Joni Ernst Introduces Bill To Ship A Chunk Of One Agency’s Employees Out Of DC

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa introduced legislation to move 30% of the Small Business Administration (SBA) workforce outside of the Washington, D.C., area Thursday.

Ernst previously introduced the Strategic Withdrawal of Agencies for Meaningful Placement (SWAMP) Act in 2023, which would move the headquarters of government agencies outside of Washington, D.C. Ernst told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the legislation, the “Returning SBA to Main Street Act” would save money by reducing the amount of unused office space in the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.

“The best ideas come from the states, not Washington,” Ernst told the DCNF. “The SBA has lost sight of its goal and there is no better way for it to rediscover it then to get closer to Main Street and better understand the people it serves. This is just the start in fixing the broken bureaucracy and making the federal government finally start to work for the American people.”

The legislation requires the SBA to “promote geographic diversity, including consideration of rural markets” when relocating employees from the D.C. area and to ensure adequate staffing throughout the regions of the Administration, to promote in-person customer service.”

Witnesses from Iowa told a Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee during a Sept. 19 hearing of difficulties in getting assistance from the SBA, which Ernst attributed to liberal telework policies in place during the Biden administration. The legislation prohibits granting relocated employees permission to telecommute.

Ernst issued a 60-page report on Dec. 5 that covered findings from Ernst’s investigations into telework since she sent an August 2023 letter to 24 government agencies requesting a review of the issues involved with telecommuting. Previous investigations by Ernst into telecommuting by federal employees detailed issues telework created involving locality pay, an adjustment to the basic pay of civilian employees in the federal government intended to make sure that federal employees have comparable compensation to private-sector counterparts in a given area of the country.

In one case, a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) employee received locality pay for the Washington, D.C., area despite living full-time in Florida. The employee in question retired before the conclusion of the probe, according to a summary posted on the USAID inspector general’s site on April 30.

Ernst’s legislation requires the SBA to “ensure that the rate of pay of the employee is calculated based on the pay locality for the permanent duty station of the employee.”

In the August 2023 letter sent to 24 government agencies requesting a review of the issues involved with telecommuting, Ernst cited a media account of a VA employee who attended a staff meeting while taking a bubble bath.

Ernst’s previous investigations also revealed that the telework policies left the majority of office space in buildings owned or leased by the federal government unused. A memo provided to the DCNF in December 2023 showed the Transportation Department’s uses only 14% of its office space, and that six out of 24 agencies reviewed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) had building utilization rates below that level, with the Social Security Administration (SSA) having the lowest utilization rate at 7%.

The legislation requires the SBA to reduce its total office space in its Washington, D.C., headquarters by at least 30% in two years.

The SBA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.