The real problem are those who aren’t ever in their office but offer you the old message, I’m so and so with such and such … sorry I missed your call, I am either … your call is very important to me … leave a message … for immediate help, call so and so ….

You call so and so and get his or her tape.

Check out the message on the tape of the Virginia Business Information Center, where I work. We do things differently.

Very few people can maintain an 8 hour attention span. We all need breaks. He took his posting from his computer. So what?

I hope the annoying bureaucrat at the Denver Registrar of Deeds, which only registers notarized documents, who told me that there where no notaries in the building was posting on a blog - if not she wasn’t contributing ANYTHING to society.

I agree with Waldo that too much has been (and will be) made of this, with few if any M/HC politicians/officials actually bothering to contact Will himself.

I think it would be a beautiful place to build a state university.

Trust me, once this is resolved, I will never again post/blog on state time. I was wrong and again, I apologize.

For those of you who think you’re getting way more state work out of non-bloggers, I suggest you snoop around.

I was looking for a place to build a small plant - 75 local jobs. One city that pitched me was Gary Indiana. They were all happy faces, the Miss USA contest had just been held there, they told me Everythg That Was Wonderful About Gary.

Just driving from the airport to the meeting, I went past block after block of borded up and occasionaly burt out houses. Shuttered stores. Derilict cars.

By the time I got to the meeting I knew that everything they’d told me so far was a lie.

If they had just told me what Gary was like to begin with, they would have had a shot. But even in the meeting, with the condition of the city known, they kept up with the happy talk. I knew I could’t trust them, I left early.

If a city is confidant to not just admit it has a problem, but to JOKE about it - that’s a city I want to do business with.

On that Friday, and most Fridays, I have different job duties than normal. Instead of answering the 50-70 calls requesting business assistance that come in, I am responsible for answering the emails and the live chats that come in from my agency website or the state business portal. In other words, to be effective, I am chained to my desk in front of the computer so as not to miss any of the chat requests and to see the emails immediately so I can respond to them.

On most Fridays, it is relatively slow. Had I shopped online or closed my door and read the paper, no one would know. Had I just logged off to eat lunch out or take a walk, no one would be the wiser except for anyone who went to our website and wanted to use live chat and found that it wasn’t available. Instead, I mindlessly entered the Caption Contest using the computer in front of me, the one I had to monitor. A chat or email would immediately appear on my screen in front of what I was doing and I would handle it.

That’s not an excuse or justification, just an explanation of the situation. I was wrong to use the state computer in that way and I was wrong to participate in economic development satire. I have apologized for bad judgment and I apologize the bad appearance my many entries gave as to my work product.

Just for the record, yesterday I took 49 calls from businesses and citizens requesting information or answers. I was able to respond to 48 of them–one message was so garbled I was unable to get a callback number. I answered 70% of those calls live. Try calling around state agencies and see if you get a 70% live operator.

A very quick peruse of a few political blogs (google ‘will vehrs’ and just look around) that span a few years back show Will spent more 8-5, Monday-Friday time posting comments, thoughts, and cute captions at other blogs…than just this incident.

Perhaps his co-workers brought this latest to light so he would do his job during the day, and limit his political activites to his off hours.

Oh, and before you ask…Im on vacation today.

12:51, 12:54, 1:02, 1:03, 1:07, 1:14, 1:17, 1:27, 1:36, 1:42, 1:44, 1:45, 1:47, 1:51, 1:51, 1:54, 2:06, 2:10, 2:33, 2:43, 2:48, 2:50, 2:55, 2:59, 3:03, 3:03, 3:12, 3:16, 3:16, 3:21, 3:25, 3:28, 3:37, 3:40.

taxpayers=hurt. Appearance=bad.

Nice sentiments.

I hadn’t read the caption contest until you pointed it out and I have to say its not really the the content that bothers me–its clearly all in good fun–but rather the number of comments posted by Mr. Vehrs throughout the course of a Friday afternoon. If I were the economic development folks in Martinsville, I’d waste less energy on what he said than on when he said it. Every minute spent in a state office building on a state computer blogging in silly caption contests is one less minute focused on bringing jobs to Martinsville and places like it.

I don’t doubt Mr. Vehrs commitment to his job and to the people he serves–and I’ve no doubt that he works longer hours than the 9-5 he’s required to by the state…but if I were him, I’d be more concerned about the appearance of blogging from a state office than on open threads for those he offended (who are likely not reading the commonwealth conservative). It smacks of bureaucrats with too much time on their hands and does the state workforce a disservice.