By Anna Kaminski, Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — The lunch rush in downtown Topeka’s restaurants and cafés hasn’t been the same since the COVID-19 pandemic, said Seth Wagoner, an investment executive.
Thousands of state employees who once worked in office buildings in Kansas’ capital and frequented downtown businesses for lunch and happy hour now work from home all or part of the time. They could be called back to the office under proposed legislation.
At a Thursday hearing in the Senate Committee on Government Efficiency, legislators considered Senate Bill 256, or the “back to work act.” Wagoner, the CEO of private equity firm AIM Strategies, said in testimony that at some lunch hotspots in downtown Topeka, business is still down by 10% from pre-pandemic times, accounting for inflation.
He was the one proponent to speak, and five state employees, testifying as private citizens, spoke against the bill.
One employee, Frances Dewell, who works in the protection report center within Kansas Department for Children and Families, which fields calls related to suspected abuse and neglect, said mandating state workers back to the office full time risks losing at least a quarter of their staff.
“Yes, state workers could return to a pre-COVID office setting,” Dewell said. “However, the changes that have developed over the last five years have compelled us to evolve.”
A virtual work culture has developed in her workplace and allowed prioritization of employee growth and well-being, she said.
A 2023 report from the Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit examining 81 state executive branch agencies found that 30% of state workers work from home all or part of the time.
Of the state’s roughly 18,000 employees, the estimated 5,500 who work remotely under a telework agreement, the state’s official term for working from home full-time or on a hybrid schedule involving remote and in-office work, would be required to return to office buildings full-time with some exceptions. Agency heads would be allowed to offer exemptions to employees with atypical work hours, positions that don’t reasonably require in-office work and if office space constraints would mean added costs to accommodate a return to work mandate.
In smaller agencies that have around 100 employees or fewer, most or all of them telework, according to the data from spring 2023. That includes the Kansas Water Office, the Kansas Sentencing Commission, the state board of optometry examiners and the board of mortuary arts. It also includes the Kansas Board of Regents, the Office of the State Fire Marshal and the Office of the State Bank Commissioner.
In the largest agencies, the popularity of remote work varies. In the Kansas Department for Children and Families, 85% of employees engaged in some form of remote work as of April 2023. At the Kansas Department of Transportation, which employed more than 2,100 people at the same time, around 14% had telework agreements. More than half of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s roughly 1,500 employees worked remotely.
“Telework is viewed as a benefit by many state employees,” said Adam Proffitt, speaking on behalf of the Department of Administration, which includes Gov. Laura Kelly’s office.
Proffitt, who shared that he often works from home one day a week usually when the Legislature is not in session, told legislators that the state offers a template for agencies that dictates the roles eligible for telework and the number of days employees can work remotely. He said telework can be a tool to attract and retain employees, and “can actually expand our radius of talent,” by hiring employees who don’t live in Topeka or cannot commute.
The department of administration will be required under the bill to create a report for the government efficiency committee listing state agencies granting exceptions to the mandate, the number of exceptions granted, the job descriptions or titles associated with each exception, the number and costs of buildings leased by each agency and the number of state employees assigned to a physical office space but working remotely.
However, concerns for state employees with disabilities arose in the Thursday hearing because of the job description or title reporting requirement. Employees with disabilities could be identifiable in smaller agencies, a violation of legal protections including the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Martha Gabehart, the executive director of the Kansas Commission on Disability Concerns, said in written testimony that the mandate would be out of sync with Kansas’ reputation as a model employer for people with disabilities.
“By creating a policy that would, if not implemented correctly, violate the rights of employees with disabilities, we would no longer be considered a model employer,” she said.
A back to work mandate would be costly to the state, according to a fiscal note attached to the bill. The health department estimates the change would cost the state a combined $1.3 million over the next two fiscal years. More than 160 of the department’s employees are fully remote, and office space for them does not currently exist. Several other agencies noted increased costs associated with finding new office space for returning employees and the possibility of employees resigning if the back to work act is implemented. Agencies including the Department of Corrections noted no or minimal cost increases because the majority of their employees have returned to in-person work.
The bill is awaiting final approval in the Senate committee and has yet to be introduced in the House.
