There’s plenty left to do in the remaining months of this session, but Members who already plan to leave at the end of the 110th Congress — and even those who don’t — are being advised to start preparing now to close their offices.
The Congressional Management Foundation recently released a management brief offering recommendations for closing Congressional offices. It outlines the things Members must tackle when leaving Congress, from figuring out who will monitor the mail to where all that paperwork will go to helping staffers cope with losing their jobs.
“You need to have an overall plan for how you are going to approach this,” said Beverly Bell, CMF’s executive director. “It becomes very difficult in those last few weeks to get a lot done.”
The nonprofit, nonpartisan group has released the report for a number of years now, updating it each Congressional session, Bell said.
CMF employees compiled their recommendations after speaking with Hill staffers who have actually closed Member offices before, Bell said. The final report includes a range of suggestions designed to help give staffers a head start in their planning.
Tackling the logistics is key: When will the Member officially leave? Who will be the last person in the office? Who will handle closing the district offices? Who will take charge of the phones, computers and other office equipment? And where will it all go?
“You certainly want someone who is going to pick up the mail for a month or so, because you are going to have bills coming in,” Bell said.
Then there are the files, gifts and other property that Members have gathered over the years. Members should decide well ahead of time which library, university or depository will receive their Congressional papers, Bell recommended.
Michael Cronin, the office director and certified archivist for the House historian, told Roll Call last week that Members must take time to make the organization of their Congressional papers a priority. After all, there is a ton of stuff to dig through.
“It’s a pretty time-intensive process,” Cronin said. “Just to have in the back of their mind, how are we going to preserve these papers? What’s the plan? I think just asking the question is important.”
With all the paperwork that passes through Member offices, it is sometimes difficult to decide what to keep and what to discard, Cronin said. While correspondence between Members and anything related to legislation certainly is important, it is less clear when it comes to other documents and items, he added.
The Clerk’s Legislative Resource Center and Senate Historical Office are among the offices that can help staffers decide what to archive and what to throw away, the CMF report notes.
Handling casework is a whole other subject, Bell said. Members must decide quickly whether to conclude every case on their own or hand over unfinished work to the incoming Member, for example.
Deciding how often the outgoing Member will be in Washington — and what that Member will be doing while in Washington — is another issue, Bell noted. Although work might slow down, it certainly won’t go away entirely, she said.
Members also need to decide how to handle staffing issues, including what to do if staffers leave the office before it actually closes. For example, do Members hire new staff or just hand over the workload to others in the office?
Roll Call has launched a new feature, Hill Navigator, to advise congressional staffers and would-be staffers on how to manage workplace issues on Capitol Hill. Please send us your questions — anything from office etiquette, to handling awkward moments, to what happens when the work life gets too personal. Submissions will be treated anonymously.
