Clock tower at Trump hotel kept staffed with federal park rangers despite government shutdown

As employees have been left unpaid and national parks forced to struggle with piles of accumulated waste by the partial US government shutdown, National Park Service rangers have continued to work at the Old Post Office Pavilion Clock Tower at the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC.

The attraction remains open and staffed, and visitors are still able to ride to the top of the 315-foot-high, nearly 120-year-old clock tower, an attraction housed within the federally owned building that is leased to the Trump Organisation.

Amanda Osborn, a spokeswoman for the General Services Administration, which owns the building, said that the shutdown exemption for the clock tower was “unrelated to the facility’s tenant”.

The agency said that the law that put it in charge of the site obligates it to keep the attraction open, even as federal Washington closes around it. Yet the sight of staffers working at the clock tower is sure to raise eyebrows, as the effects of the shutdown begin to be felt across the US.

Around 800,000 government workers have been left unpaid since the partial shutdown began on 22 December, after the president and senior Democrats failed to come to an agreement on funding a wall at the US-Mexico border.

The Trump administration decided to leave national parks open, but staff at Yosemite have struggled to clean bathrooms and dispose of rubbish.

Three people have died in the parks since the beginning of the shutdown.

Elsewhere museums remain closed and federal landmarks have been left unstaffed.

A watchdog group is now questioning why the clock tower has been exempted from the crisis, which has paralysed part of the government.

The group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking documents explaining why the tower was open, how it continues to be funded and any communications between the agency which runs it and the president’s company.

“At the very least, this smells funny.” said Noah Bookbinder, the group’s executive director. “We have not seen a satisfactory basis for why one park service property is opened when no others are. This raises tremendous questions about whether this property that intersects with the president’s business is getting special treatment.”

The General Services Administration (GSA), a government agency which helps run other federal agencies, pays for the National Park Service to run the building’s clock tower for visits by the general public.

The tower initially closed to the public after the shutdown started.

The GSA then noticed that the deal under which the park service staffs the site had expired, and renewed it. The park service then reopened the tower this week, the agency said.

The controversy is the latest story in which the president’s business interests have overlapped with the work of the federal government, creating the appearance of a conflict of interest.

With other federal sites closed to tourists or unstaffed, ranger Rob Lorenz said business has been picking in the tower “as tour operators figure it out”.

Additional reporting by agencies