Banner produced by the Moratorium NOW! Coalition for the Labor Day march in Detroit urging President Barack Obama to issue an executive order aimed at enforcing the full employment act. Obama would speak later the same day. (Photo: Abayomi Azikiwe), a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
October 1, 2013 at 1:00 am
Michigan workers sent packing by fed shutdown
Marisa Schultz and Chad Livengood
Detroit News Washington and Lansing Bureaus
Thousands of civilian government workers in Michigan were sent home Tuesday without pay on Day 1 of the first federal government shutdown in 17 years, while the state government sent out thousands of precautionary furlough notices to its unionized workers.
As the federal government kept what it considered essential services going, the state’s five national parks closed and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stopped issuing the Lake Erie harmful algae bloom bulletin that sailors and fishermen consult before boating. Online visitors were told parks like Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in west Michigan and River Raisin National Battlefield Park in Monroe were shuttered and their Web pages weren’t operating.
Cash assistance and food stamp funding for low-income individuals in Michigan weren’t affected because they were paid in advance with carry-forward money, according to Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration.
Furlough notices were handed out Tuesday at the U.S. Army’s TACOM facility in Warren and are expected to affect up to half of the facility that employs 7,500 civilian workers, said Steve Ball, the garrison public affairs officer at TACOM. The installation’s 280 military members will not be affected, he said.
In Lansing, State Budget Director John Nixon said the state has sent “generic” furlough notices to state labor unions notifying them of layoffs in 14 to 30 days, depending on their contracts. The number of employees who could be laid off is unclear because some state jobs are funded by a variety of state and federal sources, Nixon said.
“We haven’t targeted any specific employees. Hopefully, if this thing is resolved in 14 days, there won’t be any furloughs, any layoffs,” Nixon said during a news conference where he indicated slightly more than 40 percent of Michigan’s budget or roughly $20 billion comes from the federal government.
The state also imposed a hiring freeze Tuesday on any federally funded job in state government, the budget chief said.
At Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township, about 650 civilians and military technicians employed by the 127th Wing were sent home Tuesday after they shut down operations in the morning. Minimum personnel remained on duty, such as the fire department, security and air traffic control.
One of the furloughed employees was Crystal Seamster, 56, who came to her job at Selfridge and was told Tuesday to pack up and go home without pay. The news was especially hard, she said, after struggling through six furlough days earlier this year because of federal spending cutbacks known as sequestration.
The loss of pay meant her 16-year-old son, who struggles with attention deficit disorder, dyslexia and Asperger’s Syndrome, couldn’t go to a summer camp that helps his disabilities.
“It was very painful,” Seamster said. “Now, we were just talking about him trying to learn to drive because I just got myself straightened out again, and we can’t even do that now … because I don’t know when I’ll have a paycheck again.”
The Chesterfield Township mother says the situation has made her lose confidence in elected officials.
“I have come to the conclusion that they are not out there for the mass populace,” Seamster said. “If it was their paychecks that they were having to sacrifice, then it might be different.”
About 150 active members of the 127th Wing remain on duty and the 50 members deployed to either southwest Asia or Guam will continue their mission. The weekend drill, which was to take place Saturday and Sunday, has been canceled.
Military death benefits on hold
These were the immediate effects on government employees, but a Midland economist warned Tuesday the longer the shutdown lasts the more it will hurt economic growth — especially after more than a month.
“We could see little to no growth in the fourth quarter, which is not what our economy needs because it’s very fragile and it’s growing at a much lower than historic pace right now,” said Timothy Nash, the Fry endowed chair in free market economics at Northwood University, about the national economy.
A prolonged shutdown, he said, “could take Michigan GDP growth for the fourth quarter and knock it down.”
It was unclear Tuesday how Congress and President Barack Obama would end the shutdown that furloughed 800,000 federal workers nationwide and dealt another blow to public confidence in the elected officials.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Detroit, outlined to reporters Tuesday some of the impacts on Michigan residents including delays for veterans services, Social Security applications and military training; unanswered phone calls to the Internal Revenue Service, halted medical research, and loss of funding for social services that help women, infants and children.
Most egregiously, Levin said, death benefits for families of soldiers will go unpaid.
“Tell the family that’s lost a loved one in war they don’t get a death benefit,” Levin said.
Algae bulletins go unpublished
Metro Detroit fisherman and boaters also saw the first sign of a shutdown Tuesday morning when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced it could no longer send out bulletins alerting them to harmful algal bloom in Lake Erie.
Area residents began to lash out against their government Tuesday, with Detroiter Ernest Wilson saying he worries how his cousins, who work at the Pentagon, will be affected.
“The family knows the rest of us will help them out if it comes to that,” said Wilson, 56. “It’s just crazy how you’ve got politicians that go against the grain and don’t care about what the public and the people think. A lot of the regular government employees are going to be hurt. They’re the ones who won’t be getting a paycheck.”
Wilson, who lives on the city’s west side, argues politicians should “come back and get together for the country itself” and work out an agreement.
Thousands of civilian government workers in Michigan were sent home Tuesday without pay on Day 1 of the first federal government shutdown in 17 years, while state government sent out thousands of precautionary furlough notices to its unionized workers.
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20131001/POLITICS03/310010079#ixzz2gccoztlu
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