Umbrellas up, suits donned, lanyards slung, employees of the federal government went back to work across Atlanta Thursday morning, for the first time in 17 days.
Medicare claims specialists, tax experts, environmental lawyers, park rangers. Awaiting them: Testy citizens who’d gone two weeks with no way to address problems, file applications, get documents or enjoy parks and historic sites.
Some workers found an ominous void in their in-boxes. Others faced mounds of paper and unanswered email.
“It’ll take some time but we’ll get caught up,” said Angie Cameron of Stockbridge, an administrative assistant at the Environmental Protection Agency. “I think everybody’s relieved Congress finally came to its senses.”
Tawanna Fields learned she was going back to work in the Medicare office by watching CNN. The shutdown “was an eye opener as far as the financial status of your family,” said Fields, who is currently the sole breadwinner in her home. Like more than 5,000 other federal employees, Fields applied for unemployment benefits to get her through the shutdown.
Those workers will have to pay back those benefits when their retroactive shutdown pay comes in.
For Fields and her colleagues, Thursday was a day for taking care of emergencies: a deluge of pent-up calls from people with claims they need to resolve, from congressional offices about constituents’ needs, and from health care providers.
The cafeteria in the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center was still closed until Friday, the menu on display from the first week in October.
A Mediterranean deli a few blocks away noticed a surge in lunchtime business. The owner said he lost $300 to $400 each day his federal customers were furloughed.
Across town at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, director Tom Frieden stood in the parking lot for more than an hour, greeting his returning researchers, whose jobs include analyzing disease reports to see if an outbreak is imminent or in progress.
Frieden’s spokesman, Tom Skinner, said the CDC “missed out on a really important window” of fall publicity for flu shots. Now, he said, when it comes to investigations and tracking, “there’s probably somewhat of a nervous anticipation in trying to figure out what we may have missed. …
“I think that’s something we really need to get down to the bottom of as quickly as possible.”
David Wynes, vice president for research administration at Emory University, said the ripple effects of the shutdown may continue for weeks or months. The pipeline for grant applications didn’t flow during the hiatus, which could mean gaps in funding down the road.
“I don’t want to take anything away from the fact we’re thrilled the shutdown ended,” Wynes said. However, he noted, Congress only funded the government through mid-January, “so we don’t know what happens after that.”
Average citizens shared his mixed feelings.
Bivie Johnson, 67, who lives in Thomasville, came back to Atlanta Thursday after making a pointless two-hour round trip last week to the Social Security office. Her rent check bounced when her Social Security check inexplicably came in short, and she was trying to get things straightened out. “To me it messed up everything,” she said.
For Robert T. Hazell, the good news was that he finally was able to get into the Internal Revenue Service office. When he showed up on Oct. 1 to meet a deadline, he met a locked door. Thursday, even after an employee told him he wouldn’t be penalized for missing the deadline, he wasn’t mollified.
“The American people are fed up,” Hazell said. “The federal government is not supposed to be closed. I was in the Army. Someone comes to us, do you think we can say, ‘The Army’s closed?’ No! I was available 24/7.”
Estimates of how long it will take to clear the work backlog varied from agency to agency, employee to employee. Some said days, others said months.
It was good to be back, many said, but the sacrifice seemed so pointless.
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