This bill directs agency leaders to decentralize a substantial portion of their headquarters personnel to duty stations outside the Washington metropolitan area and orders OMB to shrink headquarters office space. It creates new personnel rules tied to those moves—pay will be recalculated to the new locality and affected employees will lose authorization to telework full time—and requires agencies to report implementation plans to Congress.
The measure is consequential for HR, real‑property managers, regional field offices, and congressional oversight: it forces rapid reallocation of staff and workspace, overrides collective bargaining in favor of swift implementation, and embeds new budget-reporting items to track progress. The change reallocates federal presence geographically and shifts operational and human‑capital risks from centralized headquarters to regional offices.
At a Glance
What It Does
Directs each executive‑branch agency to relocate a sizeable share of headquarters employees to non‑Washington duty stations and directs OMB to reduce headquarters real property; the bill ties employees’ pay to their new locality and limits full‑time telework for those affected. It also prescribes reporting and budget disclosure requirements to Congress.
Who It Affects
Heads of executive agencies, OMB, agency HR and real‑property teams, regional and field offices that will absorb staff, and headquarters employees currently paid at Washington locality rates. It also touches landlords, vendors, and congressional appropriations and oversight staff.
Why It Matters
The bill changes where federal work gets done, who performs it, and how employees are paid and permitted to telework. That rewiring of operational footprint and personnel rules will affect recruitment, continuity of service, federal lease portfolios, and labor relations across the government.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill establishes a uniform requirement for executive agencies to move a portion of their headquarters workforce out of the Washington metropolitan area. It defines who counts as a ‘‘headquarters employee’’ broadly to include employees with permanent duty stations at agency headquarters and full‑time teleworkers paid at the Washington locality.
Agency heads must identify employees eligible for reassignment and make permanent duty‑station changes so those employees are assigned to agency offices outside the DC metro area.
The statute ties personnel effects to the new duty station: for any employee whose permanent duty station is changed, the agency must calculate pay using the pay locality for the new duty station, and the employee may no longer be authorized to telework full‑time. The bill provides an exception for qualified individuals who require full‑time telework as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA; those employees are excluded from reassignment but still count toward headquarters employee totals for compliance calculations.The law imposes concrete timelines and reporting steps.
Agencies must submit a report to relevant congressional committees within 180 days listing counts of headquarters employees, those eligible for reassignment, planned reassignments, ADA exceptions, and the agency’s implementation plan. After that report, agencies notify affected employees within a specified window and effect changes on a stated schedule; there is also a separate countdown for full‑time teleworkers who remain at headquarters but are not relocated.
Separately, OMB must issue a directive to shrink headquarters real property and prioritize disposal or consolidation, with the statute setting start and completion windows for reductions.Other operational provisions include new line items in agencies’ budget justification materials to disclose headquarter staffing and telework accommodation data, an explicit bar on paying relocation incentives when an employee’s official worksite changes as directed by the act, and clauses that supersede inconsistent laws, collective bargaining agreements, or agreements while denying any private cause of action to litigate selection or placement choices under the act.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The act requires agency heads to change the permanent duty station of at least 30% of the agency’s headquarters employees (as counted on enactment) to offices located outside the Washington metropolitan area.
For each employee reassigned, the agency must recalculate pay based on the new duty‑station pay locality and withdraw authorization for full‑time telework for that employee.
Qualified individuals who receive a full‑time telework ADA accommodation are exempt from reassignment but are still counted toward the agency’s headquarters totals for the 30% requirement.
OMB must issue an instruction to reduce federally owned or leased headquarters office space by at least 30%, prioritizing disposal of buildings and co‑locating agency headquarters; agencies must begin reductions within prescribed windows and finish within two years.
The statute forbids relocation incentives tied to these changes, supersedes inconsistent statutes and collective bargaining provisions, and creates no private right of action to challenge selections or moves.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Who counts as ‘headquarters’ and what terms mean
This section sets the counting rules that drive the rest of the act. It treats as headquarters employees both those with a headquarters permanent duty station and full‑time teleworkers whose pay is calculated at the Washington locality. That choice forces agencies to include remote DC‑paid staff in the pool subject to reassignment. Definitions also carve out national‑security components and Executive Office positions from the employee definition, making those personnel effectively outside the statute’s reach, and adopt Census‑based meanings for ‘rural’ and standard pay‑locality and telework definitions.
Agency duties on who to move, how to pick them, and timelines
This is the operational core. Agency heads must change permanent duty stations for not less than 30% of headquarters employees within the statute’s windows. Agencies must count eligible employees, notify individuals identified as eligible, and submit a report to relevant congressional committees within 180 days that lists counts and the agency’s plan. The statute directs that, after reporting, agencies give affected employees a defined notice window and make the duty‑station change effective on a stated schedule; it also separately limits full‑time telework for certain employees who remain at headquarters. Practically, this forces agency HR shops to run eligibility analyses, craft placement plans across regions, and coordinate pay‑locality adjustments and telework authorizations on a compressed timetable.
OMB’s directive to shrink federal headquarters footprint
OMB must issue a memorandum within 60 days requiring a not‑less‑than 30% reduction in headquarters real property owned or leased by the federal government. The memo prioritizes disposing buildings and co‑locating agencies. Agencies must start implementing reductions within 180 days and complete them within two years. For real‑property teams this creates a parallel project to the staff moves: lease terminations, sale processes, consolidation planning, and a likely wave of procurement and contract adjustments tied to vacated space.
New transparency requirements for staffing and telework data
Agencies must add specific headcount and telework information to their next and future budget justification materials, including counts of headquarters employees, employees in field/district/regional offices, full‑time teleworkers, and ADA telework accommodations. That adds a permanent reporting line for Congress to track geographic decentralization and will feed oversight, appropriations, and performance discussions.
No relocation incentives, supersession, and no private remedy
The statute bars relocation incentives for employees whose official worksite changes under the act, states a severability clause, explicitly supersedes conflicting laws and collective bargaining agreements, and denies any private cause of action to challenge decisions made under the act. Those mechanics are designed to speed implementation and reduce litigation risk, but they also concentrate discretion in agency leadership while limiting traditional remedies available to employees or unions.
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Explore Government in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Regional and rural communities that receive reassigned employees — they'll likely see new federal jobs, increased local spending, and greater access to federal services as agencies staff field and regional offices.
- Field and regional offices — they gain capacity and in‑person presence for customer service and program delivery, which can improve local responsiveness and reduce dependence on centralized HQ processing.
- Congressional appropriators and oversight staff — the bill forces standardized reporting and budget justifications that make it easier for committees to quantify HQ staffing and monitor geographic distribution and telework accommodation use.
Who Bears the Cost
- Headquarters employees relocated or whose pay locality changes — they face forced duty‑station changes, potential reductions in locality pay, and limits on full‑time telework, with relocation logistics and family or housing impacts.
- Agency HR, IT, and real‑property teams — implementing large‑scale reassignment and office reductions on statutory timetables will require program management, hiring for remote sites, systems updates for pay/locality, and lease/space disposition work.
- Unions and collective bargaining entities — the act expressly supersedes bargaining agreements and limits traditional dispute avenues, shifting negotiating leverage away from labor and increasing friction during implementation.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central tension is between rapid, uniform decentralization to reduce DC concentration and the operational, personnel, and legal disruption that such a top‑down shift imposes: the policy aims to move work and cut real estate quickly, but doing so risks loss of institutional capacity, employee pay and retention problems, and strained labor relations — solving one concentration problem may create several others.
The bill forces a trade‑off between decentralization goals and operational continuity. Agencies will need to staff regional offices quickly while maintaining program continuity; that means recruiting for potentially higher‑cost regional labor markets, transferring institutional knowledge, and paying relocation or hiring costs that the statute otherwise restricts.
The required change in pay locality creates a potentially large retention and recruitment problem: employees who lose Washington locality pay may exit, creating gaps that are costly to fill and could undermine service delivery in the short term.
Legally and administratively, superseding collective bargaining agreements and denying private causes of action reduces immediate litigation risk but raises longer‑term labor relations risks and political pushback. Implementation capacity is another concern: agencies vary in their ability to identify appropriate regional offices, stand up new duty stations, and dispose of leased real property quickly.
The bill also assumes that co‑location and disposal opportunities exist; in many cases, local market conditions, lease terms, or statutory constraints on property disposal will slow or increase the cost of the intended reductions.
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