I feel a bluff getting called. Governor Dennis Daugaard has offered to use "state personnel and resources" to keep Mount Rushmore open during the partial federal government shutdown. The National Park Service has said no, thank you, saying that the federal government can't surrender national parks and monuments to state control.
(Remember that Governor Daugaard has not made any comparable offer to repoen federal Farm Service Agency offices with state staff to process loss claims from West River ranchers who lost tens of thousands of cattle and sheep in last week's blizzard. Governor Daugaard's response to that pressing crisis is to urge people to make donations.)
But now Interior Secretary Sally Jewell has made a counter-offer: The Park Service will work with South Dakota, Utah, and other states that have made offers like Daugaard's to protect their tourism industry... if the states are willing to pay while the federal government is shut down.
Governor Daugaard says he's thinking about it. When he was offering to shift state personnel and raise private money to run the lights at Mount Rushmore, he was ready to mobilize immediately. But ask Governor Daugaard to add a line to the budget, to replace exactly what his Republican friends in Washington have taken away by holding the budget hostage, and suddenly reopening Mount Rushmore isn't quite the priority we thought it was.
Adding a swing by Mount Rushmore to a state trooper's patrol schedule doesn't cost much. Griping about traffic cones is free. But really running Mount Rushmore the way the National Park Service runs Mount Rushmore costs money.
The Governor may yet accept Secretary Jewell's offer and write a check to open the granite gates to the Shrine of Democracy. But past performance suggests he won't. Consider the ACA Medicaid expansion: Governor Daugaard refuses to sign South Dakota up for that program because he doesn't want to spend state money to cover health care costs for able-bodied adults. He also doesn't want to check a chance that the federal government wouldn't hold up its end of the deal and pay its promised 93% of the expansion cost over the first nine years. Secretary Jewell isn't offering to reimburse the states any of the cost of reopening the national parks, and there's no timeline for how long Republican kamikazes in Washington would keep the states footing those bills. Why would Governor Daugaard incur open-ended financial obligations to fund recreation for able-bodied adults?
We will learn this week if South Dakota is willing to put its money where its mouth is or whether Governor Daugaard will provide one more example of red-state moocherism.
But whatever the Governor chooses, we have to ask: why aren't we having this discussion about reopening FSA offices to help ranchers, or paying Brendan Johnson's staff to prosecute criminals, or providing state support for heating assistance on the reservation to keep Indians from freezing in the next snowstorm?