Several Republican-led states are in step with President Trump’s push to make government workers return to the office or forfeit their jobs.
Republican officials in Oklahoma, Utah, Ohio and Wisconsin are revoking or rethinking state workers’ allowances to stay home since Mr. Trump won reelection in November and signaled his intent to reduce the federal workforce through a Department of Government Efficiency.
The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, a network of state lawmakers that launched a Government Efficiency Coalition to coordinate with DOGE to reduce government waste, said the return-to-office push is part of a broader effort to audit the “size and effectiveness of the public-sector workforce.”
“For nearly five years, many state governments have been paying for maintenance on office buildings that have remained largely empty,” said economist Jonathan Williams, the legislative council’s president. “That’s taxpayer money flying right out the window, and it gives state-level DOGE efforts a significant area to investigate.”
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, signed an executive order this month for state workers to return to their offices by March 17. He cited a need for Ohio’s employees “to effectively, efficiently and accountably serve its citizens at all times.”
“There is no right to work remotely whenever an employee feels like doing so, and many employers, including the government of Ohio, are correct in having rules to ensure workers are as productive as possible,” Rea Hederman, an economist at the conservative Buckeye Institute in Columbus, said in an email. “Expect more states to roll back the permissive work-from-anywhere policies that have been prevalent since the pandemic, as have many private-sector businesses.”
As the incoming Trump administration announced its plans for DOGE in December, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, ordered workers to return to the office by Feb. 1. He said the “conditions necessary for nontraditional work environments” ended after the World Health Organization canceled the COVID-19 public health emergency in May 2023.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican who once described himself as a “televangelist for telework,” said last month that he was rethinking a 2021 executive order he signed promoting telework. That order claimed remote work saved taxpayers millions of dollars.
“Remote work has its place, but so does being together,” Mr. Cox told reporters.
Most Democrats and government labor unions have resisted the return-to-office mandates, arguing that working from home improves government savings and efficiency.
Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Legislature heard testimony on a proposal this month that would send most state employees back to the office four days a week, but Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, has threatened to veto any return-to-office legislation that reaches his desk.
“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,” Mr. Evers said in a December interview with Milwaukee’s WISN-TV.
Virginia, Idaho, and Nebraska tried to reduce telework before November’s election, with mixed success.
The Nebraska Association of Public Employees, a union of more than 8,000 state workers, has filed legal challenges against Republican Gov. Jim Pillen’s November 2023 order that they work full time in the office without negotiating new contracts.
“These legal actions are important to all state employees because there is an important legal question about when the state must negotiate the terms and conditions of employment,” the union said in September.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, ordered the commonwealth’s employees to justify their remote work or return to the office by July 2022.
Rick Manning, president of the Virginia-based Americans for Limited Government, estimated that county workers are the only ones still working from home.
“Overall, it’s a productive trend,” said Mr. Manning, a former official in the George W. Bush Labor Department and former member of Mr. Trump’s transition team for that agency. “Jobs overseeing complex government programs require in-person collaboration that makes for a significantly more efficient and better-operating government than building your day around Zoom meetings.”
He noted that Republican-led states allow exceptions for the handful of taxpayer-funded jobs, including social media managers, data entry specialists and information technology consultants, that qualify for legitimate remote work exceptions. Still, he urged officials to evaluate whether workers have adequately fulfilled their duties.
“If you’re told by your employer to come to work and you refuse, it may indicate you don’t care much about your job,” Mr. Manning said. “If people aren’t willing to do simple things, I don’t know that we can expect them to do hard things.”
In Idaho, the state government implemented a policy limiting remote work to 20% of the workforce, which started last spring.
“The shift back to in-office work has become a political issue, even though it shouldn’t be,” said Andrew Crapuchettes, CEO of Idaho-based jobs board RedBalloon. “Bringing workers back to the office ensures greater transparency and efficiency, which benefits both taxpayers and the workforce.”
Mr. Youngkin and other Republican leaders criticized the Biden administration for failing to get federal employees back to the office, resulting in unanswered phone calls and sluggish government services.
Since returning to the White House in January, Mr. Trump has signed an executive order for all federal workers to work from their offices. He said those who work from home spend only a fraction of their time on government work.
He has also fired probationary federal workers and applauded DOGE consultant Elon Musk’s threats to fire others who don’t return to their desks.
“Starting this week, those who still fail to return to office will be placed on administrative leave,” Mr. Musk wrote Monday on X.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.