Are Feds in and Around D.C. Going to Have to Go Into Offices Soon?

Ross Gianfortune

This is GovExec Daily, where we bring you the federal stories that really matter.  It's May 3, 2023 . I’m Ross Gianfortune.

When the private sector was starting lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the federal government instructed agencies to implement “maximum telework.” The White House announced that it will end the public health emergency on May 11, and with that, the Office of Personnel Management declared that the “maximum telework” status will end, too.

All this comes amidst a backdrop in the D.C. area of business interests, local governments and others lamenting in-person work as economic drivers of real estate, hospitality and other businesses. In January, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called for the Biden administration to make good on its promise to get feds back into offices downtown. 

Inertia is a powerful thing, though, and three years of remote work have become ingrained in many offices and agencies. Ahuja noted that “Agencies should continue to strategically use telework and remote work policies” while also asking agencies to “increase meaningful in-person work.” If that means more federal employees will be downtown each weekday in D.C., the local government will certainly be pleased.

GovExec Daily is based here in D.C. and after a short break, GovExec Daily’s Adam Butler and I will discuss the state of telework in the federal government as the public health emergency comes to an end next week.

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Ross Gianfortune
The Office of Personnel Management announced that the maximum telework edict will end this month with the cessation of the national public health emergency on May 11, though OPM chief Kiran Ahuja has said that the change will not have a significant impact on agencies. Telework for feds has been a political football and the three years of the pandemic suggest that flexibility overrides almost everything else. Still, plenty are pushing for more in-office work and the matter seems far from resolved.

GovExec Daily's Adam Butler joins me now to talk about the state of telework in the federal government as the public health emergency comes to an end next week. Adam, Hello. 

Adam Butler
Hey, how's it going? Good, good. 

Ross Gianfortune 
So, we have talked about this on the show before it has been a long standing topic since we launched just a few weeks before the lockdowns in 2020. You live in DC I live in DC we work in DC. DC is a very remote work heavy city and community census showed according to data that DC was the top city for remote work in 2020 and 2021. And thus the stop state were we estate. Before the pandemic, it was somewhere around six or 7% of people telework worked. In 2021 48.3% of employees in DC worked remotely. That's like almost half obviously, it's a big gap. So I posit to you. What do you think the city's relationship with work? And telework has it changed entirely during the pandemic?

Adam Butler  
I think it has actually, um, and I'm going to reference the article in a second but just to answer your question directly. I do definitely think it has changed we talked about this last time that there are empty buildings now I don't want to make it out to sound like you know, downtown DC is like a ghost town. You know, it's not completely dead. But There are buildings that were occupied before 2020 that aren't, there are businesses that existed before 2020. That don't. And that directly impacts the economy of Washington, DC, and it definitely impacts the relationship. You know, it's no surprise that we're wanting to be at the highest, one of the highest numbers of the highest number of telework, because most people that work in the DMV area, or a lot of the people that work in the DMV area work for the federal government, whether you live in Virginia, whether you live in Maryland, whether you live in DC proper. So that makes sense. And in nice reference before the businesses around it have been impacted. But one thing Ross has been impacted is our public transit, our metro, and the city council, I'm gonna have you heard about this, but the DC City Council was actually proposed a $2 surcharge, a $2 charge, excuse me, on all rideshare. So that means Uber Lyft would cost $2 extra on top of all of the fees that we already get in DC, we actually get a lot of fees when you ride Uber, or any rideshare some of the fees are actually going to help out DC Metro already. So now we want to add another $2 to that charge, which would actually make getting into DC. I think they said between the hours of 7am and 12pm 12. Yeah, 12pm. And then from something like from like three to like seven in the afternoon, the discharge would take place socially saying that keep it simple, that if you want to go into Washington, DC, if you want to go downtown DC, if you want to ride Uber, you probably want to have to pay more starting October 1. The reason they're doing that is to into to convince people to ride metro to ride the bus to ride the train, which has been which has been impacted since 2020. If you live in Washington, DC, you know that our trains are trained specifically our metro rail has not been the same since as a run on a proper schedule. You know, used to you know, during rush hour to run like every you know, you get to train every two, three minutes now is like every 510 minutes. The trains are more crowded, they're doing more work on it, they've they're losing money. So I don't know where I fall on this debate, right, I ride over a lot. I think Uber is way more convenient. I've barely rode the train since the pandemic, I think maybe two or three times Ross, I love the convenience of Uber, I live in a city is easy to get around that way. But just to you know, go to what you just did, just to answer your question in the reference do talking about they have to do something. So that to me speaks to the relationship between the the, you know, the Fed, and just the regular, you know, just to average person and the local government, there's money being lost and money have been has been lost for some time. If people aren't going to go back to work, right. And we don't know if they will or won't. But if if you can't fill up those those offices, you can't get business bubbling downtown, you have to figure out another way to make money. And here's one way to do that. The counselor said, you know, hey, we're going to, we're going to charge more for Uber. Basically,

Ross Gianfortune  
it's interesting, because this is something that I was, my mind was somewhat changed, or at least has brought a new perspective into my life. When you talk about the public transit, problems in DC, and the adjustments that will Mata has made when it comes to service and cycles of service and things like that, because, you know, it's still the cheapest form of of transit other than walking in, in DC. And so, you know, depending on where you are in the economic spectrum, you may use the Metro more than, you know, Uber or Lyft or or cabs. In the same way, you know, I politico did a story about this last week that spurred our conversations for the most Yeah, about doing this again. And in it, they spoke to SEIU and AFGE union representatives, and there seems to be a clash there. And that is something I hadn't really put into perspective, because the federal government is the largest employer in DC. That's not news. Right. But SEIU obviously is a huge Union. It might be one of the I think it's the biggest in the country, but it's certainly one of the biggest, and they represent a different group of people. People that rely on the jobs that have been somewhat going away for all of this stuff that we talk about when it comes to this particular topic. It is most About our audience specifically. Yeah, our, the people with which we engage the most. That varies, obviously, between you and I between our other colleagues. But certainly when it comes to our audience, our audience is mostly in the desk type jobs. Yeah, we're not we're not. We're not talking about the people that SEIU represents. Yeah. And it's easy to forget that, because that's DC is not just people who sit at desks, it's people who, in the case of SEIU, they talked about people who work in janitorial services, and we're in the buildings of these hotels and restaurants who have been hurt that said, you know, the downtown DC business industrial district last winter. did say that economic activity is creeping up. Hmm, that's a sign of progress. Yeah. But it is still very, very, very low, it is still at a little bit over half of pre pandemic levels, which tracks eerily close with the 48% of people who worked remotely during 2021. But that 52% is up from a third in the fall of 21 and 16%, at the real low of December, January 2021. So there are signs of optimism, I guess. And I guess that so that brings him to the the question, Do you think I'll pose it to you? You think that the end of the public health emergency next month, next month, this month? Yes, we're recording this on May 2? It's May. Is that kind of spur some, some movement here?

Adam Butler  
I'm gonna have to get it was for some shore? You know, I'm curious to see how much though, I think so to answer your question. Yes, I think it will. I talked about this last time, we never considered the people that just want to go into the office and like going into the office that want to be downtown and kind of miss, um, I've said this a million times, I'm one of them, right? Like, I I'm often conflicted, because, you know, and I use myself as an example. Even I don't work for the federal government. I am, you know, I've talked about this before the beginning, the pandemic is very hard for me, because I was in here with it with, at the time, seven year old, and, you know, six year old, excuse me, and it was tough, Chad homeschool, all of this, you've heard this story. Um, now I am here with a two month old, right. And that is helpful for me, because I have free child free childcare now, like, I can take care of my child during the day and not have to worry about, you know, you know, trying to find childcare, and how much that's gonna cost me, my wife, and I can make it work. However, the feeling of going downtown, the feeling of being in a city, you move to a city for a reason, right? And I'm only I'm making this, you know, just relating this to myself and people that live in the city that would have to go, you know, you people, some people would enjoy going out on their lunch break and getting a sandwich when they, you know, their favorite little shop or the restaurant or whatever. So people enjoy being in the office and having that camaraderie with other people, and not just on Zoom meetings and things like that. So people do enjoy that. So I think the opportunity for those people to get back to quote unquote, normal would be good for them. And I think that would, that would be some progress. But I don't think we ever get back to pre pandemic numbers in terms of people being in the office and people being downtown and people eating at the restaurants during work hours. I don't think we ever do. So, you know, cities that are impacted, in this case, DC are going to have to think outside of the box, right. And I go back to that city council thing, because that just you know that that really made me think about our subject what we were talking about today, that is a city trying to think outside of the box, even if it may be a bad idea. And for the record, the mayor of the city thinks it's a terrible idea. And obviously Uber thinks it's a bad idea, right? So but it's just people kind of throwing darts at the wall trying to figure out how can we boost our economy knowing that we can't bank on traveling back into the past, people have been doing this for three years for the most part and they become comfortable with it. Even people like myself, who would rather be in the office and rather put on his clothes in the morning and get up and go and just had another I've become this has become routine for me. I almost can't go into the office every single day My life has changed dramatically over the past three years, you know, so there is a long time. So, yes, some people will just go back. Some some, some organizations will, agencies, I should say will probably just make people go back, we don't know. But I don't think most will. Especially if you're a not a, you mentioned, someone that has to be in office, you work in maintenance, right, or you have to work in someone that has to be on site, if you're not that person, and you could work from a desk. And if organization can say, Yo, you know, maybe we don't need to spend as much rent, maybe we could downsize our offices, maybe we can move out of this place. And you know, maybe we don't need it office is a lot of options on the table to save money. And there's a lot of options for people to save money. If Uber is going to cost more it just again, for DC to get into the city during rush hour, then I'd rather not have to deal with because one thing we mentioned about public transportation, again, that's not to brag on DC, but you know, our public transportation has become more valid over the past three years does just that's just on right. That's, you know, so now you're telling people to have to do it, you know, so I don't think that I wonder if local, local governments and you know, that are impacted by if you have a federal if you have a large amount of federal workers in your wherever you live in your city, I wonder if they are a little too late, with the planning and trying to figure out how to boost their economy or whatever they should have thought of, you know, being a little more innovative. Earlier on, they try to figure this out, because it feels like they kind of chasing the tail now. Oh, my God, it doesn't feel like people going it doesn't seem like people are going to come back to work. We're not gonna get the numbers that we need. How do we supplement that? And I just, I feel like, ultimately, they're coming up with plans, at least here that are gonna end up hurting people. As opposed to it. I don't think I don't think it's gonna work. So no, I don't think yes, I do think that we will, that will get some progress that's inevitable. But not enough. Not enough.

Ross Gianfortune  
Now, I think that's a good point. And I was just strolling, scrolling through some, some data on this, the offices rate vacancy rates in downtown centers, this is from a Brookings Institute report. In 10, cities, DC is has the third biggest increase from 11.1% to 17.5%. As far as office vacancy rates in downtown's from 19 to 22. Now it's starting from a fairly low place. 11.1%. You know, that's a pretty hop in downtown, I suspect that has something to do with the fact that a lot of tenants are in fact, government or government adjacent. But that is a big jump only behind Phoenix and approximately the same as Houston. So it does bring up the question about our own anecdotal experiences, being downtown being around downtown. What that has has meant and it does seem like things are coming back to speed. Slowly is the recovery data I mentioned before. But to answer the question that I posed to you, I'll insert myself to say that don't just do our reporting. I think we have to take a a Hoosiers statement about it not being something that will have a big impact on agencies with a major, major grain of salt. Because we don't know that, you know, like, like you've cited and through the reporting that we've done on our show, and that our reporters have done that varies from office to office to agency to agency. You know, I remember talking to one fairly high up official in in a cabinet level agency who said the Secretary was pretty much hell bent on getting people back into office, despite the fact that you know, this was a times when reinfections were fairly high. Right, and there are a lot of there's just so much variance, and there's a lot of different Secretaries of agencies, you know, heads of agencies, cabinet level and below. Middle managers and officers who make personnel policy just generally people who have different ideas of what is meaningful in office work. That's the thing is that the the memo from from OPM, about ending maximum telework talks about meaningful or reasonable let me find the exact wording it's a Yeah, meaningful in person work. The agency should continue to strategically use telework and remote work policies in support of their workforce plans moving forward, while capitalizing on the benefits of meaningful in person work. Sorry, we're gonna have to edit around that I apologize. meaningful in office work or in person work. I mean, that doesn't mean anything. You know what I mean? So it's because there's so much discretion, and admittedly there has to be meaningful in office work. In person work, I keep saying in office means something different from one agency to the next. And for to the mayor's credit, to Mayor Bowser is credited. I know, she has admittedly fairly late, as you talked about, you know, they should have been more innovative. Local governments probably should have been more innovative earlier. In January, she basically said like, well, we want, you know, if the federal government is going to use this space, like we want to use it for public, you know, housing or development, or all the things that local governments do with land use. And to her credit, that, however empty that threat may be, it is, at least there's a solution there. And I credit that, but there's so many different agencies, and so many different bosses, and so many different people that are going to have different accommodations that are needed. That I, this kind of just seems to have to happen at this snail's pace. And I'm Yeah, that's a cell for anybody. Yeah. Who is relying on your if you work, if you work, maintenance in some place downtown, and you're out of work? Like, you can't wait. But yes, if you're right, me, you can, you know, right, right. And that is the trick. That's why I say, you know, one hand,

Adam Butler  
I keep going back to the Uber thing, just because this to me is like a microcosm of all of this, like, on one hand, you have a here's a plan. But is that isn't a good plan. I don't, it's hard to say. And I wouldn't want to be in a position of having to handle a budget of a city that could be losing money that was reliant on a certain, you know, that was reliant on certain businesses to bring in a large portion of money for your city, you know, and so that's, that's, that is difficult. But you're right, there are so many, so many people involved decision makers involved in this, right. It's, you see it just from I know, we all know, people who are who worked for certain agencies or work for private for the private sector, who, maybe the manager wanted them to come back to work a couple of months ago, and then certain people started writing letters and saying, I don't want to do it, and I don't feel comfortable. And then the manager had to backtrack a little bit, I've seen that. And I could give you four or five people just off the top of my head, who've experienced that. My manager or manager asked us to come back. And then two people that have said he couldn't and he went to the back for it was like, it went all the way with it almost like as far as you can, with HR letters, doctors notices all sorts of stuff saying they don't want to come back, they can't come back. I can't do full time, or I can't you I don't want come back at all. You know, that's probably going to happen all over, you know, just because this emergency this health emergency is over doesn't mean that it's over, you know, even we are considering. And I don't know the numbers have been really good lately. And that's I'm happy about that, by the way, I want the pandemic to be over. You know, I think a lot of people seem to think that people that are here's my opinion, seem to think that people who were concerned about COVID, and took over very seriously seem for the scene of not wanting to be overweight, that's not true at all. I would, I would love to go back to 2019 way 11. It was, you know, and I'm glad we're getting more back to normal. But you can't rule out another surge. You can't rule out a variant that that is just so different that we have to, you know, put all these things back in play. I don't know, I don't I don't want to say but you know what? I'm just saying you just don't know. You can't rule out an outbreak in your office, you can't rule out an outbreak, you just can't. Right. Winter is what you know, next winter, what will it look like? It's always worse than when are we singing this? Right? So this is going to be different regardless is what I'm trying to say, is not going to look the same. And there's so many different like you mentioned, there's so many different people that get to make a decision on this that you can't plan for it. If you're if you're a local government, just thinking, hey, I need you all to come back, get back to normal, you can't. It's impossible to plan for it. And you're right, you're going to have to deal with this snail's pace and it's not going to be good enough. And the only thing you can do is try to think outside of the box. How you do that I'm not the person to make those decisions. But I think that's just the only choice You have the only option you have is to think outside of the box and try to find new and creative ways to boost your economy in this. And to me, that's much easier said than done. Because I'm certainly not an economist,

Ross Gianfortune  
for sure. And I think in the case of DC the hope and I don't I don't know that this happens. I know there are a lot of conversations being had in the background. I know that the political political story mentioned this. And definitely we've we've talked to people who've said this, and, you know, reporting otherwise has shown this, the DC government and the federal government have to work together on this because it is very much something that affects DC and the federal government has to keep that in mind. from an individual perspective, I imagine a lot of our listeners will echo what Max Dyer, who has been on our show up a bunch has said, talking about the Senior Executives Association, or Tony Reardon, who has been on our show a few times is the NTU. President, he's which is that managers, a lot of managers like telework to Yeah, so there may be a lot of Sturm and Drang around this in the halls of Congress, but the actual people who are doing the teleworking or the people who are doing the mission delivery, they have not seen a downside, as much, as James Comer wants to say that it's bad that federal employees are not in an office building, right realist office building on, you know, off of Independence Avenue, right. Their strikes meet, in addition to the actual data of the production meeting the same people will, as you've referenced, they're gonna freak out if you start telling them they have to go into the office. And I'm, I'll be curious to see how that works out. Because as I've said to our colleague, Courtney, on the show, stuff is lost in full telework, not just the sort of human interaction that we've we've talked about in person. And by the way, I say this, I'm recording from our office. Yeah, yeah. irony is that I'm, I'm in our office today, instead of my home office.

Adam Butler  
This is a definition of what the future and what the President so this is the normal right here me at home. You in office?

Ross Gianfortune  
I think so. And ultimately, I mean, I, and I'll just end on this little filibuster to say that. I don't think we're going back. And I think you know, like you said, we all want to live back in 2019. In a lot of ways, in most ways, in 99% of ways. Yeah. Most notably, not to be grim. But the million people, the only Americans who died.

Adam Butler  
Yeah. And by millions that got sick. Yeah.

Ross Gianfortune  
Yeah. And wearing a mask everywhere. And all the changes that have happened. Very few of them, if any have been good. Yeah, certainly. remote works. adoption, I think, has been good in a lot of ways, because it's given access to people that didn't have access before. And it has changed the way people approach their work lives. And I think that is very good. And there's a lot to be said for that. But if even if you're not thinking from a bird's eye view from it, from an individual standpoint, why on earth would you want to sit in traffic or on a train or on a bus, or whatever, when you can roll out of bed and do work, the people are just too ingrained in these rhythms, too, to make a U turn. That's something we have to keep in mind. I don't know what that means for local governments. And I don't know what that means for the federal government. I know OPM makes OPM and GSA make a lot of noise about reducing the federal footprint with buildings, selling off excess property. And our colleagues have been covering that for as long as I've been here. But yeah, that's similarly slow going. So everything with regards to the federal government is fairly slow. I don't like again, I'm not breaking news, our listeners here. Yeah. But what I think is a nightmare scenario, two circumstances, one that you laid out, and I also have friends who work for huge contractors that are government adjacent, and a couple who work for agencies, where their managers are just chomping at the bit. Pre maximum telework they made people come in and post maximum telework they're gonna make people come in. That fight is going to be fair really difficult depending on where it is?

Adam Butler  
Yep. Yep, yep. Yep. Absolutely. And just a note really quickly, before we go, that, you know, the DC council, the mayor has expressed that she thinks it's a bad idea to charge people to come downtown, you know, via Uber, that she thinks, you know, it's a terrible idea that it will actually cause people not to want to come downtown and shop and eat and do these things. The DC government has expressed that they think that they that too many cars, too many vehicles, you know, is a problem, and that they want to lessen our carbon footprint and pollution and things like that. I just want to be fair to them. Because that's that was their response that they didn't just mention, oh, we need more money. So we need you to ride our Metro. You know, they are saying it's about the carbon footprint in this and and others as well. So, you know, whether I believe that that is not important, but that's something Yeah.

Ross Gianfortune  
I mean, you know, you could take any of those statements at face value to a certain extent with regards to revenue or the environment or whatever, I don't really know. Right? Again, I this is not a hot take. And in my middle age, I have become less of a hot taker, but it's a hard problem. And I'm glad I don't have to solve it. Yeah, no, I mean, as as someone who is just a cog in the machine, such as it were, I, I drove, I drove to the office today, I generally drive or take a cab or something when I'm going to a concert Wednesday night, tomorrow night, down by the waterfront, and that's, I don't I'll probably drive, I don't know. Yeah. For the pandemic, when I would go to the to the wharf, I would take Metro and walk whatever it is, yeah, hell from the station. I moved and move far away from Metro. Like, it's just not really an option anymore. And I wonder how that sort of works out for everybody. That's my own individual thing. But broadly, how do we reconcile those very understandably, competing to needs or wants or desires or whatever? I don't know. I don't even and I you know, I think, like I said, I think the nightmare scenario for a lot of our listeners and I, this is borne out in the feedback that we've gotten is that telework. People love telework, man. Yeah, we love it. They like having the option to go to an office. And they like having an option to have, you know, a huddle or something in an office if they need to have on site stuff, but taking it away or putting these kinds of restrictions on Hmm, that's really tough.

Adam Butler  
What do they say it takes two weeks to create a habit? Well, three years is a culture. Yeah, for sure. Three years is a culture. No, no, no, we've been doing a certain way for three years now. Um, and you have to accept that to some extent.

Ross Gianfortune  
Yeah, it does. It's not going to change because someone because one or another person thinks it should, however much power they have, I think the masses of people who like telework will really have their say so as the public health emergency ends, we will certainly be covering that in this. And as such. Thank you for doing this. 

Adam Butler
Of course.

Ross Gianfortune
Thanks for listening to GovExec Daily. Our show was produced and hosted by Adam Butler and  me, Ross Gianfortune. Our music is the song “Signals” by Catfish Dancing. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.  You can email us any feedback at podcast @ govexec.com or hit us on Twitter @ Govexec. Find us on Facebook or LinkedIn by searching for Government Executive.

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