Day Off for City Hall Sparks Washington Protests

Parents, teachers, students and municipal workers protested Friday at City Hall as the District of Columbia government shut down for one day to reduce its budget deficit.

After seven months of debate and a court battle, some 43,000 city employees deemed not essential to public health and safety were laid off for a day without pay.

Many citizens who apparently had not heard that schools and most of the city’s services would be closed Friday came to do business as usual. But they wound up inconvenienced and often angry outside shuttered city offices.

“I didn’t know that everybody was off today,” said Mazzie Snowden, who sought to pay a parking ticket at the Bureau of Traffic Adjudication. “This furlough thing is causing problems for everybody.”

A man who identified himself only as Bruce pounded vainly on the doors of the Department of Employment Services, where he wanted to check on his unemployment insurance claim.

“I’m a seasonal construction worker who’s been between jobs for months and came all the way in town from southern Maryland to check on my claim,” he said. “They don’t treat you with any respect over the phone, and this is the only day I really have to drive up here to see what’s going on.”

About 500 people attended separate noon rallies called by education advocates and unions on opposite sides of the street outside City Hall. Both groups blamed D.C. Council Chairman John A. Wilson, who first proposed the furloughs in March.

Wilson blamed Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly, who voiced philosophical opposition to the layoffs but did not say how they could be avoided.

As approved by the City Council, the mayor and the city’s highest court, the plan calls for one furlough day a month during this fiscal year to save $36 million in a budget with a projected $490-million deficit.