OPINION:
“Of the people, by the people, and for the people” was President Abraham Lincoln’s description of how the federal government should function. These days, however, it’s hard to know who’s doing what for whom — or even where.
More than three years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many federal employees still haven’t returned to the office, and some are choosing to abuse federal telework and leave policies and waste hard-earned taxpayer dollars funding empty offices.
In his State of the Union address in January 2022, President Biden promised that “the vast majority of federal workers will once again work in person.” In far too many cases, this hasn’t happened.
The federal COVID-19 public health emergency ended this past May 11, yet hundreds of thousands continue to work remotely — if they are working at all.
The Functional Government Initiative, a watchdog group dedicated to improving public awareness about the officials, decisions and priorities of the government, obtained an internal report from the Department of Health and Human Services showing that according to VPN login data, 25% of HHS employees were not logging in to work on any given day.
As public servants, federal employees have been entrusted by the public to remain consistently productive and deliver on products and services. Apparently, they never got the memo.
The Functional Government Initiative also revealed a concerning trend in leave usage among federal employees. Comparing employee leave usage from 24 federal agencies before and since pandemic telework policies were implemented, there was a direct correlation between an increase in telework and a steep decline in annual and sick leave usage. Compared with numbers in 2018, there was a 15% to 40% drop. This decline equated to more than $1.4 billion in taxpayer funding.
Why use leave days when you can just pretend to telework, right?
In March, the director of the Office of Personnel Management admitted to Congress that the agency had not been properly tracking telework levels or performance data. This led House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican, and nearly two dozen other members of the committee to send letters to 25 federal agencies, requesting information about their telework and remote work rates and policies.
Earlier this month, Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, wrote to 24 inspectors general of major federal departments and agencies, urging them to open investigations to determine the impact of telework on the delivery and response times of services, how much taxpayer money can be saved consolidating unused office spaces, and changing the location-based salaries of employees no longer living in the Washington area.
A July Government Accountability Office report revealed that 75% or more of the office space at the headquarters of federal agencies is not being utilized. According to the report, the federal government, regardless of utilization, spends approximately $2 billion a year to operate and maintain office buildings and $5 billion annually to lease these buildings.
That means that billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent renting and maintaining empty offices. Furthermore, the work locations of more than 280,000 employees were redacted from data provided in a Freedom of Information Act request to the nonprofit group Open the Books. If they’re not in the offices, where are all the employees?
In fact, just this month, the GAO employees union reached a tentative agreement with the GAO to retain their D.C.-location rate salaries while they work from elsewhere. The agreement stipulates a one-time grace period in which employees can retain their current salaries if they move or have already moved to more affordable parts of the U.S. within 18 pay periods.
It’s a disturbing irony that GAO employees are abusing telework policies when the very office they work for, the supreme audit institution of the federal government, is supposed to prevent such abuse.
As the federal government continues policies that enable abuse of telework policies and seemingly encourage “leave time” on the clock, the American public will continue to pay the price, both literally and figuratively. For example, veterans’ calls to the Department of Veterans Affairs are going unanswered. Ditto for older adults who call the Social Security Administration for help. People can’t get their passports in time for travel due to long wait times at the State Department.
Businesses with that kind of customer service go bankrupt. It’s time to return to the office.
• Pete McGinnis is the communications director at the Functional Government Initiative.
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