Lawmakers debate measure requiring state employees to return to in-office working
The Republican-controlled Senate Committee on Licensing, Regulatory Reform, State and Federal Affairs held a public hearing Tuesday on a bill that would require all state employees to work full-time in state office starting July 1, unless there is a telework agreement in place or their job was a telework position before the pandemic.
The committee may vote remotely on whether to advance the bill on Thursday due to anticipated inclement weather, a move Democratic committee member Sen. Chris Larson of Milwaukee implied was ironic.
The bill was introduced by Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, and Sen. Corey Tomczyk, R-Mosinee, who said getting such employees back to work is necessary to fill offices that taxpayers pay for, check in on employee efficiency and to build relationships between team members once again.
But Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has already said he will veto such proposals.
In December, Evers said he would not sign the upcoming state budget if Republicans include a requirement mandating state employees working remotely return to the office.
"I think it's important for us to say, 'We want to get the best people working for the state of Wisconsin possible,' and sometimes that will mean that they will work from home, part-time, full-time," Evers said in an interview on WISN-TV's "Upfront" Sunday morning. "We can work that out. It's working fine."
Work-from-home agreements were implemented to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 back in 2020, but that's no longer a risk, Nedweski said during Tuesday's testimony.
"Simply asking employees to return to the work routine they enjoyed prior to the pandemic is not only fair, it is representative of what the public is demanding," she said. "And that is accountability."
Tomczyk said he drew upon his experience in managing people to write the bill and knowing that people can't just work on their own all the time.
"Everyone needs accountability in some way. It's what motivates us, it's how we prove our work. We are all accountable to the taxpayer," he said. "This bill is about good management and development of human beings in a work setting. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can replace the face-to-face experience when coaching or developing or creating something with humans."
Democrats on the committee questioned why employees should be back in the office five days a week and raised concerns about the recruitment and retention of employees in Madison and across the state who choose to work for state agencies because of the flexibility.
"I think one of the things that we learned was remote work can work," Larson said.
Last year, an analysis released by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau found most state agencies and University of Wisconsin institutions allowed employees to work from home up to five days a week and one-third or less of workstations in state offices were being used during auditors' visits.
Based on six visits to 15 agencies and University of Wisconsin System offices between July and August 2023, the highest percentage of workstations being used was 34.5% at the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance. The audit was released in December 2023.
The lowest percentage was at the state Department of Public Instruction, where just 5.3% of workstations were used.
Most agency officials told auditors telework increased the efficiency of their operations, but many had not assessed the effects of remote work in writing.
Auditors wrote in the December report on their findings that the "precise extent to which employees worked in the office was not known."
Through a review of the state and UW's human resources systems, auditors found that 3,439 agency employees used their key cards at four buildings on an average of 1.3 days per week and 186 UW System Administration employees used their key cards at two buildings an average of 1.5 days week.
The key card data indicate some employees may not have worked in the office as frequently as expected, based on their agreements.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in November suggested he wants to have state employees working in the office "at least three to four days a week."
During the hearing, lawmakers also discussed the idea of potentially auditing the levels of productivity of workers while working remotely vs in the office.
"I'm not against the idea of saying we should do an analysis to see what's working and what's not working," Larson said. He added he has concerns about abruptly uprooting employees and putting them back in the office again.
"I don't know, tackling one problem can often create more problems," he said.
The Wisconsin proposal is similar to an order by President Donald Trump in January, requiring all federal employees to return to in-person work on a full-time basis.
Nedweski said that the bill wasn't based on that "federal trend," which was issued after the Wisconsin audit, and was in fact one of the reasons that she decided to run for office.
"It is about being responsive and accountable to the taxpayer and using that dollar to its maximum efficiency," she said.
Laura Schulte and Molly Beck can be reached at leschulte@jrn.com and molly.beck@jrn.com.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Republicans seek to return state employees to in-person work
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Washington is part federal theme park, with its historic buildings and museums, and part downtown, where restaurants and lobbyists outnumber any corporate presence. Neighborhoods range from the places where Jeff Bezos set a record for a home purchase price to destitute streets in economically depressed areas that are also magnets for drugs and crime. In 1968, the capital was a city on fire with riots. Twenty years later, a murder spree and crack epidemic fed the sense of a place out of control. But over the last 30 years, the city's population and its collective wealth have swelled. A cooked-up emergency? Against that backdrop, Philadelphia's top prosecutor, District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, assailed Trump's moves in Washington. 'You're talking about an emergency, really?' Krasner said, as if speaking with the president. 'Or is it that you're talking about an emergency because you want to pretend everything is an emergency so that you can roll tanks?' 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But the leader of the D.C. Police Union, Gregg Pemberton, endorsed Trump's intervention — while saying it should not become permanent. 'We stand with the president in recognizing that Washington, D.C., cannot continue on this trajectory,' Pemberton said. From his vantage point, 'Crime is out of control, and our officers are stretched beyond their limits.' The Home Rule Act lets a president invoke certain emergency powers over the police department for 30 days, after which Congress must decide whether to extend the period. Trump's attempt to use that provision stirred interest among some Republicans in Congress in giving him an even freer hand. Among them, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee drafted a resolution that would eliminate the time limit on federal control. This, he told Fox News Digital, would 'give the president all the time and authority he needs to crush lawlessness, restore order, and reclaim our capital once and for all.' Which raises a question that Trump has robustly hinted at and others are wondering, too: If there is success in the district — at least, success in the president's eyes — what might that mean for other American cities he thinks need to be fixed? Where does — where could — the federal government go next? ___ Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.
