As the clock ticks toward a possible shutdown of Minnesota state government on July 1, a lot of people are wondering what would really happen on that day.

• Would state troopers stop patrolling the highways?

• Would state-funded transportation projects — including some real traffic-cloggers currently under way in Rochester — come to a screeching halt?

• Would summer classes at state colleges and universities be canceled?

• Would the court system continue to try new cases?

• Would people still be able to renew their automobile registrations and driver’s licenses?

• Would nursing homes stop receiving payments from the state?

We could go on and on, but the fact is that no one really knows what a shutdown would mean. The state has already informed 800 law enforcement officers that they might face layoffs, and 35,000 other state workers soon will receive similar notices, but there’s no telling which ones actually would be idled. Private companies with state contracts have been informed that a shutdown could interrupt payments and disrupt existing contracts, but again, no one knows which contracts and companies would be affected.

Even history is, at best, an incomplete teacher. The government shutdown of 2005 kept 9,000 state workers at home, but most of the heavy lifting on the budget had already been done when the shutdown began. Funding was already in place for courts, colleges, state parks and prisons, so for a lot of people, the biggest inconvenience of the shutdown was a closed rest area as they traveled to their favorite vacation destination.

Things could be much different this year.

In the upcoming weeks, if the pattern of 2005 is followed, a judge will be appointed as “Special Master” to determine which services and employees are essential and which are not. It’s a very specific process. Six years ago, the special master determined that of the Health Department’s 1,387 employees, 209 were essential. In Public Safety, 851 of 1,457 employees remained on the job (including every state patrol officer, so be forewarned, leadfoots). Of MnDOT’s 4,828 workers, 3,829 were told to stay home.

Of course, even the process of determining what is “essential” won’t be devoid of politics. Lobbying will take place, either from politicians or from agencies looking to protect their employees and the people who receive their services.

We hope, however, that no one attempts to define state parks as essential services.

Think about it. The shutdown would begin on Friday, July 1. That’s the beginning of the best possible July Fourth weekend we can have. Every state park should be booked to capacity, and if the parks were to close, our politicians would have to face a lot of very angry constituents.

Good. That’s how it should be.

To keep our legislators motivated to avoid a government shutdown, we can’t think of anything better than the threat of barricades at the gates of Minnesota’s state parks during the biggest holiday of the summer.

If you have reservations at Whitewater, Itasca, Gooseberry Falls, or one of Minnesota’s other 65 state parks, we suggest that you contact your representative and senator.

Let them know that you and your kids don’t want excuses — you want to go camping.

— Rochester Post Bulletin, June 2