Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Small cities feel shutdown squeeze
Furlough of federal workers drains cash from local businesses
The furlough of federal workers drains cash from some local businesses far from Washington.
OGDEN, Utah — The snowy streets of Ogden are quiet these days. Parking lots are half-empty. Restaurant sales have dropped. Without federal workers to serve, Bickering Sisters cafe has cut the hours of its lunch service.
More than 4,000 federal employees who work for the IRS and U.S. Forest Service have been furloughed from their jobs in this outdoorsy haven north of Salt Lake City as part of the partial government shutdown. The closing of federal offices has reverberated across this city of 87,000, where roughly a third of annual revenue comes from the sales tax.
Far away from the behemoth federal office complexes in Washington, small towns and cities with workforces dependent on government jobs are beginning to feel the pinch of the more-than-2-week-old shutdown.
Many of the affected federal workers — including 10,000 people in Utah, 6,200 in West Virginia and 5,500 in Alabama — have salaries far below the average $85,000 for government employees. But those paychecks drive local economies, and workers are starting to make tough choices about how to spend them, creating a ripple effect through the neighborhoods and towns where they live.
With President Donald Trump predicting that the shutdown could last months or even years, these towns are preparing for a long-term economic blow.
“The lunches that are missed and the shopping that is missed, people are staying at home, and that really hurts our small-business community,” said Tom Christopulos, director of community and economic development for Ogden. He expects that the town will take a hit on its weekly sales tax revenue of $314,000, which could delay parks and roads projects.
Furloughed IRS employee Krystle Kirkpatrick, 31, said she and her family of four can scrape along on her partner’s machinists salary for a while, but she’s already thinking about signing up to be a plasma donor to earn some extra cash. That would bring in $200.
“It’s not OK with me for my job to be used as a bargaining chip when people on either side don’t get what they want and they can’t come to an agreement,” she said. “I just want to work.”
About 2,200 workers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., have been furloughed, leaving nearby restaurants worried about the economic fallout. Workers are making plans to cut back on expenses, anticipating the budget crunch after the first direct deposit doesn’t arrive in the coming days.
For Meghan Nester, a Huntsville resident whose husband has been furloughed from the NASA facility, that’s when things will get “a lot more real.”
Some needs will have to be delayed for her singleincome family of five, she said. The stove will remain broken, and she’s not sure whether she’ll be able to pay the $1,000 deposit for her child’s braces.
In Clarksburg, W.Va., a struggling industrial city reinventing itself amid a declining coal industry, a massive FBI complex has become a bulwark of economic stability.
The burgeoning Interstate 79 technology corridor between Clarksburg and Morgantown, W.Va., has attracted NASA, the Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with the 2,500 employees at the FBI facility.
Now, that economic foundation is shaking. Workers at the FBI crime lab are deemed essential, so about 2 in 3 remain on the job without pay.
The shutdown is also hitting private contractors and support staffs, local industries that have flourished with the growing federal presence.
Restaurants and gas stations nearby are expecting reduced sales.
“As each day goes by, I’m sure you’re going to worry some more,” said Jim Estep, president and CEO of the High Technology Foundation, which lobbies for federal agencies to relocate to West Virginia.
In a state where nearly 70 percent of voters supported Trump in 2016, the political fallout is mixed, Estep said.
“You’re going to have half our population saying, ‘Hold out for that wall! Hold out for that wall!’ ” he said. But, he added, “Those involved in the federal contracting business are going to say, ‘Look, compromise!’ ”