Federal employees returned to work Oct. 17 after sixteen days of government shut down.
As widely reported, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives and Democrats in the Senate reached a deal Oct. 15 to return federal employees to their offices until at least Jan. 15. Budget negotiations to keep the government open longer are continuing.
The largest federal presence in Wrangell is the U.S. Forest Service, with 24 employees. Those employees were hard at work on their first day back trying to bring various systems online and return contractors — timber companies and road construction crews – back to work, said Ranger Bob Dalrymple.
“The employees are glad to be back,” he said. “It ends the uncertainty.”
In the meantime, forest service officials expected some delays while computer systems went back into operation, Dalrymple said.
“We’re just getting turned back on,” he said. “They’re all national systems. We’re starting those up and trying to get ‘em going again. It’ll take a couple days to get back running.”
The impact had shut down a timber sale on Zarembo Island, and suspended a road improvement project being run by a Petersburg contractor. Dalrymple expected the contractors to be back on the job.
“What we couldn’t do until (Oct. 17) was administer the contracts for payment,” he said.
The federal government employs more than 15,000 people in the State of Alaska, the majority of whom were sent home when the government shut down went into effect Oct. 1.
Federal employees deemed essential were required to come into work anyway without pay, like Borough Assembly member and TSA worker Daniel Blake, who declined to comment for this story.
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