Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature are pushing for big changes to how – or more importantly — where state employees work.

“We want to get the most out of our state workforce and this should have been done a long time ago,” said state Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, the author of AB 39, which is named the “Return to Work” bill.

“The ‘Return to Work’ bill simply requires state employees who worked inside an office building for the state prior to March 1 of 2020 to come back and work in person,” she explained.

The lawmaker has several reasons why she thinks state employees should be working in state office buildings instead of at home.

“It’s been five years since this temporary solution to the COVID response was instituted,” she said.

“There hasn’t been an effort to evaluate productivity outside of the office,” said Nedewski. “So it just sort of was, ‘We’re all going to go home and work remotely and no one ever has to come back.’ It’s become sort of a permanent solution to what was a temporary problem.”

On Sept. 11, the Wisconsin State Assembly debated and ultimately passed Nedweski’s bill, with all Republicans voting for it and all Democrats voting against it.

“As amended, it requires most state employees to be in the office at least 80% of the work month, roughly four days a week, allowing for some flexibility,” she said on the Assembly floor.

Nedweski said she wrote the “Return to Work” bill to rein in a state government remote work system that lacks proper oversight of its employees.

“People are very concerned about efficiency — fiscal management or mismanagement and fraud — and you know, this is an accountability issue,” she said.

And, Nedewski said her constituents are asking for this bill.

“A lot of money comes out of your taxes,” she said. “If you’re a teacher or a nurse or maybe you’re a small business owner, you’re paying a lot into the system. You want to know you’re getting the most you can out of it, and that’s what we’re hearing from constituents around the state.”

State Rep. Mike Bare, D-Verona, said he’s hearing very different things from his constituents.

“I have not heard from one single constituent or one single state worker who thinks this is a good idea,” he said on the Assembly floor.

“We heard over and over from the state government – from secretaries and managers in state government – that they don’t need this bill. What they’ve been doing is working,” he added in an interview in an interview.

Bare said remote work is effective, which is why it’s still in place so many years after the pandemic began.

“There’s no evidence to suggest that this would be helpful to state workers, that this would be help to our state government, no evidence to suggest that this will save any money or make us more efficient,” he said. “In fact, it will cost more money and make us inefficient.”

To that point of cost, if Nedewski’s bill becomes law, finding office space for state employees to return to work would be a challenge. Over the last few years, many state agencies have realized savings in rent and building maintenance by shrinking or even eliminating their needs for physical office space.

In fact, the state is emptying and getting ready to sell three of its largest office buildings in downtown Madison, namely spaces known as GEF 2 and GEF 3 and another building so old it was officially named the State Office Building when it was built nearly 100 years ago.

“The fiscal impact of the bill at the time I introduced it was something like $200-$400 million to bring employees back because they’ve closed buildings without evaluating telework performance,” Nedewski said.

Bare said that remote work has allowed many state employees to move away from the state’s larger cities, a benefit they appreciate.

“They’ve moved out into the state, across the state, out into Assembly districts that aren’t as close to Madison as mine is,” he said. “So that means that those workers will have to come back, and that has a tremendous cost to it in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Bare and Nedewski note that cybersecurity issues for remote working state employees is a concern that needs to be addressed. Both lawmakers also agree that ending or limiting remote work for state employees will have a significant effect on hiring and retention.

“There would be a bleed of good, talented, skilled people from state government that we wouldn’t want to see,” Bare said.

“I expect there’d be some turnover,” Nedewski said.

In all, there are about 70,000 employees working for various state agencies and the Universities of Wisconsin system. The Legislative Audit Bureau estimates that from 19% to 75% of those employees work remotely or have hybrid work schedules, depending on the agency.

Nedweski said her bill doesn’t mandate that all state employees can never work remotely again – but that the decision to grant off-site work needs to be on a case-by-case basis and it should be based on productivity.

“All the bill says [is] you have to come back. Re-evaluate — it’s determined by your business unit or by your department that you’ve been working effectively in your remote work situation, you can re-engage in a remote work agreement,” she said.

Bare, however, says offering public employees remote or hybrid work options keeps the state competitive in the job market.

“I don’t think that this is special treatment,” he said. “I think this is treatment that’s consistent with what the private market is doing, and I think that managers have been holding them accountable for being good, productive workers who are working for the taxpayers as they’re expected to do.”

While the Republican majority in the Assembly passed the bill, it still must go to the Senate and if approved by the Republican majority there, will go to the desk of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who will almost certainly veto it.