WASHINGTON – Mark Souder's name may be off the door of his Washington and Indiana offices as of this weekend, but it won't be lights out for the 19 people who spend most of their workday helping constituents.
The employees will remain, supervised by the clerk of the House, until a replacement is selected in a special election this year.
Want to buy a flag flown over the Capitol? Need help with a federal regulation that looks like it would crimp your ability to expand and hire more workers? Stuck in a bureaucratic limbo because of a misplaced or lost document?
If you would have called Rep. Mark Souder's office looking for help last week, you should follow that impulse now that he's gone, said the director of the congressional district's Indiana operations.
"It's been a really rough week," said Derek Pillie, who added that the staff will continue to try to resolve those kinds of problems "no matter whose name is on the door."
Most people go into government work, he said, "because they enjoy serving people. So the focus of our job starting Monday when we start working for the clerk of the House will be service and serving the people of the district, which it always has been."
At least half a dozen times a year, one of the 535 House members dies or resigns, sometimes in scandal and sometimes to run for another office.
When that happens, the House has a procedure that comes down to this: No one from the vacated office can cast a vote on the House floor or ask a question in a committee meeting. Otherwise, the work of the congressional office goes on.
"It's called the caretaker provision," said Kyle Anderson, spokesman for the House Administration Committee.
Someone from the clerk's office will visit the office on a regular basis and handle any administrative details that typically would require an elected official's signature.
But beyond that, Anderson said, "the ongoing operation of the office is focused largely on constituent service."
Most people who call the office need help with some aspect of the federal government and just aren't certain where to start. Pillie said the congressional office has even gotten calls from people with sewer system issues and who didn't know whether to call the state, a local agency or City Hall. So they called their member of Congress.
Most of the work the staff does, Pillie said, involves referring callers to the right place or helping them navigate dealings with federal agencies.
"When people have problems with the government, they just assume there's some sort of malicious intent behind it. It really isn't the case," he said, "In the vast majority when people have a problem or there's a mistake, a lot of times it's because of a simple oversight or a misapplication of something.
"A lot of times it's us going in and trying to help the agency troubleshoot where the misunderstanding took place. So, in a lot of ways, the staff becomes advocates on behalf of the congressman or the clerk for that constituent."
Pillie said he hopes Souder's absence and the lack of an elected member of Congress for northeast Indiana won't deter people who need help.
"We don't want people to feel like they are abandoned," he said.
