Joni Ernst reveals more examples of HUD bureaucrats bilking taxpayers

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa sent a letter Monday highlighting more cases of bureaucrats at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) abusing a program that allows them to do work for unions on the taxpayers’ dime.

Ernst detailed how bureaucrats claimed they were carrying out union activities while taking vacations or serving time in jail, while also revealing new details on one case involving a bureaucrat who used so-called “taxpayer-funded union time” (TFUT) to launch a small business in Florida while purportedly working in the Washington, D.C., area, in a letter to HUD Secretary Scott Turner. Ernst told the Daily Caller News Foundation that it was time for the agency to get “its house in order.”

“From launching real estate careers to sitting in jail cells, HUD bureaucrats have been quite busy while claiming to be on taxpayer-funded union time,” Ernst said. “Meanwhile, they have put the important work of serving the American people on the back burner. I look forward to Secretary Turner getting the house in order at HUD and ensuring that federal employees serve the American people and not themselves.”

Americans’ tax dollars should not be footing the bill for union bosses to negotiate for IRS bureaucrats to get cushy telework agreements.

I am putting a stop to the insane practice of taxpayer-funded union time. https://t.co/W9ZVXr4DLm

— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) April 18, 2025

In the letter, Ernst highlighted additional details about the HUD employee in Florida who collected locality pay, an adjustment to the basic pay of civilian employees in the federal government intended to make sure that federal employees have comparable compensation to private-sector counterparts in a given area of the country, for Washington, D.C., while on TFUT while living in Florida.

“Corroborating the allegations that this individual lives in Florida instead of Washington, D.C. are a series of legal documents he signed in which he claims his residence to be in Port Saint Lucie, Florida,” Ernst wrote. “These documents include, but are not limited to, two housing discrimination complaints, one signed in 2019 and the other 2020 (filed with the Florida Commission on Human Relations), as well as annual Limited Liability Company (LLC) disclosures signed each year between 2017 and the present, in which the LLC’s principal place of business is listed as Florida.”

“Perhaps this purported HUD employee conducts the entirety of his real estate business outside of the hours for which he draws a federal paycheck,” Ernst added later in the letter. “Somehow, I doubt it.”

Ernst also revealed that another HUD employee attended a training conference in Puerto Rico under TFUT, then added an extra week of vacation in the U.S. territory, according to a whistleblower who contacted the senator’s office. Ernst also revealed that another HUD employee who used TFUT while being jailed for drinking and driving in one of several DUI offenses was only fired after allegedly embezzling $20,000 from the American Federation of Government Employees.

Federal employees spent 2.6 million hours, the equivalent of nearly 300 years, on union activities, costing taxpayers at least $135 million in fiscal year 2019, according to Ernst, who cited data from the Office of Personnel Management. Ernst’s office received information from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) about TFUT for fiscal years 2023 and 2024 following a request to multiple agencies.

HUD didn’t immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Latest posts by Harold Hutchison (see all)

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.