The workload at many agencies is likely to be staggering. Federal workers return to a 'mess'

President Barack Obama officially reopened the government with the stroke of a pen shortly after midnight Thursday. The White House budget chief followed with a statement ordering federal workers back to their desks in the morning.

Now if only it were so easy.


Getting the word out to a half million furloughed employees that they should return to the office is hampered by the fact many had to turn off their work email accounts when the shutdown started.

Sure, they can turn on CNN or visit POLITICO for the latest news. But after sitting at home for 16 days with no promise of back pay, it shouldn’t be a big surprise if some workers had tuned the bickering politicians out.

When they do return, the workload at many agencies is likely to be staggering.

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The Commerce, Education, Housing and Urban Development and Labor departments, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, have largely been dark since Oct. 1. Not only are those workers almost three weeks behind schedule, many will need to spend the next few days just digging through clogged inboxes and answering phone messages.

Cleaning up will also be a top priority for many federal facilities, from deferred maintenance at more than 400 national park sites to first lady Michelle Obama’s weed-infested White House vegetable garden.

“It’s going to be a mess,” said John Palguta, vice president for policy at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service and a former executive-branch human resources manager. “You can’t have that many employees sit idle for two weeks and think within a week you’re back online and at full speed. It doesn’t work that way.”

While the final deal reached Wednesday will ensure furloughed workers get paid for their time off, there’s also the psychological baggage that comes with being told your job wasn’t “essential” during the shutdown. It’s yet another item that Obama and his lieutenants spread across the federal agencies will need to address if they want the government operating smoothly anytime soon.

“It’s very hard to get everyone feeling good about their mission and back in the swing of things. It’s going to be a real challenge to managers throughout the federal government,” said Kenneth Baer, a former Obama Office of Management and Budget senior adviser.

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Back during the last round of shutdowns in 1995 and 1996, then-President Bill Clinton estimated the costs for closing and then reopening the government at $1.4 billion. Obama didn’t even venture a guess on the price tag during brief remarks Wednesday at the White House, promising only to “begin reopening our government immediately” after signing the budget deal into law.

First up, OMB Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell has given notice to the agencies to start reopening their doors. She also issued a statement Wednesday night urging federal workers to keep monitoring the news and to check the Office of Personnel Management for further updates. The OPM website was updated overnight to inform federal workers they should return to work their next scheduled day, which is Thursday for most, unless otherwise instructed by their agency.

“In the days ahead, we will work closely with departments and agencies to make the transition back to full operating status as smooth as possible,” Burwell said. “This has been a particularly challenging time for federal employees, and I want to thank our nation’s dedicated civil servants for their continued commitment to serving the American people.”

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It’ll be easiest for agencies like Veterans Affairs, which sent home only a handful of workers, and the Pentagon, which didn’t furlough the enlisted troops and also got back most of its civilians about two weeks ago.

A Defense Department official said Wednesday that the plan for getting the word out to the remaining 7,000 furloughed workers involved using press releases, website posts, supervisor phone calls and the media. Anyone who has stayed in the local area most likely will be back to work Thursday. A full return to business may take a few more days.

Washington itself should begin to return to normalcy soon enough. The Smithsonian museums are expected to open Thursday morning, followed later in the day by the return of the much-beloved Panda Cam, a 24-hour camera focused on the most popular residents of the National Zoo.

The challenge will be a bit more difficult for agencies with large staffs that haven’t been on the clock — and where the paperwork has been piling up.

Consider the Internal Revenue Service, which has halted the processing of any paper forms that poured in ahead of Tuesday’s deadline for tax returns filed with a six-month extension. IRS workers also will need to get moving in processing documents demanded by congressional investigators still looking into the targeting of tea party nonprofits.

It’s a similar story for the Agriculture Department, which will need to crank back up its publishing operations for weekly and monthly farm reports watched closed by futures traders and farmers. USDA officials told POLITICO it’s going to take a little bit of time to gather the needed data before the first report gets released, noting that a Friday update most likely won’t be ready on planting, harvesting and overall crop conditions in most states.

Many of the worker bees who keep the nation’s air travel flowing smoothy and safely also will be coming back to work in the coming days. But it won’t mean everything that needs to get done will happen at once.

“It’s more of a methodical, let’s get this stuff up and running, let’s get the programs running … let’s make sure we get the maintenance all logged and get things fixed,” said Paul Rinaldi, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

Particularly concerning, Rinaldi said, is that getting systems fully up and functioning again could take up to three months — which would dovetail almost exactly with the next deadline that Obama and Congress will face to keep funding the government. “It takes about three months to get everything back up and running back to normal and we might be looking at the same scenario,” he said.

For the housing market, several key government functions that have delayed some home sales will come back online when the government shutdown ends. But they will be facing big work loads.

The Federal Housing Administration, which insures mortgages for lower-income and first-time homebuyers, has been endorsing new loans during the shutdown. But a backlog could have formed from lenders waiting for staff to help with specific problems on their loans.

A more serious pile of approvals for condo buildings will also be waiting. The FHA must check a series of boxes for a condo complex before a unit can be sold to a buyer using an FHA-backed loan. This process was put on hold over the past two weeks, leading some to estimate what usually is a 30-day process could take up to 75 days.

Medical research is in the same boat.

David Holtgrave, chairman of the Health, Behavior and Society Department at Johns Hopkins University, saw several research projects grind to a halt while the government was closed, including a training program for genetic counselors and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded research on alcohol.

Most people think the government shutdown was like a car that ran out of gas, Holtgrave said: Just add more gas (or federal money) and wait for things to get back to normal. But he said that’s a poor analogy for the long-term effects of 16 days’ lost time, to say nothing of the uncertainty of sequestration.

“It’s more like you don’t put gas in the car, but you also fail to check the tires, and you don’t change the oil, and eventually you have these long-term effects on the engine,” Holtgrave said.

Workplace morale is very much an issue at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Staff retention was already a problem before the shutdown because of a large workload, tight budget and pending change in leadership. Add in the shutdown, which left all but 30 of the agency’s 650 employees furloughed, and senior leaders say they’re concerned more staff will want to head for the exits.

“Day One, it’s about welcoming back these resilient people, ensuring that they feel they know how important they are to the mission of the agency and American public,” CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler said in an interview on Wednesday.

His plan: to hold an all-staff town hall meeting aimed at “bringing the family back together,” shoring up morale and addressing staff concerns.

Kate Brannen, Lauren French, Libby A. Nelson, Adam Snider, Bill Tomson and Zachary Warmbrodt contributed to this report.