The partial government shutdown, now in its third week, is costing the state of Hawaii, tour companies, four nonprofits and possibly hotels hundreds of thousands of dollars — and that’s just in relation to the USS Arizona Memorial.
Pacific Historic Parks, which supports the revered visitor attraction and three other museums in Pearl Harbor, paid out between $14,000 and $18,000 a day for the National Park Service to keep the memorial’s visitor center open for the first week of the shutdown, which began Dec. 22.
The state’s Hawaii Tourism Authority put up $126,000 to keep it open the second week. Tour companies additionally provided about $13,000 for a day of operations.
And now the Pearl Harbor organizations — Pacific Historic Parks, the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park, Battleship Missouri Memorial and Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum — have agreed to dig again into their nonprofit pockets to fund streamlined operations at $10,000 to $11,000 a day through Friday, officials said.
The three museums rely on the gravity of the Arizona Memorial to attract visitors through their own doors.
All the money amounts to donations that will not be recouped when the federal funding spigot is eventually turned back on.
Despite the money drain, Aileen Utterdyke, president and CEO of Pacific Historic Parks, takes the glass-half-full view. For nonprofits, “times are always hard. You have to watch your money very carefully,” she said.
But Utterdyke said Pacific Historic Parks — and by extension the other Pearl museums — is willing to go through some pain during the shutdown to ensure the Arizona Memorial visitor center stays open.
A total of 1.95 million people visited the Arizona Memorial in 2017, just under the 2 million who visited Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island.
“I believe in the park. I believe in the operations that we have out here. It’s a phenomenal site, and I think that we can get (financially) healthy again,” Utterdyke said. “It will take time, and it will be a slow process.”
The plight of the Arizona Memorial is one of the more tangible effects of the government shutdown in Hawaii. Some federal agencies are funded while others are not, making for a somewhat confusing picture.
Credit report website WalletHub reported that Hawaii is the fourth most affected state by the shutdown based on its high proportion of federal jobs, among other factors.
However, Hawaii congressional delegation members Friday were not able to provide the number of affected federal employees in the state.
Coast Guard affected
Among Coast Guard District 14’s 1,004 personnel in Hawaii, Guam and elsewhere in the Pacific are 835 active-duty members, 59 civilians and 110 reservists, said deputy public affairs officer Chief Sara Muir.
The active-duty personnel received a one-time paycheck Monday from funds moved from other accounts, but the civilian employees haven’t been paid since Dec. 22.
Eventually, the Coast Guard personnel — and other federal employees — will be paid back for the furlough days, but that doesn’t make it any easier in the short run to pay mortgages and other bills.
“Certainly, it’s a challenge,” Muir said. “No one ever wants to hear that their pay may be delayed. But Coasties join to make a difference, and our internal staff is working very hard to keep folks informed and give them options if they need additional resources.”
Search and rescue, ports and waterways, coastal security and environmental response are exempted from the shutdown, meaning those functions continue while some administrative duties don’t, she said.
Other impacts
Nine of 15 federal agencies are affected by the shutdown.
The federal court system is funded through Friday. After that, if a shutdown continues, cases would have to be prioritized with essential staff still on the job.
Without approval of a Department of Agriculture appropriations bill, its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program, or SNAP, is guaranteed to provide full assistance only through January.
The state Department of Human Services said that in fiscal 2014 the program for low-income and needy households “helped put food on the table for an estimated 193,565 Hawaii residents.”
Pacific Historic Parks’ Utterdyke said she’s heard of some people canceling their hotel stays with the uncertainty over government funding for the Arizona Memorial. She just doesn’t want the situation to tip further in that direction.
“We’re still open till the 11th, and we’re going to try to find more donations and funding,” she said. “Realistically, after the 11th I don’t know what we’re going to do. If we don’t get something else in, I’m not sure the nonprofits can re-allocate very much more.”
