Recently hired at a new downtown restaurant, Chan Hall entered the Metcalfe Federal Building this week to get copies of her Social Security card to hand over to a new employer so she could prove her citizenship and start a bartending job.
The mundane task was cut short steps away from the building’s front door. Security guards informed Hall that the Social Security office couldn’t provide printouts or copies of her card because of the partial government shutdown.
Never considered the model of efficiency, federal government offices in many cases are operating in shutdown mode, creating even more headaches for civilians like Hall, as the wrangling in Washington causes subtle but widespread consequences.
A suburban school district can’t continue contract negotiations with its teachers union because a federal mediator is on furlough.
A brewery is worried that the shutdown could keep seasonal beers off store shelves because the agency that approves new formulas and labels for bottles is closed.
A central Illinois marathon organizer had to find a new race course days before a run because a federally operated trail had been barricaded.
At the University of Chicago Medicine, a study of the drug-resistant bacterium MRSA has ground to a halt.
“Basic, simplistic stuff is being shut down over egos,” said Hall, 30, who lives in Chicago.
Arlington Heights School District 25 and the Arlington Teachers’ Association are bracing for postponement of a mediation session scheduled for Wednesday because the federal mediator running the negotiations is on furlough, along with thousands of other federal workers based in Illinois.
In an email, school board President David Page said that, should the shutdown continue through Wednesday, “then we won’t have the federal mediator to run our negotiation, so the meeting will have to be rescheduled after he gets back to work.”
Since March, the school district of 5,100 students has been in negotiation with its union representing 485 teachers. The teachers’ contract expired in August.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service handles about 14,000 cases each year. A majority of their mediators work in private-sector cases, but a small number also involve public agencies, such as schools, police and their unions, said Scot Beckenbaugh, the agency’s deputy director.
In the Chicago area, the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police Labor Council reports that at least 10 sessions for mediation have been either canceled by the circumstances or gone unscheduled because its federal mediators are out of work.
Trouble brewing
Beer fans in Chicago and nationwide could feel the burn of the shutdown as new seasonal beers are kept off store shelves.
The Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau has sent home most of its 483-person staff, leaving nobody to process label applications and approve new formulas at a time when brewers are prepping seasonal beers for the holidays, beer makers said.
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The delay has annoyed Lagunitas Brewing Co. founder Tony Magee, a Chicago native whose Petaluma, Calif., company is currently building a Chicago brewery in the Douglas Park neighborhood.
Early on, he tweeted: “Feds are gonna shut down the already incompetent Gov while hundreds of small breweries, including us, have labels pending. Nice.”
Magee then followed up: “Wanna regulate? Perform or get out of the way.”
Todd Stevenson, Lagunitas’ chief operating officer, said the shutdown had already delayed the company’s application for approval to sell its Hairy Eyeball beer in a 22-ounce bottle.
“It’s an aggravation,” Stevenson said. “It’s not the end of the world … but if it were to persist and we weren’t able to get these products to market and changes to our labels to market, it would be a serious problem.”
Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association, said his members were feeling the stress.
“A lot of brewers have already made these beers, but they won’t be able to get them to market if the shutdown goes much longer and the backlog grows too long,” Gatza said.
The delays could affect more than 1,000 beers, including 500 to 600 seasonal varieties, Gatza said.
Describing brewers’ predicament as a “regulatory limbo,” Gatza noted that the bureau was still collecting excise taxes, but wasn’t performing the functions that allow brewers to bring their products to market.
“It’s a drag,” Gatza said. “All these companies want to do is do business.”
Outdoor activities
Central Illinois runners and mountain bikers were dismayed to find the entrance to a popular trail in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Farmdale Reservoir in East Peoria barricaded this week.
Farmdale Trail Run race director Ann Schmitt faced a last-minute scramble to find another set of trails big enough for the 50-mile, 30-mile, 10-kilometer and half-marathon race scheduled to take place at the reservoir this weekend.
With just a few days to spare, they got permission to host the event at Jubilee College State Park in Brimfield, Ill.
“But it was still extremely nerve-wracking,” Schmitt said. “People come from out of state for this event. We were all waiting with bated breath.”
Closures of Illinois’ national parks, such as Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge, just west of Marion, means anxiety for tourism officials downstate who expect revenue each year from thousands of sportsmen coming to the area for fall hunting seasons.
“Those hunters, they like to eat,” said Shannon Johnson, CEO of the Williamson County Tourism Bureau, adding that the wildlife refuge draws more than 19,000 hunters each year, especially when deer, water foul and duck hunting seasons begin.
Not only would hotels and restaurants be out some dollars without the influx of hunters, some visiting the area often need to buy other incidentals like strings for their bows or waders for collecting water fowl, which can costs hundreds of dollars, Johnson said.
“Not only is it about the hotel, it’s about gas, it’s about permits,” she said.
Delayed burials
Springfield’s National Lincoln Historic Home has closed its gates to the public for the shutdown. National cemeteries in Illinois, such as Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, are open, and interments will continue, but officials there are conducting a reduced number of burials each day, so some families may have to pay for storage of a loved one until they can be scheduled, Veterans Affairs officials said.
At the University of Chicago Medicine, a federally funded study of a drug-resistant bacteria is on hold.
Officials causing the stalemate in Washington “are hurting patients and investigators who are trying to learn quickly the best way to treat patients,” said Dr. Robert Daum, director of the U. of C.’s MRSA Research Center.
The same roadblock is occurring at the other principal study sites in San Francisco and Los Angeles, he said.
“Bottom line for me is, I have two people on payroll who come to work daily and have nothing to do,” he said.
In his 40-year career, “I’ve never seen anything like this. … This is just a real problem for us.”
Back at the Metcalfe building in the Loop, Dorothy Jennings headed for the exit seconds after arriving, realizing the shutdown meant she couldn’t secure the documents she needed to get assistance with her utility payments.
“I came way down here on the bus, and that costs money,” said Jennings, who lives in the East Chatham neighborhood.
“Can’t do nothing but wait now,” she said.
Tribune reporters Bonnie Miller Rubin and Lauren Zumbach contributed.
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