Fairfax County, VA
Fairfax hits teleworking milestone
More than 1,000 county workers telecommute
By Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
Published: Monday, January 9, 2006 8:48 PM EST
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Fairfax County is the first Washington-area jurisdiction to convince 20 percent of its eligible government work force to telecommute, County Board Chairman Gerald Connolly said Monday.
More than 1,000 of the county's 5,000 eligible employees worked from home or from a telework center at least one day a week in 2005, meeting a Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments goal set five years ago when Connolly was the regional body's chairman, Connolly said.
The county has more than 11,000 employees, but many, such as police officers, must be physically on the job all the time.
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By reaching its target, Fairfax will eliminate 1.8 million commuting miles and prevent 720,000 pounds of pollutants from entering the air, Connolly said. The county "has consistently led other COG jurisdictions in this effort to take cars off the road, fight gridlock and improve air quality," he said.
"We are spoken of as a bureaucracy, but we can make change," said Fairfax County Supervisor Cathy Hudgins, D-Hunter Mill.
COG's goal - to pull 20 percent of the region's 2.4 million commuters off the roads at least once a week, improving air quality and easing traffic congestion - requires the participation of local jurisdictions, private employers and the federal government. Though many employers participate, it's difficult to nail down where the telecommuters are coming from, and Fairfax appears to keep records better than most.
In Prince William County, for example, the government allows telecommuting on a case-by-case basis, but there's "no goal we're trying to reach," said county spokeswoman Liz Bahrns.
Throughout the region, roughly 320,000 employees work from home or from telework centers at least once a week, about 13 percent of the work force, according to the most recent State of the Commute survey conducted by the Council of Governments. Hundreds of thousands more would stay home if given the option, numerous studies have concluded.
mneibauer@dcexaminer.com
