Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa demanded on Tuesday for the Biden administration official in charge of human capital at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to hold a meeting as she prepares to deliver a “blueprint” to President-elect Trump to crack down on telework fraud.
Ernst and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware asked Acting Chief Human Capital Officer Sepideh Keyvanshad of USAID to schedule a staff briefing by Dec. 12 on measures to prevent timecard fraud in a letter exclusively provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. Ernst previously questioned USAID over an employee who improperly received locality pay — which adjusts pay scales to account for the cost of living in certain areas — for the Washington, D.C. area despite living in Florida.
“Bubble bath bureaucrats beware – change is coming,” Ernst told the DCNF. “President Trump promised to clean out the deep state and hold bureaucrats accountable. That starts with cracking down on those stealing from taxpayers with locality pay lies. I will be delivering President Trump a blueprint for ending the abuse of telework and getting Washington back to working for the people.”
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) on federal employees who telework:
“How many of these federal employees who get location-based pay … are teleworking from a lower-cost area? …It is fraud, folks. It’s fraud. So you federal employees that are out there: We’re coming after you.” pic.twitter.com/uHLePlwqsJ
— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) September 6, 2023
Ernst and Coons wrote Keyvanshad, asking for information following a second case of improper locality pay going to a federal employee at the agency.
“As you may know, the USAID Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued multiple investigative findings denoting employees have been paid improper locality pay. Timecard fraud is a serious offense, yet it is unclear what steps USAID is taking to proactively root it out,” Ernst and Coons wrote in their letter to USAID.
“In September 2024, the OIG issued a second investigative finding that an employee ‘worked primarily in North Carolina between October 2022 and April 2023 and received locality pay adjustments for Federal employees working in the Washington, D.C., area. OIG estimated the employee was overpaid more than $9,800 due to the higher pay rate in the nation’s capital,’” Ernst and Coons added.
A spokesperson for Ernst told the DCNF the letter was meant to be a building block for shaping locality pay, remote work and telework policy under the incoming administration.
In an August 2023 letter sent to 24 government agencies seeking a review of the issues involved with telecommuting, Ernst cited a media account of a VA employee who attended a staff meeting while taking a bubble bath. Ernst also cited a case involving an employee with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) who received $25,000 while spending over 730 hours at the golf course or happy hours, according to an August 2015 report by the inspector general’s office of the Commerce Department.
Ernst wrote to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in an August 28 letter sent to EPA Administrator Michael Regan urging the agency to take emergency action about contaminants that built up in the drinking water of federal buildings left unoccupied by a shift to remote work.
Ernst also introduced the Stopping Home Office Work’s Unproductive Problems (SHOW UP) Act, in September 2023 as part of a package of legislation to rein in the “administrative state.” The legislation requires agencies to revert to remote work policies in place as of Dec. 31, 2019, and to submit studies on the effects telework had on the agencies.
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