'It's A Ghost Town,' Says Small Business Owner In Area Suffering From Shutdown
The federal government is fully re-opened. At least for the next three weeks as congressional negotiators try to hash out a border security agreement. And while the shutdown’s end brought some relief for more than 800,000 federal and contract workers who’d been living without pay, the lasting effects have left many workers distinctly pessimistic. And it’s not just federal workers. It’s their families, their communities, the businesses that relied on them as well. Among those in the latter camp: Tyler Lathrop, owner of A Good Life Café and Juice Bar, which is located in Ogden, Utah, on the same block as the federal building. About 5,000 federal employees who work for the IRS and the U.S. Forest Service work in that building in Ogden. Many of them were furloughed during the shutdown. Roughly one-third of Ogden's annual revenue comes from sales taxes, and of course that means the town are highly dependent on those incomes of the federal employees there.