What Government Shutdown Means For Maryland Workers

WASHINGTON, D.C. — While Congress debated funding and assigned blame between the parties and President Trump as the dreaded government shutdown began, federal workers in Maryland braced for missing paychecks. If you're a federal employee, a government shutdown will obviously have a very big effect on you -- but exactly what would happen? In past shutdowns employees have received back pay, but that is no guarantee, it must be approved by a quarrelsome Congress.

Funding expired Saturday after the Senate rejected a budget deal that didn't include a solution for the estimated 700,000 immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, meaning hundreds of thousands of federal employees that are non-essential will be told not to come in to work. The last government shutdown in 2013 resulted in 850,000 federal workers being furloughed per day, causing the shuttering of not just government offices, but also national parks and museums, according to an NBC News report.

Virginia and Maryland are two of the top three states in the number of federal workers living there; California has the most federal employees. According to 2016 government data, Virginia had 136,377 federal employees, while Maryland had 130,402 such workers. Federal contractors also make up a huge portion of the workforce, and whether they can work as normal will vary from agency to agency. State officials say Maryland loses $5 million a day during a federal shutdown.

Gov. Larry Hogan on Friday blasted both parties for the impasse.

“Marylanders are sick and tired of Washington’s dysfunctional, insider blame games. I am calling on all members of Congress and the Administration to not only continue funding the government, but to finally find long-term, common sense solutions to provide health care for our vulnerable children and to protect Dreamers, he said in a statement. “Let me be very clear to everyone in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats – stop the finger-pointing and do your jobs.”

A divided House voted Thursday to prevent a government shutdown in a deal designed to keep agency doors open and hundreds of thousands of federal employees at work through Feb. 16. The measure was designed to give White House and congressional bargainers more time to work through disputes on immigration and the budget that they've tangled over for months. But the GOP-written measure failed in the Senate, with a handful of Republicans joining Democratic opposition.

Witold Skwierczynski of Catonsville, a claims representative at the Social Security Administration, is president of a council of the American Federation of Government Employees that represents nearly 30,000 employees who work in Social Security offices. If the federal government closes, thousands of Skwieczynski's colleagues will be required to work as essential employees but they won’t know when they would be paid.

“Some people live paycheck to paycheck, and they were hurting,” Skwierczynski told The Baltimore Sun of the impact a retroactive paycheck had on workers after the 16-day shutdown in 2013. “It’s very confusing, and it causes stress.”

What worries you most about the potential deadlock and shutdown? Tell us in comments.

The military, law enforcement, TSA screeners, border patrol agents, and other essential federal employees will continue to work despite the shutdown. However, they won't get paid unless more funding is authorized by Congress, which is what happened in 2013 with the Pay Our Military Act, NBC News notes. Since 1976, the government has shut down 18 times, most recently in 2013, during the Obama administration.

The affect will be felt by Americans who have applied for benefits and are waiting for action, as well as by anyone who has applied for a Social Security number or a passport.

Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III told The Washington Post the Department of Housing is ready to help households that may not be able to pay their mortgage or rent. The county has 75,000 federal workers, and in many households both parents work for the government.

Government contractors often can work because their funding isn’t governed by the current appropriation that lapses, but by prior-year funding. But the government personnel they work for might be sidelined, said David Berteau, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, which represents hundreds of federal contractors who work with several different agencies.

“Among the things you have to worry about are: Who is going to have access to what facility? Many contractors have workers who go to a government facility. Will that facility be open? Will you be on the roster of people who are allowed to come in?" he told WTOP.

Tom Temin, an anchor at Federal News Radio, told the station it is up to company holding the contract to decide if it will pay idled contractors. “High-level professional services people might continue to get paid, but if your contracting is for maintenance, or lawn service, or that sort of thing, you may not get paid," he said.

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen said he was extremely disappointed that a compromise wasn't reached, and said Congress must now work around the clock until it reaches an agreement to open the government. "It is outrageous that Senate Republicans refused to keep our government open for another three days in order to resolve these issues in a bipartisan manner," Van Hollen said. "President Trump once tweeted about the need for ‘a good government shutdown.’ I have news for the President: there are no good government shutdowns.”

Federal workers who are idled potentially will lose income altogether if they aren't retroactively paid. But there are a huge amount of other variables as well, as Patch reported in a past article on the 2013 shutdown government shutdown.

Those variables include:

• The length of the possible shutdown.
• Whether furloughed federal workers would be retroactively paid.
• Would there be a delay in processing federal grants?
• Would the loss of daily federal commuters impact Metro revenues?
• Would a shutdown and loss of income to federal workers who live here in NoVa lead to foreclosures?
• Would there be more need for local social services for federal workers on the margin?
• Would a federal government shutdown cause people to stop buying things and thus reduce our sales tax revenue?
• Would a federal government shutdown impact business and sales tax revenue related to those segments of our business community that receive federal contracts?
• How would a shutdown impact the bond market?

Federal retirees will still receive their annuity payments if the government shuts down, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Retirees under the CSRS and FERS retirement systems will still receive their scheduled annuity payments on the first business day of the month.

Health benefits to federal employees and retirees will also continue during the shutdown, FedSmith.com reports. “The employee’s FEHB coverage will continue even if an agency does not make the premium payments on time. Since the employee will be in a non-pay status, the enrollee share of the FEHB premium will accumulate and be withheld from pay upon return to pay status,” according to OPM.

Image via National Parks Service