Sequestration Hits Yellowstone and Local Communities Help Out

This is a good news article from the Denver Post about people working together to decide on what should be cut. Kudos to the Park Superintendent.

Here’s an excerpt:

Dan Wenk, the superintendent of Yellowstone, is the face of the federal government around Cody, and his popularity underscores the truth that it’s harder to dislike a neighbor than some faceless bureaucrat inside the Beltway. When the cuts hit, Wenk had to slice $1.75 million from his $35 million budget and do it with the fiscal year just about half over.

He trimmed his payroll. He scaled back travel and training programs. Finally, he decided to idle the Park Service snowplows for two weeks, saving $30,000 a day and leaving it to the spring thaw to help clear more than 300 miles of roadway.

The idea, Wenk said, was to ensure that there was money left to keep Yellowstone open throughout the peak summer months.

“We cut the budget in a way we thought was absolutely the least impactful,” he said.

Locals were nearly unanimous in their praise for Wenk and the way he worked with community leaders and state officials to find a solution that got the plows rolling. It is a lesson, they said, that Washington should heed.

“We just talked it through,” said Claudia Wade, marketing director for the county tourism office. “Everybody came to the table and said, ‘How can we work this out?’ Not, ‘Whose fault is it?’ “

In case it isn’t obvious, the communities around Yellowstone and the Administration are generally not of the same political stripe. Local physical realities tend to trump ideological inclinations.