April 25, 2001 – As income-tax money flowed in through the front door of the Bureau of Internal Revenue building on St. Thomas earlier this month, furniture was being toted out the back.
It was over the five-day Easter weekend that IRB director Louis Willis completed spring cleaning of the agency's formerly worn and bedraggled offices at Mandela Circle.
Actually, it was much more than a spring cleaning. The offices hadn't seen so much as a coat of paint since the IRB move into the building in 1995. What they've just experienced is a state-of-the-art renovation.
"People said it couldn't be done with the April filing deadline and the Easter holidays," Willis says, "but we got it done."
The cleaning and renovating of the offices are part of his overall IRB modernization and reorganization plan, which he has explained at length in several Senate hearings since being appointed acting director last July. It is a plan professionally laid out in a 400-page manual describing the agency's operations and the jobs of its personnel.
"We've never had anything like this," Willis says of the manual. "Someone new could come in here, pick this up, and have a grasp on what IRB does. The job descriptions start with the director's."
Bids for the physical work and new furniture went out in January, and jobs were awarded the first week of February, Willis says. To get the job done, he says, "We worked sometimes until 3 a.m. and on weekends."
Revenue officer Shirley Jones suggested giving some of the old furniture items to the recently renovated Police Zone A Command, which had a widely publicized need for such things. "It's the first time in my 12 years under six different directors that anyone has actually listened to me," Jones says. She adds that a co-worker who just retired commented, with mixed emotions, that she had "been here 30 years, and never even got a new desk."
The long Easter weekend brought the final push to get everything into place. "We got the Justice Department to help," Willis relates. Orange-suited prisoners toted the worn desks, chairs, tables and lamps out of the building, across the neighboring Pueblo parking lot and into trucks. "They were great," Willis says. Some of the furniture is going to Zone A, and other pieces will be used in port excise-tax booths.
Willis has told legislators that his is a "time-driven" job, and that includes making time to lead a purposeful stroll around the renovated quarters. He says that providing a cheerful work environment is key to his plan for increasing worker productivity in the agency, which accounts for 90 percent of the territory's revenues. All of the territory's tax returns are processed in the St. Thomas headquarters, he notes.
There's bright, new lighting in the upstairs hallway leading to the modern, well-appointed offices of the revenue agents. Willis opens the door to a spotless room lined with computer terminals. "This is our ongoing training room," he says, noting that the agency is now completely computerized, with IBM supervising the training.
Another room contains 11 comfortably arranged cubicles. Granville Smith, computer operations chief, steps out of his adjacent office to display the electronic brain center where all the network wiring terminates. The densely occupied "closet" — where one can't see the walls for the wires — emits a steady hum as remote terminals process taxpayer's paperwork.
Downstairs is the agency's first mail room, a bright, white space occupied by neat cubicles stuffed with tax returns. The whole main floor work area has been reconfigured so that what used to be space for 26 employees now can gracefully accommodate 48. Some of those positions have yet to be filled, but "we'll do that in the fourth quarter this year," Willis says — after the 2000 returns and refunds are processed.
One room is overflowing with returns on tables and counters and in neatly arranged plastic boxes on the floor — 24,000 to 25,000 of them just from April 17. Not all of them represent revenue for the agency; Willis says about $40 million in refunds will be mailed out by July 30.
He points out offices for the IRB representatives who deal with taxpayers owing less than $10,000 and others where representatives deal with those owing $20,000 to $100,000. There's no class distinction between the spaces; all are painted a soothing gray with muted blue trim.
Also in this part of the building are room for the staff "phoners." "They follow up after we send out a first notice," Willis explains "There are three notices, and then the agency takes legal action." The phoners are part of his strategy to accommodate taxpayers and assist them in meeting their obligations.
It's Willis's projection that the IRB will collect $400 million this year, about $15 million more than last year. The agency now has 209 employees, with 25 vacancies to be filled. The 2001 budget includes $2 million to go toward the hiring of new tax-collection agents.
Willis opposes a bill before the Senate to give bonuses to revenue agents based on their individual collections. "It would just create problems," he says. He favors a collective bonus coming directly to the agency for its management.
The IRB director figures he is living on borrowed time, since the current administration could be voted out of office in a year and a half. "I didn't know if I wanted this job," he says. "There's so much to get done in two years, but I wanted to do it for the employees. That's why I took it."
His next big project is to get make maximum use of a scanner that sits in the office overflowing with returns. "If we can get people trained on the scanner, it will be so much easier next year," he explains. The device "reads about 100 returns a minute," with the data then transmitted to a form processing area "where the scanned documents are corrected," he says.
High on Willis's list of things to accomplish during his tenure is interfacing with the Licensing and Consumer Affairs Department to streamline the issuance of tax-clearance letters for business license renewals. Also near the top is implementing a system to allow on-line tax payments by credit card.
Testifying in Senate hearings, Willis has repeatedly described himself as a team player. He brought 14 members of the IRB team to his March confirmation hearing. He declined to have his photograph taken for this article. "Take a picture of some of the other people who do the work," he said.
