Last year, we worked together with Senator Joni Ernst’s office to quantify the federal bureaucracy. We asked questions like: How many are there? What are they earning compared to the private sector? Where are they located? How do they perform? And how much vacation do they enjoy on taxpayers’ dime? From OPENTHEBOOKS.
Many of the answers were pretty damning.
Our findings were documented here on Substack and at Newsweek in our joint oped, “Where’s Waldo at Club Fed?”
We found that after just three years of federal employment, workers enjoyed 44 days of paid time off. Nine weeks of vacation must be nice!
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average real wage for a private worker (FY21) was $54,339 – but at 109 of 125 federal agencies in DC, the average salary was over $100K.
When questioned by Congress in 2023 about how many employees had returned to the office after Covid, Office of Personnel Management Director Kiran Ahuja had no idea.
And under the Biden administration, the government was becoming more and more secretive about who these workers were, what they were doing, and from where:
In the…2022 payroll, 350,861 worker names are redacted. Under the Obama Administration, in FY 2016, that figure was 2,300. Stunning.
The administration has also redacted 281,656 worker locations.
Our auditors estimate some $36 billion worth of taxpayer-funded salary, benefits and bonuses are hidden from Americans. Even worse, they are headed to mystery people in mystery locations.
THE BIG NUMBERS
A new report this month from Senator Ernst, aptly titled “Out of Office,” dives even deeper. Those vacation days are just philosophical at this point, as the Covid lockdown has given way to an endless era of work-from-home and telework policies. They’re “phoning it in” – literally!
Among federal buildings in DC, just TWELVE PERCENT of office space is occupied.
Prior to Covid lockdowns, only three percent of employees were teleworking every day. But now, almost 1 in 3 workers areremote every day.
And, astonishingly, only six percent of employees report to work in-person, daily!
SERIOUS SIDE EFFECTS
Like the draconian lockdowns before it, this post-crisis absenteeism can have dire consequences.
Senior citizens wait for answers from the Social Security Administration, on which many rely to pay for basic necessities. Veterans who need to make appointments, fill prescriptions, or access mental health care are famously stuck on endless waiting lists. Backlogs and long wait times at VA facilities routinely make local news headlines, and in one case, a national scandal commenced when a teleworker was posting to social media from a relaxing bubble bath.
And remember the baby formula shortage that had new moms driving all over creation trying to find proper nutrition for their children? Well, telework may have had something to do with that as well.
According to the report:
Some Americans are literally getting sick of employees not showing up to do their jobs.
Babies may be harmed because a whistleblower complaint was left unread by the Food and Drug Administration. Warnings about unsanitary conditions at a baby formula factory linked to the deaths emailed and FedExed to the agency were ignored for months as the problem grew worse.
The FDA says the oversight was “likely due to COVID-19 staffing issues.”
A similar tragedy could occur any day because a massive backlog of inspections piled up after the agency curtailed on-site reviews of food and drug manufacturing facilities during the pandemic that persists to this day.
THEY BREAK IT, WE STILL BUY IT
The human consequences are more than enough to demand action. But adding insult to injury is the fact that taxpayers continue to pay for the poor service, and silly spending sprees to boot.
While these offices sat relatively empty, Open the Books reported the feds had no problem splashing out for high-end office furniture. From our own reporting, and highlighted on the cover of the New York Post:
For instance, in 2021, at the peak of the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spent $237,960 on solar powered picnic tables. We wonder if they included a social distancing app. The State Department dialed up nearly $120,000 brand-new Ethan Allen leather recliners for its embassy in Islamabad.
The feds spent $26 million on furniture for their conference rooms, while their meetings were held on ZOOM. Spending included $700,000 by the Securities and Exchange Commission for their New York regional office conference room.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spent nearly $250,000 on a conference room “refresh” with expensive, high-end Herman Miller furniture. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) purchased $284,000 in Herman Miller furniture for their headquarters conference center.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation spent $14.4 million on new furniture for its 1,000 employees – that’s $14,400 per employee.
Meanwhile, these same empty offices have become breeding grounds for dangerous bacteria – and other toxins like copper and lead — as water sits stagnant in pipes and restrooms:
Legionella is turning up in faucets and sinks in federal office buildings, courthouses, and even childcare centers across the country due to “extended periods of reduced or no occupancy” buildings. At least two people who worked in government buildings have recently been diagnosed with Legionnaires’ disease.
At critical agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, even when workers intent to turn up in person, they’re being told to stay away.
All of this and more is documented in “Out of Office.” You can read it here in full.
A CALL FOR R-T-O
As mentioned, longtime federal employees get 44 days of paid time off (PTO), which in many cases simply bleeds together with endless work-from-home, work-from-hotel or work-from-who-knows-where.
So, Senator Ernst is introducing a bill that can help make the case for balancing things out with some RTO – that’s “return to office.”
The REMOTE Act would, according to a press release, “require agencies to use software to gather concrete data on the adverse impacts of telework in the federal government by monitoring bureaucrats’ computer use, requiring agency reports, and providing key information for individual performance reviews.”
A law like this would accomplish a number of things for taxpayers: it would allow us to get a true assessment of how much actual work is being accomplished when employees are logged in remotely; help pinpoint the problems being created by telework; empower agency leaders to hold their employees accountable during performance assessments; and enable Congress to address agencies where problems are proliferating.
CONCLUSION
What started with employees literally phoning it in has turned into a vicious circle with buildings in disrepair, backlogged tasks, and in the case of the National Science Foundation, they’re still blaming delayed open records requests on Covid social distancing!
Congress, and legislation like REMOTE Act, will be critical to informing DOGE as it seeks to find efficiencies in the federal bureaucracy. It’s urgent we create public accountability and force Washington to set priorities and make common sense budget decisions. In the private sector, companies can set whatever remote work policies they want but few private companies maintain both expansive office space and flexible remote work rules. It’s time for Washington to rejoin the real world of finite resources.
FURTHER READING
“Out of Office: Bureaucrats on the Beach and in Bubble Baths but not in Office Buildings” | Senator Joni Ernst | ernst.senate.gov | Dec. 2024
“Seeking Daylight on the Administrative State” | Open the Books | openthebooks.substack.com | April 28, 2023
“Where’s Waldo at Club Fed?” | Sen. Joni Ernst & Adam Andrzejewski | Newsweek Opinion | March 30, 2023