When -- and how often -- are SBA staffers going into the office? A senator wants the agency's IG to find out

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, is asking the Small Business Administration’s inspector general to determine how many employees are coming to work in its headquarters after its leader disagreed with the findings of a Government Accountability Office report.  

Ernst, who has maintained stark scrutiny of federal agencies’ use of telework, joined Sens. John Kennedy, R-La., and Tim Scott, R-S.C., an April 11 letter to SBA inspector general Hannibal "Mike" Ware, following up on an August 2023 request he investigate the agency’s telework, office utilization and locality pay policies. 

The April letter ties back to comments made by SBA administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman during a March 20 hearing discussing the agency’s fiscal 2025 budget, where she disputed the findings of a July 2023 GAO report that claimed the SBA averaged about 9% utilization of their headquarters’ office space. 

“My data does not match that, that must be old data,” said Guzman during the hearing, when asked about the GAO report, which covered a three-week period between January and March 2023. “Headquarters is currently at 50% in terms of occupancy…We are now in the office five days per pay period and that is now nationally as well.”

Guzman went on to say the five days per two-week pay period was a minimum bar and office utilization was more so based on job mission, with some groups more in office than others.

But in the letter, Ernst, Kennedy and Scott said that Guzman refuting the GAO findings makes an OIG investigation essential, citing new telework reporting requirements tied to the recent fiscal 2024 budget deal that calls for agencies to disclose the average number and percentage of employees in the office, as well as their office utilization rates. 

In a statement outlining the letter, Ernst points to a March 21 Public Buildings Reform Board report that alleged SBA’s daily average occupancy at its headquarters in 2023 was 209 people or 15% of approximate utilization.

“Given Administrator Guzman’s with the GAO findings and her apparent conflation of the SBA’s policies for in-office work and its building utilization rate, it is imperative that SBA OIG coordinate with the SBA to ensure it implements a sound and valid approach to data collection and reporting as it fulfills its obligation under [the fiscal 2024 appropriations law],” the letter said. 

Ernst has been highly critical of federal telework in the past, accusing federal employees of committing “fraud” by allegedly claiming higher locality pay while moving to lower-cost areas. 

However, the senator has cited no recent evidence to match those accusations, instead referring to a time card cheating scandal that occurred at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2014.  

The SBA OIG has until Friday to respond to the letter.