Leggett: If NPS Doesn't Open Glen Echo Park, Montgomery County Will

Glen Echo Park—a national park in Montgomery County with locally managed programs and facilities, has been closed for the past two weeks as part of the federal government shutdown.

But, it might not be closed for very much longer.

On Tuesday, a day after Montgomery County Councilman Roger Berliner wrote to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell to reopen the park, Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett declared that if the National Park Service does not reopen the park by Thursday, the county will do it on Friday, according to a news release from the county.

The park, whose arts and cultural programs receive no federal funds, offers many programs and facilities managed and operated by a private nonprofit organization—the Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture, created in 2002 by Montgomery County, according to a news release from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County.

The park can operate without any federal expenditures, the news release stated.

"All the National Park Service does at Glen Echo is grounds maintenance, trash collection and provide security," Leggett said on Tuesday. "If the National Park Service will open Glen Echo, Montgomery County will provide these services until the government shutdown ends. If NPS does not reopen Glen Echo by Thursday, the county will."

The partnership and its nonprofit partners—which include the Adventure Theatre Musical Theater Center, the Puppet Co., dance organizations and visual artists—"have been barred from entering the park and cannot retrieve their property or collect their mail. According to the [Glen Echo] Partnership, the negative impact to their organizations is amounting to losses of approximately $25,000 a day," the county's news release stated.

"The financial impact of the closure thus far is potentially devastating," Katey Boerner, executive director of the Glen Echo Park Partnership, said. 

The county's arts and humanities council added that "despite working countless hours to relocate as many arts classes and programs as possible, the Glen Echo Park Partnership and its resident arts organizations and other partners have already lost [more than] $250,000 and stand to lose much more if the shutdown continues."

U.S. Rep. Christopher Van Hollen (D-District 8) said that "this issue could be solved today if House Republicans would allow a vote to pass the Senate bill and reopen the federal government."

"While the shutdown continues, I have urged the National Park Service to ensure that its policy toward parks with private partnerships, like Glen Echo, is applied consistently so the park can continue operations with its own, non-federal funds," said Van Hollen, who demonstrated on Saturday how a recent rule change in the House of Representatives could make ending the shutdown very difficult.