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Fed speeds up closure of Windsor Locks check-processing center journalinquirer.com 6/11 The FRB of Boston plans to hasten the closing of its check processing office in Windsor Locks & will hold an informational meeting about the closing in August, COO Paul Connolly has announced. The Boston Fed originally announced last summer that the closing was planned for IQ 2009. But the Fed has moved the date to 9/19, according to a filing with the state Labor Department, known as a Worker Adjustment & Retraining Notification, or WARN notice for short. In that filing, the Fed said the remaining 94 workers at the center - which just a year ago employed 136 - will be laid off when the operation closes in September. The center is located at 317 Ella Grasso Turnpike, near Bradley Airport. In an announcement of the speedup sent to banks still using the center, Connolly said there will be ‘town hall meetings’ in Boston & Enfield sometime in August to field questions about the closing. The Fed announced the phasing out of the Windsor Locks center last June, citing as reasons the dwindling use of traditional paper checks & the shift toward electronic processing of check-based transactions. FRBs act as intermediaries in commercial banks’ check cashing procedures, collecting & processing millions of checks every day, setting interest rates, regulating & supervising banks, & issuing government securities. In his latest letter to area banks, Connolly said that the move of check processing from Windsor Locks to Philadelphia & the stepping up of electronic processing will be a benefit overall. ‘Electronic check collection & receipt will be more beneficial than ever for New England institutions when we move our check processing operations to Philadelphia.’ The August public information meetings, including the one in Enfield, ‘will provide opportunities for us to share the latest information & discuss the transition.’ In the initial 2007 closing announcement, Boston FRB VP Thomas Lavelle said the laid-off workers would be offered unspecified separation packages, extended medical insurance coverage, & ‘career transition assistance.’ Windsor Locks is one of 14 Fed check-cashing operations & Fed bank branches with a total of 1,740 jobs being lost in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, NY, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee & Washington. The Philadelphia, Cleveland, Atlanta, & Dallas FRBs will be regional check processing sites that will provide full check-processing services through at least mid-2011, according to Lavelle. Since 2003, the Fed has reduced the locations where checks are processed from 45 to 21. 3 other sites that previously were scheduled to discontinue check operations, in San Francisco, Kansas City & Helena, will remain as print-only sites.