• Slap In Face Of Telecommuting
Derek Slap, spokesman for Democractic Connecticut State Senate President Donald Williams said, “We always knew the Republicans were phoning it in; now they want to make it official policy.” What’s his beef?
Seems the Democrats have their nose out of joint because the Connecticut Republican leader Lawrence Cafero has proposed a telecommuting plan, and they didn’t think of it first. At least that’s what I gather from a piece Christopher Keating wrote today in the Hartford CT Courant.
In fact, of 50,000 Connecticut state employees only 140 telecommute. Our numbers suggest something like 40% could.
But Slap doesn’t seem to have a clue, “”The reality is that the GOP plan would not save taxpayers any money and would not ease congestion. In fact, the only people the plan would help would be Republican caucus staff members.”
Really? “A good starting place would be to document how much money a telecommuting plan might save taxpayers,” Slap said, according to Keating.
Okay, using national average numbers for time and distances for the commute, and $4/gallon for the price of gas, if 5,000 Connecticut employees started telecommuting it would save over 1.1 million gallons of gas or almost 4.5 million dollars in fuel bills. State employees are taxpayers, remember.
On top of that Cafero said he commutes two hours and ten minutes to and from work, and drives 75 miles. If he telecommuted just one day a week, taxpayers would get almost 3 weeks (14 work days) more work from him.
Then add increased productivity of between 5% and 40% (depending on what study results you accept) for anyone who works at home, and there’s a pretty compeling case for telework regardless of whos idea it is.
Connecticut, in fact, should take a page from the Federal Government book on telecommuting that will soon require federal agencies to assume employees can telecommute unless it is documented that the job isn’t suited for it—a reversal of the old manadate that said all agencies should telecommute to the maximum extent possible, but you had to prove the job was suited.
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