SANTORUM, EPA ADMINISTRATOR WHITMAN KICK OFF NATIONAL TELEWORK
AND AIR QUALITY PILOT PROJECT

Click here to see photos from the Kick-Off event in Philadelphia

Washington, DC -- U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, joined EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman today to kick off the National Telework and Air Quality Pilot Project, an incentive-based pilot program that aims to improve air quality and reduce highway congestion by enabling companies to allow employees to work from home one or more days per week.

Senator Santorum and Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA/10)   authored the National Telecommuting and Air Quality Act in October 1999, which called on the National Environmental Policy Institute (NEPI), with EPA oversight, to facilitate the development of an emissions credit trading and exchange system to encourage telecommuting in five major metropolitan areas. On July 14, 2000 the President signed legislation which included an additional $2 million to continue efforts to market, implement, and evaluate strategies for awarding telecommuting emissions reduction and pollution credits in the five cities - Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Houston, Los Angeles and Denver.

 "Telecommuting improves the quality of life for everyone by creating an alternative to the traditional workplace that is both friendly to the family and the environment," according to Santorum. "Telecommuting reduces traffic congestion, air pollution, gas consumption and our dependency on foreign oil. In addition, telecommuting gives working parents increased flexibility to meet the demands of their family, and provides greater job opportunities for disabled members of the work force."

 "Reducing the amount of time workers spend in traffic is a tangible way that each and every one of us can help to improve our environment," said Whitman. " It also strengthens families; it's good for our communities and our quality of life."

Joining Santorum and Whitman at the press conference, which was hosted by NEPA, were House Majority Whip Tom Delay (R-TX) 
and Representatives Frank Wolf (R-VA), Connie Morella (R-MD), 
Mark Udall (D-CO) and Stephen Horn (R-CA).

Santorum and Wolf also introduced the Telework Tax Incentive Act in March 2001, which would provide a $500 tax credit for expenses associated with a telecommuting arrangement, such as computer software, home-office furnishings, a fax machine or other work-related expenses. For more information, visit http://santorum.senate.gov/computer.html

-###-

Region Gets Telecommuting Funding

June 15, 2001 North Penn Reporter- 
Philadelphia area to take part in program to encourage working from home. 
By: Linda Doell, Staff Writer

NORTH WALES - This area is among five metropolitan regions nationwide to take part in a pilot program that promotes telecommuting. U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-PA, co-authored with Rep. Frank Wolf, R-VA, the National Telecommuting and Air Quality Act, which was signed 
into law by President Clinton on July 14, 2000. What the act does is establish an emissions credit trading and exchange system to encourage telecommuting in five metropolitan areas: DC, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Denver.

"Telecommuting reduces traffic congestion, air pollution, gas consumption and our dependency on foreign oil," Santorum said in a prepared statement in April. The eCommuting program will be explained at a local kickoff event that will be held at 9 a.m. June 27 at Commerce Bank, 437 Sumneytown Pike, Upper Gwynedd. 

"It will take that one car off the roadway," said Peggy Schmidt, executive director of The Partnership TMA in North Wales, which is working closely with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission on the local program. She said four companies have expressed interest in the program so far. 

According to the National Environmental Policy Institute, if 10 percent of the nation's workforce eCommuted one day a week, the annual pollution savings would be the weight equivalent of three Capitol domes - 12,963 tons. NEPI is a Washington, DC nonprofit spearheading the pilot eCommuting program. The program tracks workers through log-ons, documents and time spent working and reports its data to the participating company. 

In exchange for allowing a worker to telecommute at least once per week, a company will be given emission credits. These credits can be used when reporting company emissions to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The credits also can be saved or traded, Schmidt said.

Commerce Bank was chosen as a site for the local event because it already has on-line banking, Schmidt said. "Firms that already allow workers to telecommute are noticing advantages," she said. "By allowing the workers to telecommute, the companies are finding that it is a recruiting tool, a retention tool, and improves production," Schmidt said.

-###-

Telecommuting May Yield Pollution Credits

Firms in five regions, including Philadelphia, get financial incentives to keep workers off the road. 

WASHINGTON - Companies in the Philadelphia region and four other metropolitan areas could get air-pollution credits if they allowed their employees to telecommute. A federal program launched yesterday also affects employers in and around Denver, Houston, Los Angeles and Washington. 

They would be brought into an existing air pollution-fighting program designed for power plants. Plants can get special government credit for reducing the pollution coming out of their smokestacks. 

Companies in the Philadelphia area and four other metropolitan regions could participate in the program by keeping employees' cars off the road. Then, they could sell or trade the government credits, as utilities already do. The companies would use a government computer program to calculate pollution reductions. 

 Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman said the program would "create a growing economy and clean environment" because employees would become more productive and the air would be cleaner.

At a news conference outside the Capitol, Whitman said the five urban centers were chosen because large numbers of workers have especially long commutes and because they have a sufficient number of businesses that lend themselves to telecommuting, in which employees work from home via an electronic link with the office.

The program could reduce emissions by 2,613 tons per year for every 100,000 people who participate, according to the National Environmental Policy Institute, a Washington-based research and advocacy group. Already, about 20 million people work from home at least one day a week, according to the institute. 

Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) said that in addition to the environmental benefits, the program would decrease the stress of commuters who have to endure extended periods in their cars.

-###-

Home is Where the Office is 

 May 30, 2001 - Working from home increased by 20% last year. Now more than 21 million Americans are doing it. On work days, Harvey Levitt, a manager for DecisionOne Corp., a computer-maintenance company in Frazer, Chester County, heads up to the office - in a converted bedroom of his home in St. Paul, Minn.

Likewise, Laura England, a communications director for the American Dairy Association/Dairy Council in Center City, spends two days a week working from a bedroom-turned-office in her home in North Wales, Montgomery County.

Telecommuting - or teleworking, as some experts now call it - may not be for everyone, but millions of untethered workers are doing it. "I just don't have to be physically down in our office,"said Lynn Farkas, manager of national accounts for NRI Data & Business Products, of Morrisville, Bucks County. Farkas typically checks in with her boss and her own scattered staff from the high-tech office she has at her house - in Nashua, N.H. Farkas, 44, said she is about to hire an assistant who lives nearby, but is planning to move almost four hours away, to Martha's Vineyard. In these times of virtual connectedness, "I can hire who I need to hire without that being a concern - that she needs to come into an office to work with me," Farkas said.

Last year, 9.3 million Americans telecommuted at least one day per week, and 12 million more were classified as occasional teleworkers - an overall increase of 20 percent over the previous year - according to the International Telework Association and Council, a nonprofit group in Washington that promotes telecommuting.

It is not all fun and games at the home office. England, 39, of the Dairy Association, said she may dress in jeans instead of a suit, and she admits to throwing in the occasional load of laundry. But, "Working from home, you have to be a very disciplined person to begin with," she said. "I try to keep my routine as similar as possible to 9-to-5 hours."The growth in telecommuting is being fueled by high-speed network connections available at home via cable modems and digital subscriber lines, some experts say. 

Setting up employees to work at home is "much easier today than it was four or five years ago," said Farkas' boss, Phil Lanctot Jr., chief executive officer of NRI, a supplier of office equipment and business network services. "The Internet has been a big enabler here." Lanctot said six of his 60 employees are telecommuters like Farkas, and clients increasingly ask for help in setting up home offices for their workers. Along with ubiquitous mobile phones, household fax machines, and other inexpensive office equipment, broadband is helping to make telecommuting attractive as a convenience to workers and an alternative to corporate cubicle farms that by some estimates can save businesses as much as $1,000 per month per worker.

"We're seeing a lot of work today driven by the price" of the broadband connection, said Levitt, who heads DecisionOne's new business, Telework Services, which offers to set up and support remote workers for companies that want to encourage telecommuting. "It used to be $1,500 to $1,700 a month for [high-speed Internet access]. Today that's in the $59 to $79 range," Levitt said. "That's what's really opening up the market." At home in St. Paul, Levitt, 47, uses a DSL line. His office has three computers and two printers, and is hooked into a home network. He also has three phone lines - two for voice, one for fax. "I have the ability to do my research, keep my e-mail on one machine, collaborate with my teammates because I've got the bandwidth at home to do it." he said. "I am on the company intranet, I am on the company network, as if I was sitting at any desk at any office in the country."

Governments are taking an interest in telecommuting as a way to cut traffic and smog. "The thrust in every city is to get people off the roads during the peak hours," Levitt said. A federal pilot program announced this month has earmarked Southeastern Pennsylvania and four other metropolitan areas where companies can earn air-pollution "credits" for telecommuting workers. Denver, Houston, Los Angeles and Washington are the other cities in the pilot.

Companies that participate will use a computer program called Teletrips that calculates reductions in auto emissions for the days each employee works at home. The reduced emissions, which can be converted into tax credits for the employers, are put into equations that government officials use to determine whether a region is in compliance with federal air-quality standards, said Catherine Weaver, a consultant with the participating Clean Air Action Corp. By using the Teletrips software, "Instead of just implementing a telework program and saying: 'We're doing something good, we're helping to clear the air' - which you are - this program quantifies that," said Stacy Bartels, who will oversee the program in the Philadelphia region under the auspices of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.

Levitt, who has lived in St. Paul for 19 years, said he took the job at DecisionOne last year on the condition that he need not relocate. "The fact that DecisionOne supports telecommuting allowed me to change jobs but not change my whole life," he said. "Ten to 15 years ago, taking a job at a director level would have for sure meant relocation."During the day, Levitt maintains "work rules" for the house. "I answer my [business] phone, but I'm technically not home to answer my daughter's line or my wife's line." he said. "The only way I can stay sane during the day is to ignore that. It's really hard when your family comes home, and they yell upstairs: 'Hello,' and they want a response, but I'm upstairs on a conference call with headphones on." But he said he did not want to be working round the clock. "When I want to shut down the system and I'm done for the day, which is very important, the house becomes mine again," he said.

England, however, said letting go of work at the end of a day can be difficult. "You never leave your office when you've got a home office," she said. Many evenings she finds herself back at work after putting her 6-year-old son to bed. "Mom, you're always working," her son has said. "It's just so easy to go back to the office and do work," she said.

Those who supervise telecommuters have their own adjustments to make. "You're not managing people that are going to be in your line of sight all day long," Levitt said. And knowing which employees can handle remote work can be a challenge, he said. A new worker needs face time with coworkers, needs to get to know the company network and phone system, and to build "comfort and trust" into work relationships before going home, Levitt said. Too often, "the wrong people are sent home," he said. "You need to be able to function alone. . . . There's no one to talk to, and you have to like that." Contrary to any suspicion that telecommuters are slackers, they tend, instead, to overcompensate for their relative freedom, Levitt said. "I probably over-document," he said. "I want to establish to my boss that I'm working, not mowing the lawn."