Sen. Joni Ernst is going to be introducing legislation to relocate federal workers from Washington, D.C. to other areas across the U.S. as part of her efforts to fix what she says is a broken government bureaucracy.
The Iowa Republican will introduce the first of those bills, obtained exclusively by FOX Business, on Thursday.
The legislation, dubbed the “Returning SBA to 5 Main Street Act,” would move nearly a third or more of the employees at the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Washington, D.C., headquarters (HQ), to duty stations outside of the D.C. metro area.
The bill reduces SBA’s HQ office space and “100 percent telework” ability, by moving at least 30 percent of HQ employees into various regions across America and reducing HQ office space by an equal amount. It comes after the SBA stated that even if 100% of SBA employees came in-person to the Washington, D.C., HQ, only 67 percent of SBA’s HQ capacity would be used.
Ernst’s new legislation also follows a September Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee hearing on the impact of telework to SBA services, during which a witness from Iowa detailed how they had an extremely difficult time getting in touch with anyone at the agency.
“Ask any small business owner – if your customers can’t reach you, your doors won’t be open very long,” Ernst told FOX Business. “The SBA is supposed to serve Main Street, but there might as well be a ‘closed for business’ sign up at the agency because it is nearly impossible to reach anyone with all the bureaucrats permanently out of office.”