More than 70 billboards across Ohio are calling out the Elon Musk-led team for staffing concerns at national parks, including Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
CLEVELAND — A wave of billboards skewering federal staffing cuts at Cuyahoga Valley National Park has appeared across Northeast Ohio, spotlighting concerns over reduced services and raising the specter of future privatization.
The campaign, funded by pro‑labor nonprofit More Perfect Union, features more than 20 billboards around Cleveland, more than 70 across Ohio and more than 300 nationwide.
Each carries a postcard‑style greeting — “Greetings from Cuyahoga Valley National Park” — paired with the tagline, “Now with reduced staff, made possible by D.O.G.E.”
DOGE is the Department of Government Efficiency, a Trump‑administration initiative led by Elon Musk that has targeted what has been deemed to be wasteful federal spending, including positions at the National Park Service.
Billboards explained
When asked why his organization chose to invest millions of dollars into the billboards, More Perfect Union Executive Director Faiz Shakir said the cuts assume that slashing public‑service jobs will go unnoticed.
“I think they’re operating off the assumption that they can cut government services and nobody will notice or care. I have a different view,” Shakir said. “It doesn’t matter how rich you are, or how poor you are, or where you sit on the income scale, you generally get the same experience visiting a national park. It’s a public good.”
Since January, the National Park Service has laid off roughly 1,000 employees nationwide, including some staff at Cuyahoga Valley. In 2024, when the NPS reported a historic high in attendance across the country, Cuyahoga Valley saw a record 2.9 million visitors, putting extra strain on the remaining crew.
“You’re likely to experience longer wait lines, more trash, all kinds of other issues,” Shakir warned.
Future concerns
The Trump administration’s proposed budget, released last week, would slash more than $1 billion from the NPS.
White House economic adviser Stephen Miran defended the plan, claiming “the government is operating doing the same with less, and that’s exactly what the President promised.”
But parks advocates have pushed back. Theresa Pierno, President and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association released a statement following the budget proposal, saying in part:
“The president’s proposed budget plan is beyond extreme. It is catastrophic. Every action taken so far by this administration has chipped away at national parks and their staff, but this budget is the final blow. If enacted by Congress, our national park system would be completely decimated…”
Shakir worries these measures set the stage for a “pay‑to‑play” future in which basic park access becomes costly.
“I promise you what happens then is it gets tiered,” Shakir explained. “Certain people pay for wonderful benefits and they enjoy a certain thing, and most of the rest of us get cut out. That’s the direction of being a non-public good.”
With summer crowds on the horizon, Cleveland-area advocates and visitors are left wondering whether staffing cuts will undermine the park’s mission.
3News reached out to the National Park Service and Cuyahoga Valley National Park to obtain exact figures about position and funding cuts under the Trump Administration. So far, we have not gotten those numbers back.
We’ll update this story with more information when it becomes available.
