Anonymous wrote:If telework is indeed here to stay, my prediction is that the DC area will weather this better than many other cities and states.
If people keep resisting requests/commands to head back to the office and continue to insist they are just as productive at home, at some point corporate leaders will simply offshore those jobs. They did this before with blue collar jobs; they will do it to knowledge workers. Why pay for an accountant/graphic designer/engineer in the US, when you can hire one for a 1/10 of the cost and without pesky employment regulations in Costa Rica or Ghana or India? Even if these employees are (initially) less productive, they will cost so much less that it won't matter. The tax revenue consequences of this will be felt throughout the country.
The safest jobs are going to be jobs that cannot be outsourced: service jobs, professional jobs that require physical interaction (e.g., some doctors), the military, and many government jobs. The latter will make the DC area more offshore-proof than the rest of the country.
In addition, vengeful Republicans will eventually force federal government employees back to the office. They will be delighted at upsetting what they perceive to be lazy government workers. Which will help DC and surrounding areas.
Every time I have been downtown it seems quite busy. Also, I agree that the “vengeful” Republicans are going to force federal workers back into the office. It is only a matter of time.
The House already has a bill introduced by GOP sponsors to end federal telework, as it happens.
Will it pass the Senate? And even if it does, can it reverse or supersede signed bargaining agreements? Not sure it can, on either of those questions.
It’s not likely this will pass the Senate unless it gets included in the debt ceiling package or something like that. The most likely outcome would probably be to lead more agencies to move to the suburbs and that’s likely to happen anyway.
Yep. GSA won't allow my agency to justify new leases or buildings in DC because of the cost savings in PG, Alexandria, and Fairfax.
If more fed agencies move out, wouldn’t that mean a federal city (at least one as big as it is now) is unnecessary? Wouldn’t the exit of more federal agencies bolster DC’s chances of statehood?
The people objecting to DC's statehood by citing the number of government jobs in the city aren't arguing in good faith. They object to DC statehood because the city votes for Democrats by a 80 point margins. Their stated reasoning is merely intellectual window dressing.
Perhaps. But politics aside, the strongest argument against statehood is that DC has not sufficiently proven that it can govern itself.
And Mississippi has? Please . . .
The government of Mississippi hasn’t been taken over by the Feseral government since reconstruction. So objectively yes, they have a longer track record of successful self-government than DC.
Mississippi is a ward of the state. It receives way more tax dollars that it pays. It cannot even provide portable drinking water to the citizens of its largest city. The Feds had to step in
Not sure you want to play the federal dependency game. DC is screaming that it’s going to go broke because federal workers are only going to the office 1-2 days per week.
Do you have issues with reading comprehension or do you deliberately misinterpret public statements to suit your silly agenda?
The whole point of this thread is that DC is angry at the WH for not forcing federal employees back to the office 3 days per week because unless they do it will destroy the city’s economy. DCs own head of economic development said that the federal government is directly responsible for 25% of DCs economy. And you want to talk about Mississippi? Last I checked Mississippi hasn’t care one way or another if the federal government works from home or not because their whole economy is not dependent on the Federal government.
Bowser asked the Feds to either return to the office OR give up the huge amount of office space currently sitting idle so that it could be repurposed. Sh*t or get off the pot, in common parlance.
The point about Mississippi was that DC seems to govern itself a hell of a lot better than states that, among other severe failures of governance, can't even provide clean drinking water to residents of their own capital city.
Not quite the apt analogy. DC said send back the workers or give us the land (for free). That's sh*t or give me your bathroom.
I’m a bit hazy on this but I believe those lead pipes were put before DC was given home rule.
The argument was that DC supplies clean drinking water.
The point was that DC’s issues with lead piping - unlike, say, the issues that Jackson, MS is having with drinking water - hardly demonstrate that the city can’t govern itself but are rather a legacy of the city’s management by the federal government.
So the DC government doesn't need to supply clean drinking water because at some point in the past they didn't have complete control of the infrastructure? I guess you can handwave away any DC incompetence using this excuse. That's nice.
Anonymous wrote:I do not understand the rationale to raise the height limits now after pandemic. Pre-pandemic? Maaaaaybbbbeee? But now properties will be available to convert or replace with residential. Timing is not right.
Also, do higher buildings offer more protection in the event of air strikes, for example? Seems like defensive considerations should be taken into account.
Ahh, yes, the ol' but what about air strikes line of NIMBYism
Anonymous wrote:As a federal employee- what has DC done for me?! Made it easy to get to work? Nope, metro is bad, parking is bad, traffic is bad. Made it nice to eat lunch outside? No, the park next to my federal office has needles, homeless people sleeping on benches and pee everywhere.
Even before telework was a thing, people were begging to work in our suburban offices instead of DC.
If you are a federal employee living outside of DC 95% of your trip is regional and not in DC. Metro is a regional business. Traffic is regional. Ask MD and VA what they were doing as well.
Anonymous wrote:As a federal employee- what has DC done for me?! Made it easy to get to work? Nope, metro is bad, parking is bad, traffic is bad. Made it nice to eat lunch outside? No, the park next to my federal office has needles, homeless people sleeping on benches and pee everywhere.
Even before telework was a thing, people were begging to work in our suburban offices instead of DC.
If you are a federal employee living outside of DC 95% of your trip is regional and not in DC. Metro is a regional business. Traffic is regional. Ask MD and VA what they were doing as well.
Better county/municipal services, better schools, more amenities, less crime, more job opportunities for starters...
Anonymous wrote:I do not understand the rationale to raise the height limits now after pandemic. Pre-pandemic? Maaaaaybbbbeee? But now properties will be available to convert or replace with residential. Timing is not right.
Also, do higher buildings offer more protection in the event of air strikes, for example? Seems like defensive considerations should be taken into account.
I work in a downtown office a few blocks from the White House, so I feel like I have enough personal stake in this matter to say: No one should worry about D.C. buildings taking enough defensive protections in the event of air strikes. I mean, come on. (And yes, I also worked in a downtown office a few blocks from the White House on 9/11 and, in fact, stayed at my office the entire day.)
Anonymous wrote:DC took the federal government workforce for granted for decades. More should have been done to diversify the city’s economy and encourage robust job growth in the private sector. Instead, the city did virtually nothing and most of those jobs went to NoVa and fewer to Md. Today, the city finds itself playing second fiddle to the Virginia suburbs while a critical source of its tax revenue is drying up — all while population growth has stagnated and public safety has decreased.
I don’t give a **** about DC; we have moving back home in a few years.
Anonymous wrote:If telework is indeed here to stay, my prediction is that the DC area will weather this better than many other cities and states.
If people keep resisting requests/commands to head back to the office and continue to insist they are just as productive at home, at some point corporate leaders will simply offshore those jobs. They did this before with blue collar jobs; they will do it to knowledge workers. Why pay for an accountant/graphic designer/engineer in the US, when you can hire one for a 1/10 of the cost and without pesky employment regulations in Costa Rica or Ghana or India? Even if these employees are (initially) less productive, they will cost so much less that it won't matter. The tax revenue consequences of this will be felt throughout the country.
The safest jobs are going to be jobs that cannot be outsourced: service jobs, professional jobs that require physical interaction (e.g., some doctors), the military, and many government jobs. The latter will make the DC area more offshore-proof than the rest of the country.
In addition, vengeful Republicans will eventually force federal government employees back to the office. They will be delighted at upsetting what they perceive to be lazy government workers. Which will help DC and surrounding areas.
Every time I have been downtown it seems quite busy. Also, I agree that the “vengeful” Republicans are going to force federal workers back into the office. It is only a matter of time.
The House already has a bill introduced by GOP sponsors to end federal telework, as it happens.
Will it pass the Senate? And even if it does, can it reverse or supersede signed bargaining agreements? Not sure it can, on either of those questions.
It’s not likely this will pass the Senate unless it gets included in the debt ceiling package or something like that. The most likely outcome would probably be to lead more agencies to move to the suburbs and that’s likely to happen anyway.
Yep. GSA won't allow my agency to justify new leases or buildings in DC because of the cost savings in PG, Alexandria, and Fairfax.
If more fed agencies move out, wouldn’t that mean a federal city (at least one as big as it is now) is unnecessary? Wouldn’t the exit of more federal agencies bolster DC’s chances of statehood?
The people objecting to DC's statehood by citing the number of government jobs in the city aren't arguing in good faith. They object to DC statehood because the city votes for Democrats by a 80 point margins. Their stated reasoning is merely intellectual window dressing.
Perhaps. But politics aside, the strongest argument against statehood is that DC has not sufficiently proven that it can govern itself.
And Mississippi has? Please . . .
The government of Mississippi hasn’t been taken over by the Feseral government since reconstruction. So objectively yes, they have a longer track record of successful self-government than DC.
Mississippi is a ward of the state. It receives way more tax dollars that it pays. It cannot even provide portable drinking water to the citizens of its largest city. The Feds had to step in
Not sure you want to play the federal dependency game. DC is screaming that it’s going to go broke because federal workers are only going to the office 1-2 days per week.
Do you have issues with reading comprehension or do you deliberately misinterpret public statements to suit your silly agenda?
The whole point of this thread is that DC is angry at the WH for not forcing federal employees back to the office 3 days per week because unless they do it will destroy the city’s economy. DCs own head of economic development said that the federal government is directly responsible for 25% of DCs economy. And you want to talk about Mississippi? Last I checked Mississippi hasn’t care one way or another if the federal government works from home or not because their whole economy is not dependent on the Federal government.
Bowser asked the Feds to either return to the office OR give up the huge amount of office space currently sitting idle so that it could be repurposed. Sh*t or get off the pot, in common parlance.
The point about Mississippi was that DC seems to govern itself a hell of a lot better than states that, among other severe failures of governance, can't even provide clean drinking water to residents of their own capital city.
Not quite the apt analogy. DC said send back the workers or give us the land (for free). That's sh*t or give me your bathroom.
I’m a bit hazy on this but I believe those lead pipes were put before DC was given home rule.
The argument was that DC supplies clean drinking water.
The point was that DC’s issues with lead piping - unlike, say, the issues that Jackson, MS is having with drinking water - hardly demonstrate that the city can’t govern itself but are rather a legacy of the city’s management by the federal government.
So the DC government doesn't need to supply clean drinking water because at some point in the past they didn't have complete control of the infrastructure? I guess you can handwave away any DC incompetence using this excuse. That's nice.
Imagine being this obtuse IRL
Imagine being completely ignorant of the history of the DC Water authority. I suggest you do that and get back to me about federal government "interference."
Anonymous wrote:As a federal employee- what has DC done for me?! Made it easy to get to work? Nope, metro is bad, parking is bad, traffic is bad. Made it nice to eat lunch outside? No, the park next to my federal office has needles, homeless people sleeping on benches and pee everywhere.
Even before telework was a thing, people were begging to work in our suburban offices instead of DC.
If you are a federal employee living outside of DC 95% of your trip is regional and not in DC. Metro is a regional business. Traffic is regional. Ask MD and VA what they were doing as well.
Better county/municipal services, better schools, more amenities, less crime, more job opportunities for starters...
Think that PP meant what are MD and VA doing about traffic, specifically.
Anonymous wrote:As a federal employee- what has DC done for me?! Made it easy to get to work? Nope, metro is bad, parking is bad, traffic is bad. Made it nice to eat lunch outside? No, the park next to my federal office has needles, homeless people sleeping on benches and pee everywhere.
Even before telework was a thing, people were begging to work in our suburban offices instead of DC.
If you are a federal employee living outside of DC 95% of your trip is regional and not in DC. Metro is a regional business. Traffic is regional. Ask MD and VA what they were doing as well.
Better county/municipal services, better schools, more amenities, less crime, more job opportunities for starters...
Think that PP meant what are MD and VA doing about traffic, specifically.
VA has invested billions in infrastructure. DC cannot even keep its bridges properly maintained.
Anonymous wrote:As a federal employee- what has DC done for me?! Made it easy to get to work? Nope, metro is bad, parking is bad, traffic is bad. Made it nice to eat lunch outside? No, the park next to my federal office has needles, homeless people sleeping on benches and pee everywhere.
Even before telework was a thing, people were begging to work in our suburban offices instead of DC.
If you are a federal employee living outside of DC 95% of your trip is regional and not in DC. Metro is a regional business. Traffic is regional. Ask MD and VA what they were doing as well.
Better county/municipal services, better schools, more amenities, less crime, more job opportunities for starters...
Think that PP meant what are MD and VA doing about traffic, specifically.
VA has invested billions in infrastructure. DC cannot even keep its bridges properly maintained.
+1
The gap between VA’s infrastructure investment and DC/MD has grown so wide that they’re not even in the same league anymore.
Anonymous wrote:As a federal employee- what has DC done for me?! Made it easy to get to work? Nope, metro is bad, parking is bad, traffic is bad. Made it nice to eat lunch outside? No, the park next to my federal office has needles, homeless people sleeping on benches and pee everywhere.
Even before telework was a thing, people were begging to work in our suburban offices instead of DC.
If you are a federal employee living outside of DC 95% of your trip is regional and not in DC. Metro is a regional business. Traffic is regional. Ask MD and VA what they were doing as well.
Better county/municipal services, better schools, more amenities, less crime, more job opportunities for starters...
Think that PP meant what are MD and VA doing about traffic, specifically.
VA has invested billions in infrastructure. DC cannot even keep its bridges properly maintained.
+1
The gap between VA’s infrastructure investment and DC/MD has grown so wide that they’re not even in the same league anymore.
Agreed. However there is a substantive difference between DC and MD. MD is seemingly incapable of investing in new infrastructure but at least is capable of keeping its existing infrastructure maintained. In the last 18 months DC has had a pedestrian bridge on 295 collapse and need to perform emergency repairs on the Roosevelt Bridge that are still ongoing. Both a testament to an inability to perform basic inspection and maintenance.
Anonymous wrote:If telework is indeed here to stay, my prediction is that the DC area will weather this better than many other cities and states.
If people keep resisting requests/commands to head back to the office and continue to insist they are just as productive at home, at some point corporate leaders will simply offshore those jobs. They did this before with blue collar jobs; they will do it to knowledge workers. Why pay for an accountant/graphic designer/engineer in the US, when you can hire one for a 1/10 of the cost and without pesky employment regulations in Costa Rica or Ghana or India? Even if these employees are (initially) less productive, they will cost so much less that it won't matter. The tax revenue consequences of this will be felt throughout the country.
The safest jobs are going to be jobs that cannot be outsourced: service jobs, professional jobs that require physical interaction (e.g., some doctors), the military, and many government jobs. The latter will make the DC area more offshore-proof than the rest of the country.
In addition, vengeful Republicans will eventually force federal government employees back to the office. They will be delighted at upsetting what they perceive to be lazy government workers. Which will help DC and surrounding areas.
Every time I have been downtown it seems quite busy. Also, I agree that the “vengeful” Republicans are going to force federal workers back into the office. It is only a matter of time.
The House already has a bill introduced by GOP sponsors to end federal telework, as it happens.
Will it pass the Senate? And even if it does, can it reverse or supersede signed bargaining agreements? Not sure it can, on either of those questions.
It’s not likely this will pass the Senate unless it gets included in the debt ceiling package or something like that. The most likely outcome would probably be to lead more agencies to move to the suburbs and that’s likely to happen anyway.
Yep. GSA won't allow my agency to justify new leases or buildings in DC because of the cost savings in PG, Alexandria, and Fairfax.
If more fed agencies move out, wouldn’t that mean a federal city (at least one as big as it is now) is unnecessary? Wouldn’t the exit of more federal agencies bolster DC’s chances of statehood?
The people objecting to DC's statehood by citing the number of government jobs in the city aren't arguing in good faith. They object to DC statehood because the city votes for Democrats by a 80 point margins. Their stated reasoning is merely intellectual window dressing.
Perhaps. But politics aside, the strongest argument against statehood is that DC has not sufficiently proven that it can govern itself.
And Mississippi has? Please . . .
The government of Mississippi hasn’t been taken over by the Feseral government since reconstruction. So objectively yes, they have a longer track record of successful self-government than DC.
Mississippi is a ward of the state. It receives way more tax dollars that it pays. It cannot even provide portable drinking water to the citizens of its largest city. The Feds had to step in
Not sure you want to play the federal dependency game. DC is screaming that it’s going to go broke because federal workers are only going to the office 1-2 days per week.
Do you have issues with reading comprehension or do you deliberately misinterpret public statements to suit your silly agenda?
The whole point of this thread is that DC is angry at the WH for not forcing federal employees back to the office 3 days per week because unless they do it will destroy the city’s economy. DCs own head of economic development said that the federal government is directly responsible for 25% of DCs economy. And you want to talk about Mississippi? Last I checked Mississippi hasn’t care one way or another if the federal government works from home or not because their whole economy is not dependent on the Federal government.
Bowser asked the Feds to either return to the office OR give up the huge amount of office space currently sitting idle so that it could be repurposed. Sh*t or get off the pot, in common parlance.
The point about Mississippi was that DC seems to govern itself a hell of a lot better than states that, among other severe failures of governance, can't even provide clean drinking water to residents of their own capital city.
Not quite the apt analogy. DC said send back the workers or give us the land (for free). That's sh*t or give me your bathroom.
I’m a bit hazy on this but I believe those lead pipes were put before DC was given home rule.
The argument was that DC supplies clean drinking water.
The point was that DC’s issues with lead piping - unlike, say, the issues that Jackson, MS is having with drinking water - hardly demonstrate that the city can’t govern itself but are rather a legacy of the city’s management by the federal government.
So the DC government doesn't need to supply clean drinking water because at some point in the past they didn't have complete control of the infrastructure? I guess you can handwave away any DC incompetence using this excuse. That's nice.
Imagine being this obtuse IRL
Imagine being completely ignorant of the history of the DC Water authority. I suggest you do that and get back to me about federal government "interference."
I hate DC Water. Their rates are insane, their customer service agents get paid six figures to lobby insults at anyone who dares call them, and they are generally unaccountable and downright shady. The test for lead they sent me is impossible to conduct without shutting off my water for a day. But, like the office of US attorney, the problems generally stem from their independence of the DC government. And if the existence of lead pipes is a signal of bad governance, then the same conclusion can be applied to a whole slew of states across the country. In sum, your argument is silly.
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