Federal entities in state reopen

Furlough toll seen lingering

WASHINGTON - Furloughed government workers in Arkansas and around the country began returning to work Thursday, hours after Congress ended its budgetary standoff.

The late-night deal Wednesday ended furloughs for thousands of federal employees who had been off the job for more than two weeks. On Thursday, the nation’s monuments and museums reopened, as did the offices of public agencies.

Passage of the 35-page bill, known as a continuing resolution, now allows the government to spend at fiscal 2013 levels until mid-January and raises the federal debt ceiling until Feb. 7. The bill also requires a committee to discuss broad budget issues until mid-December.

According to June figures from the Office of Personnel Management, 14,321 Arkansans are federal employees. It isn’t clear how many of them were sent home during the shutdown.

The 590 Arkansas employees who are at least partially paid with federal funds got the green light Thursday from Gov. Mike Beebe to return to work, said state budget administrator Brandon Sharp.

“They are expected to be back at work, and they will be paid for the time off,” Sharp said.

Those employees will receive their back-pay on Oct. 25, if their respective agencies complete the paperwork quickly. Otherwise, that money should arrive on Nov. 1, Sharp said.

The Arkansas Department of Human Services furloughed 64 workers and reduced hours for other employees during the shutdown. It is working to determine if the people who worked reduced hours can get paid for the time they missed, as well, spokesman Amy Webb said. One furloughed Human Services employee quit during the shutdown, she said.

Some tasks may be delayed as employees catch up on their work.

Most of the Human Services Department workers who were furloughed were child-abuse caseworkers, Webb said.

The furlough ramifications don’t stop there.

On Oct. 8, state Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said he was concerned that the joint state and federal lawsuit over the March 29 pipeline rupture that spilled more than 100,000 gallons of Canadian heavy crude oil into Mayflower would be delayed because of furloughs.

McDaniel’s spokesman Aaron Sadler said the office is now discussing the litigation with the Department of Justice.

“We anticipate moving forward as aggressively as possible with this case,” Sadler said.

State and county Farm Service Agency offices also reopened Thursday. Arkansas Agriculture Department Secretary Butch Calhoun said farmers hadn’t received help with crop loans or planning during the shutdown.

“We haven’t heard a complaint today. I think everybody’s pretty excited about it [reopening],” Calhoun said of the office. “Hopefully everybody’s learned a lesson.”

The governor echoed that sentiment, saying there is no reason for another government shutdown to occur. He urged lawmakers on Capitol Hill to “act like the folks they were sent up there to be.”

“I am as disgusted with them as I think the peopleare,” he said. “But now they have given themselves a twoor three- month reprieve. Now is the time for them to sit down and act like adults and work on lowering the deficit, work on the serious decisions that they need to [make], come together without the pressure of an ax falling on their head and do it now in a calm rational manner and don’t put the American people through this again.”

Early in the day, several state universities questioned whether their employees would be paid for their time off.

But Higher Education Department Director Shane Broadway sent a memorandum to college presidents and chancellors Thursday afternoon assuring them that all employees would get paid.

“The federal legislation also specially states that furloughed employees shall be compensated for hours furloughed during the shutdown period,” the memo says.

In addition, the Arkansas National Guard questioned whether there would be backpay for the 371 furloughed state employees it recalled Thursday. Five federal employees with the Guard also went back to work. A Guard spokesman said they are expected to be paid for the time off.

The state budget administrator said federal workers and state employees who are paid under federal grants will receive back-pay, so National Guard employees should be paid. Still, Guard spokesman Maj. Matt Snead said he is waiting to get the official yes from the Department of Defense.

Maj. Gen. William D. Wofford, the adjutant general for the Arkansas National Guard, said the effects of the shutdown on the Guard will endure for months.

“The past few weeks were hard on the Guard. We have a lot of healing to do,” he said.

The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers began reopening its campgrounds, day-use areas and boatlaunch ramps around the state.

Little Rock District Commander Col. Courtney W. Paul said in a statement that most sites would reopen by this morning, and all sites shouldbe open by this evening.

“Our ranger staff hit the ground running,” he said.

Paul also said campers who had been locked out, despite making reservations and paying money, would be reimbursed.

Arkansas’ six National Park Service sites reopened Thursday.

The 38 employees furloughed from Hot Springs National Park were back on the job Thursday. Mountain Tower, an observation tower that visitors pay admission to use, was closed the entire 16 days of the shutdown because park roads leading to the mountain were shut down.

Park Superintendent Josie Fernandez said she had no cost estimate Thursday on the amount of business and tourism what was lost.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees were notified to return to business Thursday and reopen national refuge lands. About 1,300 employees across the southeast region - which consists of Arkansas and nine other states - were furloughed. Hunting scheduled on those lands for this weekend will go on, regional spokesman Jeff Fleming said.

At the federal courthouse in Little Rock, government attorneys handling civil cases began filing requests Thursday that shutdown-imposed stays be lifted now that funding is restored.

Chris Thyer, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, said that while the shutdown officially applied only to his office’s civil division, it affected his whole office in “lots of ways.”

“From a pure numbers standpoint, about a third ofthe office was sent home as a result of the furlough,” Thyer said Thursday. He said that included all assistant U.S. attorneys in the civil division, as well as all workers in administration and staff positions on the civil side.

In the criminal division, most of the attorneys, associated administrators and staff members remained at work, Thyer said, and their duties and workloads increased. He said he struggled to find fillins to handle civil matters that proceeded in state court or otherwise couldn’t be delayed.

Thyer said he had to find people in the criminal division who were willing to be furloughed in exchange for allowing a civil-side attorney to return to work to handle “must-dos.”

He said that while some federal law enforcement agents were not furloughed, a lot of their support staffs - such as people who do backgroundchecks - were, which slowed the entire system.

Also, he said, his office contracts with special assistant U.S. attorneys in Dallas to handle civil Social Security appeals. Those cases were put on hold during the shutdown, he said, so now there is a backlog of them.

“It will take us some time to sort through all this and get back on our feet, back where we were,” Thyer said.

During the shutdown, one employee quit and accepted a nongovernment job, citing the need for a steady paycheck.

Information for this article was contributed by Chelsea Boozer and Michael R. Wickline of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 10/18/2013

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