Nevada lawmakers try to settle into interim worksite

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2001 | 9:33 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Congress is back to business -- but hardly as usual.

Nevada lawmakers on Tuesday joined their congressional colleagues settling into a simpler, pared-down existence -- a chaotic, makeshift lifestyle that has been reordered by anthrax scares on Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers insisted they were back at work today, but it was limited. The three main office buildings abandoned by House lawmakers one week ago today are still off-limits for anthrax screenings. So are two of the three main Senate office buildings.

When the 435 House lawmakers returned to work Tuesday, staffers were shoved into tiny offices on two floors of the massive General Accounting Office in downtown Washington.

Roughly 1,200 GAO workers were indefinitely displaced, sent home or to cubby holes elsewhere; one optimistic GAO employee had scrawled a hand-written message on her door, "Be back by 10-24."

That didn't happen. It's not clear when House staffers will vacate the new digs at GAO and return to their regular offices, but they are preparing for days, even weeks.

"They're going to a lot of trouble to set us up in here, so it's not going to be a one-day deal," Rep. Jim Gibbons' spokeswoman Amy Spanbauer said.

Seven Gibbons staffers met at one point Tuesday afternoon in a windowless 12-by-14-foot room on the second floor of the GAO -- a maze of tiny rooms.

Tech-savvy House staffers who are reliant every day on C-SPAN, the Internet and powerful House computer servers in more spacious office suites found themselves Tuesday with a single laptop, a few pads of paper and no television.

Phones from Gibbons' office were not yet forwarded and many cellular phones weren't receiving signals inside the GAO building.

Staffers had only very limited use of a fax and copy machine. Mail has not been delivered in Congress since Oct. 15.

"It's going to be uncomfortable," Spanbauer said. "It's not so much the space we miss as the technology."

The new arrangements severely limit business in Congress, although lawmakers vow to complete work on important spending bills as well as terrorism-related legislation. House lawmakers today were to consider legislation designed to stimulate the economy.

Lawmakers are limited to only three staffers in their new GAO quarters. That means many staff members are working -- or not working -- at home.

"Can Dan Rather manage his newscast without a production staff?" Gibbons chief of staff Michael Dayton asked. "Logistically, I think this is a very challenging proposition."

Four of Berkley's 10 permanent staffers were holed up in three tiny GAO offices they were issued Tuesday. At one point, they had no computer.

"Right now, communication is totally disrupted," Berkley spokesman Michael O'Donovan said. "We can't even watch the news. Realistically, we are not going to get as much work done, just because we have one-third of our staff. But we're performing the core functions of the office."

Some senators keep small spaces in the Capitol called "hideaways." Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has a bigger office than most as Senate Majority Whip, the No. 2 Democrat.

About half Reid's staff of 30 -- usually based in the Hart Senate Office Building -- is crammed in the Capitol office. Reid kept to a busy schedule Thursday, meeting privately with County Commissioner Dario Herrera to discuss nuclear waste issues, and brokering the breakup of a legislative logjam on the Senate floor.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., was offered a cramped room in the Capitol to share with other lawmakers, but he is not using it, spokeswoman Traci Scott said.

Ensign was "hanging out" on the Senate floor for part of the afternoon Tuesday, Scott said. Ensign sits on a high-profile panel of Senate and House lawmakers who are trying to finalize a sweeping education bill, but its meeting Tuesday was canceled.

"We're able to get our work pretty much done," Ensign insisted.

Ensign was one of three senators who did not vote on a Senate military construction spending bill Thursday -- a vote held in part as a symbol that the Senate was still in business despite the anthrax scare.

Ensign returned to Nevada Wednesday night, as did Berkley and Gibbons. Ensign knew the vote would be nearly unanimous anyway, he said. The vote was 96-1.

"I am one of the few members of the Senate who has my family back in the state, and if I can get an extra day with them when the Senate has a whatever-to-nothing vote, I'm going to take advantage of that," Ensign said. "And I make no apologies for that, and I'll make the same decision in the future."