The federal government is wasting $7 billion on leases for office space — despite around half of its employees working from home on a regular basis more than four years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report.
The House Oversight Committee probed remote work policies in the Biden administration after pandemic restrictions were lifted — and found US taxpayers had doled out “billions to pay for owned and leased federal office space that remains largely vacant,” according to a 41-page report issued Wednesday.
A Government Accountability Office report in July 2023 cited in the report found that the feds pay about $7 billion annually to lease and maintain office space — even as 17 of the 24 federal agencies are using as little as 9% and only as much as 49% of their buildings’ capacities.
According to subsequent findings from the Office of Management and Budget, “more than half of federal employees were either teleworking regularly or fully remote” by May 2024, the report noted. It’s unclear whether many have returned to offices in the nation’s capital in the seven months since then.
“In other words, the federal government is wasting billions in taxpayer dollars to pay for underutilized office space,” it states.
Federal agencies still purchased $3.3 billion in furniture between 2020 and 2022, according to an audit by the taxpayer watchdog OpenTheBooks that followed the GAO report.
Other findings from a report conducted by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) show the government has 7,000 entirely vacant buildings and 2,500 are just occupied by a portion of the federal workforce.
Ernst noted in a separate report exclusively reported by The Post that Interior Department employees were bilking taxpayers of $400,000 after improperly claiming to reside in Washington, DC.
Many agencies are still keeping in place Biden’s work-from-home options that are “detrimental,” the report also noted, and that more evidence compiled by the committee “suggests the Administration’s self-reported telework data exaggerates in-office attendance.”
That poses an obstacle to the incoming Trump administration holding training sessions and other in-person activities, with the committee faulting federal labor unions for “unsupportable high telework levels.”
“Of the 2.28 million federal civilian employees, approximately 228,000 are never required to show up to the office, and nearly all of the other 1.1 million employees technically-eligible for telework are engaged in telework,” the report adds.
DC Mayor Muriel Bower has implored the Biden administration to bring its workforce back to Washington, while mandating city employees arrive at least four days per week for in-person office work.
Comer’s panel has recommended that President-elect Donald Trump’s executive branch use automation and other tools to better track remote work.
Ironically, it was the first Trump administration that instituted the work-from-home mandates in early 2020 after the start of the COVID pandemic.
Agreements struck with federal labor unions during the Biden administration will make it more difficult for agency heads to undo the telework policies, according to the report.
In one recent instance, aides to Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley struck a deal in November with their agency’s union to uphold the status quo on telework until October 2029, the Washington Post reported.
Biden had paved the way for the move by reversing several executive orders that Trump issued in his first term to lessen the union power.
But the incoming president’s Office of Management and Budget could still release new guidance determining which federal workers are approved to work remotely, potentially setting up a legal battle with the unions.
The SHOW Up Act, which passed the GOP-controlled House two years ago but never cleared the Senate, could authorize a robust return-to-work policy.
“The lights may be on in federal buildings, but too many federal bureaucrats continue to work from home,” said Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) in a statement.
“The House Oversight Committee’s investigation into prolonged pandemic-era telework reveals the Biden-Harris Administration has ceded too much authority to the federal union bosses, allowing their preference to work from home to take precedence over fulfilling agencies’ missions and serving the American people.”
The House Oversight Committee held its first meeting of the 119th Congress on the telework problem Wednesday morning.
Read the full article here
