State Employees Move To Temporary Offices

AP/ Toby Talbot

Flooding from Tropical Storm Irene hit nearly every building in Vermont state government's office complex in Waterbury.

(Host) When tropical storm Irene hit Vermont, the State Office Complex in Waterbury suffered enormous damage.

Now, four weeks later, many of the 1,500 state employees who worked there have been relocated to temporary offices in Chittenden and Washington counties.

VPR's Bob Kinzel reports:

(Kinzel) For the past few weeks, the Shumlin Administration has been seeking out vacant office space in the central and northern western parts of the state because many of the buildings in the Waterbury Complex are totally unusable.

Hundreds of employees have been relocated to space in Burlington, Winooski, Essex Junction, Barre and Montpelier and others are still working from their homes.

Administration Secretary Jeb Spaulding hopes that most of the displaced Waterbury employees will be located in temporary space by the middle of next month:

(Spaulding) "The answer to how many are working, they're not all in their new locations but that doesn't mean they're not working. The last I heard there were over 1,100 of the 1,500 to 1,600 that were working. So we've really made a lot of progress in that regard and hope to have all the other people able to contribute constructively within the next week or so."

(Kinzel) And Spaulding says there was never any question that all state employees would continue to be paid if they were working or not:

(Spaulding) "Our view is that fairness is what should prevail and we're not going to not pay employees that have mortgages and other commitments because we don't have a place for them to work and can't arrange for them to work in their home. On the other hand, when people can work they will work and they will work at their regular wages and I think both sides of that coin are fair and what the taxpayers of Vermont would expect."

(Kinzel) Ira Sollace is the chief financial officer for the Department of Corrections. His office has just been relocated to space in Montpelier:

(Sollace) "Well we're working out of boxes, we just got settled last week. As an example we've run back to Waterbury a couple of times already to get things that we need and we have no telephones yet. We've just ordered cell phones for the staff here so at least they can be in communication. We just got IT connectivity the middle of last week."

(Kinzel) Are things beginning to get back to normal for Sollace ?

(Sollace) "A new normal. Our central office which was 60 to 70 people were in Waterbury now they're spread out, and that's a huge disruption when you're used to being able to really communicate directly and now it's either by phone or by email or whatever other electronics you cab use to do business."

(Kinzel) It's likely that lawmakers will decide the fate of the Waterbury Office complex this winter.

For VPR News, I'm Bob Kinzel in Montpelier