Ernst calls for investigation into SBA remote work abuse

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, led two of her committee colleagues in requesting that the Small Business Administration’s (SBA’s) Office of Inspector General (OIG) launch an investigation into how the SBA is utilizing its office space.

“We request your office assess the SBA’s office space utilization as part of your role in providing independent, objective, and timely oversight of the SBA,” the senators wrote in an April 11 letter sent to OIG Inspector General Hannibal “Mike” Ware. 

“In addition, we request you not limit your review merely to the SBA’s headquarters and its Washington, D.C.-based employees, but also review the agency’s footprint and workforce in its field offices across the country,” wrote Sen. Ernst and her fellow committee members U.S. Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) and John Kennedy (R-LA).

Their letter is a follow up on an investigation request made in August 2023 related to remote work, telework, space utilization, and locality pay policies at the SBA.

In it, they also pointed to discrepancies that surfaced during a hearing held in March by their committee in which SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman testified that she disagreed with the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) finding that the SBA is among the very worst federal agencies in terms of remote work, with just 9 percent of employees in the office.

Guzman claimed that her “data does not match” the GAO’s findings, and said that the SBA’s headquarters’ “occupancy rate” — not its utilization rate — is 50 percent, most likely based on the SBA’s stated in-office work policies, according to the letter. 

However, a new interim report for Congress issued on March 21 by the Public Buildings Reform Board, reaffirmed that the GAO was correct and shows that just 209 people are working in person at the SBA on any given day, the lawmakers wrote.

“Given Administrator Guzman’s disagreement with the GAO findings and her apparent conflation of the SBA’s policies for in-office work and its building utilization rate,” wrote the senators, “it is imperative that the SBA OIG coordinate with the SBA to ensure it implements a sound and valid approach to data collection and reporting as it fulfills its obligations under” the enacted Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024, which requires each agency to report the average number and percent of employees present in the office, as well as the average office space utilization rate.

Sen. Ernst and her colleagues noted that Guzman’s disagreement with the GAO also underlines the importance of Ware’s office engaging in the comprehensive reviews, audits, and evaluations of the SBA’s policies as requested in the Aug. 28, 2023 letter.