Feds stand by decision to call workers back despite commute

The Office of Personnel Management is standing by its decision to direct more than 250,000 federal employees back to work in D.C. on Friday amid snarled traffic jams and long waits for the morning’s public transportation.

Metro trains ran as infrequently as once every hour along the Orange Line, while traffic on I-395 and I-66 were at a standstill for 30-minute stretches Friday morning as thousands of federal employees flooded into D.C. after four days of not working due to a series of blizzards that paralyzed the city’s transit routes.

{mosads}“The director has made very clear that this decision was made on the safety of the public and the safety of federal employees and not the inconvenience of a commute,” said an OPM official in an interview with The Hill.

“We have bad commutes around here all of the time.”

The OPM caught criticism over the course of the week for canceling federal work, especially from people in surrounding states who did not think the 3 feet of snow warranted a government shutdown.

On Friday, some morning commuters wondered why federal workers had been directed back to their offices with only one day left in the workweek and travel operations still not at their full capacity.

More than 100 people — including national weather experts, public transit officials, and all levels of government — advised OPM Director John Berry on how to proceed with the closing of federal work throughout the week. After numerous conversations, Berry directed workers on Friday to arrive no more than two hours later than normal or take a day off using their unscheduled leave time.

“He can’t wait for every flake of snow to be off the ground to open the government,” the OPM official said.

“The director gets so much information about what’s going on with Metro and they really get into details about what can we do tomorrow, what do we anticipate, what are the conditions right now and he asks for their opinion and unanimously they had thought it was a good idea.”

“And that’s why we have unscheduled leave because if you feel that you can’t make a safe commute that morning or if that area hasn’t been plowed then don’t come in; that’s what leave is for. I understand that people want to keep their leave, but that’s a personal decision.”

Snow removal crews worked throughout the week to clear main arteries through the region and many people saw Friday as their first chance to make it into the office and escape the cabin fever that had set in.

The Ballston Metro station was so crowded on Friday morning that police temporarily closed the station’s entrances to new passengers until trains could move people off of the overcrowded platforms.

Trains grew increasingly crowded as they traveled closer to the heart of D.C., so much so that many passengers opted to take outbound trains away from their destinations for several stops so they could board less-crowded trains headed inbound.

The former head of the OPM, Janice R. Lachance, said that directors of the agency have often been stuck in the precarious situation of making a decision that is inevitably going to rub some people the wrong way.

“The OPM director can rarely make a closure decision that satisfies everyone involved,” said Lachance, who served as OPM director from 1997-2001.

“As the OPM director, you get the best information and advice from the experts, but their views often conflict. The director’s job is to weigh all of these opinions while keeping the safety of the public as the paramount standard.”

“Inevitably, someone will be unhappy, but you have done the best you can in what is always a very volatile and uncertain situation.”

This isn’t the first time D.C. has experienced a prolonged shutdown of the federal workforce followed by a problem-fraught reopening because of inclement weather.

Over the winter of 1996 federal employees were granted three days off of work. When the OPM directed people to return to work on the fourth day, the commute was filled with delays and accidents, much like it was on Friday.