Original Coverage & Source Attribution: news.bloomberglaw.com
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau employees based outside of Washington will have more time to decide whether to relocate and report to the agency’s new headquarters in southwest DC or quit their jobs, acting Director Russell Vought told lawmakers.
The CFPB in May announced a return-to-office plan that would require its roughly 350 employees outside the Washington area to work out of the agency’s new office. Last month, the CFPB gave those workers two weeks to determine whether they’ll move or be forced to quit their jobs.
But the return-to-office plan for people outside of Washington is now “on pause” while the CFPB waits for the Senate to confirm Brian Johnson, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the agency, Vought said Wednesday at a frequently fiery hearing before the House Financial Services Committee.
Affected workers will have until Nov. 2 to make their decision, according to a July 10 email from the CFPB’s National Treasury Employees Union chapter to its members obtained by Bloomberg Law.
Vought also said the CFPB was considering requests for special accommodations allowing employees to work outside of Washington, citing enforcement attorneys handling cases around the country as a potential class of workers that could get a reprieve.
The CFPB and the NTEU, which represents must of the agency’s employees, last week jointly asked Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia to stay litigation over the Trump administration’s plan to shrink the CFPB to around 550 employees while Johnson’s confirmation is pending.
Vought at Wednesday’s hearing said the CFPB currently has 1,071 employees and that his last day at the CFPB would be Aug. 1 under guidelines set by the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.
Jackson granted the request, which sought to give the new CFPB director 60 days to review the reduction-in-force plan, in a July 10 order.
CFPB employees based in Washington began reporting to the new office on July 13.
The office has room for around 500 people, so Vought conceded there “may be some rotational assignments as to how the space is allocated.”
CFPB staff told Bloomberg Law they are working staggered schedules, alternating between reporting two or three days per week.
Because of the limited office space, the union and its supporters have called the return-to-office plan a backdoor maneuver to slash hundreds of employees still working at the agency.
‘Not Done With You’
Vought’s first appearance before Congress in his capacity as acting CFPB director alternated between fierce condemnation from Democrats angry over dropped enforcement actions against bad actors and deep appreciation from Republicans who have long argued that the agency exceeded its authority under previous administrations.
Responding to a question from Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), Vought at one point claimed he couldn’t identify the director of his agency’s Office of Minority and Women Inclusion and didn’t even know what the acronym OMWI stood for. The head of that office, Stacie Jones, was put on administrative leave earlier this year over allegations she mistakenly caused the agency to post an unapproved report on its website.
The Dodd-Frank Act, which created the CFPB, requires the agency’s director to appear before Congress every six months. Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.), the committee’s top Democrat, moved to subpoena Vought to bring him back before the committee, but Republicans fended off that request.
Democrats also vowed further reviews of Vought’s tenure at the CFPB if they take control of Congress following November’s midterm elections.
“You should preserve all of your emails, text messages, and other forms of communication with respect to your CFPB work,” Waters said. “While your work may be done and a new director may be confirmed, let me be clear, we are not done with you.”
Vought is set to appear Thursday before the Senate Banking Committee, including ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the CFPB’s architect.
