HUD Withdraws Deadline To Move Workers Into New Oklahoma City Federal Building

Sunday, June 4th 2006, 12:13 pm

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ A deadline to force about a dozen employees who worked at the federal building destroyed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to move into a new building has been withdrawn.

Instead of enforcing the Monday deadline, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will grant additional time to employees who have refused to move into a new federal building about a half-block from where the old one sat.

The employees were informed in March that their requests to continue working at an alternate site had been denied, but two deadlines have been allowed to pass since then. The employees will be allowed to submit their medical evaluations to the agency's reasonable accommodation committee, HUD spokesman Jerry Brown said.

``We're trying to work with them,'' Brown said.

A bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people. The new building opened in 2004.

Brown said the agency must decide in August whether to exercise its option to lease the alternate space for another year, regardless of the ongoing appeals.

``That's not going to be the determining factor,'' Brown said.