The House and Senate Institutions committees will hear from a host of Waterbury residents and business owners Tuesday afternoon in preparation for big decisions on the horizon about where a large chunk of Vermont state government will be located.
Senate Institutions Committee Chairman Bob Hartwell, D-Bennington, said legislators thought it important to hear how Waterbury is faring since Tropical Storm Irene whipped through in August and forced the closure of a state office complex that housed 1,500 workers who no longer work, eat and shop in Waterbury. ¶
The state is awaiting a report from architect Freeman French Freeman of Burlington that will outline future prospects for that office complex. Administration Secretary Jeb Spaulding said the firm has been granted a week’s extension and the report is due March 9.
That report is designed to help state leaders figure out the best place to put various state offices that are now spread hither and yon in temporary quarters.
Hartwell said that pending the architects’ report, he goes into the decision thinking there are many reasons to move back into Waterbury. “You have to have a very persuasive argument to leave,” he said.
Though the report is still pending, the Shumlin administration plans to move the Agency of Natural Resources to the National Life building in Montpelier, where the state rents space for other agencies. Members of the House and Senate Institutions committees were miffed to learn last week that Spaulding said the state didn’t need legislative approval to do that.
“It just seems to be that’s just a little heavy-handed,” said Rep. Butch Shaw, R-Pittsford.¶
“We had understood we were going to work together and collaborate,” Hartwell said. “We want to get this thing right. It’s all inter-related.”
The argument that ANR should be near the Agency of Transportation to better plan the environmental impact of road projects is compelling, Hartwell said, but legislators were under the impression that all the employee moves would be considered as a package.
House Institutions Committee Chairwoman Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, told Spaulding that the decision to move 300 or so employees to rented space is a policy decision that should involve the Legislature.
Rep. Jason Lorber, D-Burlington, warned Spaulding that the state should speak with front-line workers, not just managers, in determining office needs.
Spaulding cautioned that the ANR move to National Life won’t happen for another two or three months — after the architects’ report comes out. That means the state will be re-upping the six-month leases it made for temporary space after Irene. Insurance and Federal Emergency Management Agency money are expected to pay the bulk of those costs, Spaulding said.
Speaking of FEMA, the agency is renting space from the state at an office building in Essex that the state bought several years ago for public safety and laboratories and has never used. The former IBM Corp. building has been cited as an example of state building decisions that didn’t work out.
“We have made a couple that didn’t work out in the past,” Hartwell said.