but there’s really a lot of work to go to the regional office and let them analyze our budget to prove we’re in good fiscal order,” he said.
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