Lawmakers back on the job Monday

LAUREN WALSH, THE OLYMPIAN

OLYMPIA -- The Capitol Campus is expected to largely return to normal Monday.

By late Friday afternoon, all structures except the Legislative Building and the Highways-Licenses building had been declared safe.

However, parts of individual buildings across the Capitol Campus will remain closed until further repairs are completed.

The Senate will convene briefly Monday, leaving members and their staffs most of the day to clean up damage from Wednesday's earthquake.

Committee hearings that were disrupted Wednesday will meet Monday at the same time and place as originally scheduled.

The cutoff date for Senate bills that hadn't left their original policy committees has been extended five days to Monday.

All state employees are expected to return to work at their regularly scheduled times, but some might report to a different location.

Some of Gov. Gary Locke's staff are doubling up in the office space of other staff members in the nearby Insurance Commissioner building.

Receptionists and other office staff will move into vacant Department of Labor and Industry space.

The Department of Ecology and the Department of Labor and Industry have unused office space that will be available for agencies and other state offices if they need it. That means the state has no plans to lease additional office space in Olympia.

"We got lots of inquires as people were trying to assess whether their building was habitable," said Bob Bippert, assistant director of Real Estate Services.

The Olympian Copyright 2000

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