[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


       CONGRESS BACK HOME: MODERNIZING DISTRICT OFFICE OPERATIONS

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

           SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS

                                 OF THE

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                           FEBRUARY 16, 2022

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-15

                               __________

  Printed for the use of the Select Committee on the Modernization of 
                                Congress
                                
 [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]                               


                    Available via http://govinfo.gov
                    
                              __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
47-222 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
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           SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS

                    DEREK KILMER, Washington, Chair

 ZOE LOFGREN, California              WILLIAM TIMMONS, South Carolina,
 EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri             Vice Chair
 ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              BOB LATTA, Ohio
 DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota             RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois
 NIKEMA WILLIAMS, Georgia             DAVE JOYCE, Ohio
                                      GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
                                      BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas

                            COMMITTEE STAFF

                     Yuri Beckelman, Staff Director
                 Derek Harley, Republican Staff Director
                            
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page

Chairman Derek Kilmer............................................     1
    Oral Statement...............................................     1
Vice Chairman William Timmons....................................     2
    Oral Statement...............................................     2

                               WITNESSES

Ms. Danielle Radovich Piper, Chief of Staff, Rep. Ed Perlmutter..     3
    Oral Statement...............................................     3
    Written Statement............................................     6
Ms. Sarah Youngdahl, District Director, Rep. Guy Reschenthaler...    10
    Oral Statement...............................................    10
    Written Statement............................................    12
Mr. George Hadijski, Director of Congressional Programming, 
  Congressional Management Foundation............................    15
    Oral Statement...............................................    15
    Written Statement............................................    17
Discussion.......................................................    21

             APPENDIX I: ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR THE RECORD

Anne Meeker, Director of Strategic Initiatives, POPVOX Foundation    41

 
       CONGRESS BACK HOME: MODERNIZING DISTRICT OFFICE OPERATIONS

                              ----------                              


                      WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2022

                  House of Representatives,
                            Select Committee on the
                                 Modernization of Congress,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The committee met, pursuant to call, at 12:01 p.m., via 
Zoom, Hon. Derek Kilmer [chairman of the committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Kilmer, Cleaver, Perlmutter, 
Williams, Timmons, Van Duyne, and Joyce.
    The Chairman. The committee will come to order.
    Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a 
recess of the committee at any time.
    Okay. I now recognize myself for 5 minutes for an opening 
statement.
    Today's hearing is titled, ``Congress Back Home,'' because 
that is what our district offices are. Our district staff are 
on the front lines day in and day out, helping our constituents 
so that they can navigate the complexities of the Federal 
Government from cities and towns all over the country. It is 
incredibly challenging work, and I know we are all grateful for 
the dedication and commitment of our staffs to serving the 
American people. We could not do our jobs in Washington without 
support from back home, which is why we need to make certain 
that our district offices and staff have the resources that 
they need to be successful.
    Staff have told us that up-to-date equipment and 
infrastructure are essential, as are clear policies and 
guidelines. They need seamless access to the same services, 
benefits, and training available to D.C. staff. I know Congress 
is making progress on this front, and I would like to 
acknowledge the good work that the CAO's coaches are doing in 
partnering with district offices.
    We also know that district staff do highly specialized 
work, and that is why it is so important to seek their 
expertise and feedback in an ongoing way. The casework they 
manage on behalf of our constituents is often complex and 
requires a detailed understanding of agency processes and 
procedures. And this work is made more difficult when there is 
little consistency across agencies in terms of how inquiries 
are handled.
    So, our goal today is to learn about what we can do to make 
the lives of our district staff easier so that they can better 
serve our constituents. And what better way to do that than 
going straight to the source, because committee staff have been 
holding listening sessions with district directors, two of whom 
are joining us today, and will continue to incorporate their 
insights into our work.
    Even though we are meeting virtually today, we are going to 
use the committee rules we adopted late last year that give us 
more flexibility in the Q&A portion of the hearing. Our goal, 
as always, is just to encourage thoughtful discussion and the 
civil exchange of ideas and opinions. So, here goes.
    In accordance with clause 2(j) of House rule XI, we will 
allow up to 30 minutes of extended questioning per witness, 
and, without objection, time will not be strictly segregated 
between the witnesses, which will allow for extended back and 
forth exchanges between members and the witnesses. Vice Chair 
Timmons and I will manage the time to ensure that every member 
has equal opportunity to participate. Any member who wishes to 
speak should just raise their virtual hand, and either I or 
Vice Chair Timmons will make sure you can jump in.
    Additionally, members who wish to claim their individual 5 
minutes to question each witness pursuant to clause 2(j)(2) of 
rule XI will be permitted to do so following the period of 
extended questioning.
    All right. With that, I would like to invite Vice Chair 
Timmons to share some opening remarks as well.
    Mr. Timmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    We are joined by a very special panel of witnesses today. 
To be sure, it is unusual to have current staff testify at a 
House hearing, but who better to hear from on how we as an 
institution can better serve our constituents than those who 
are on the front lines doing just that every day.
    In that vein, I believe our witnesses today have almost 50 
years of combined service between them. I want to thank each of 
you for your service, not just to the institution itself, but 
more importantly, to the people we represent.
    And as you probably know, a big focus of our committee has 
been and continues to be improving staff capacity. In other 
words, how do we recruit talented staff to serve, and just as 
important, how do we keep them here so we maintain that 
experience and that institutional knowledge, which makes the 
House stronger and improve our work on behalf of the American 
people.
    And I know that is not the topic of today's hearing, but 
clearly, the offices where you have worked have done something 
right. So perhaps we can take some time after our hearing 
concludes today to get your recommendations on that front as 
well.
    Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you and I want to thank 
Congressman Perlmutter for the passion behind this issue. I 
have had challenges getting my district offices up to date. I 
inherited two district offices in different parts of my 
district, and then we combined them to one. And, you know, 
there is cost savings there, there are efficiencies there, but 
it took us 11 months to get internet. It literally took us 11 
months to get internet.
    So, you know, we all have our stories of the challenges of 
setting up new offices, and I look forward to learning the best 
practices and how we can improve Congress as a whole to better 
serve the American people. I will give you all one example. We 
do not--passports are obviously a huge issue, and we are 
creating an online portal to shepherd the constituents to to 
expedite that process as opposed to them calling me and texting 
me and emailing me. So, you know, there are just so many 
efficiencies that we can have everywhere. And if anybody on 
this call has not gotten their passport renewed, please do it 
now. That would be great.
    With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you so much.
    The Chairman. Good advice. Good advice. Thank you, Vice 
Chair Timmons.
    I am pleased to welcome our witnesses who are here to share 
their thoughts about what Congress can do to modernize district 
office operations. I also want to note that two of our 
witnesses today run the district offices for two of our 
committee members, Mr. Perlmutter and Mr. Reschenthaler. We did 
some research, and as far as we can tell, this is the first 
time staff have testified to their own bosses, so another first 
for the Modernization Committee.
    Witnesses are reminded that your written statements will be 
made part of the record.
    So our first witness is Danielle Radovich Piper. Ms. Piper 
serves as Representative Ed Perlmutter's chief of staff and is 
based out of his district office. She previously worked in the 
Colorado State legislature and was the chief of staff for the 
State senate majority office. Prior to that, she was a senior 
associate for a public affairs firm. She earned her bachelor's 
of arts in political science from Colorado State University. 
And for working with Mr. Perlmutter, she has earned our undying 
gratitude and sympathy, really. He has got to be really 
challenging to work with, but we are grateful that you are 
taking time out and hopefully getting hazard pay for your work 
with Ed.
    But, with that, Ms. Piper, you are now recognized for 5 
minutes.

  STATEMENTS OF DANIELLE RADOVICH PIPER, ON THE BEHALF OF THE 
OFFICE OF CONGRESSMAN ED PERLMUTTER (D-CO); SARAH YOUNGDAHL, ON 
 THE BEHALF OF THE OFFICE OF CONGRESSMAN GUY RESCHENTHALER (R-
 PA); AND GEORGE HADIJSKI, ON THE BEHALF OF THE CONGRESSIONAL 
                     MANAGEMENT FOUNDATION

              STATEMENT OF DANIELLE RADOVICH PIPER

    Ms. Radovich Piper. Thank you.
    Good afternoon, Chairman Kilmer, Vice Chairman Timmons, 
members of the committee, staff, and my boss. My name is 
Danielle Radovich Piper. I am chief of staff to Congressman Ed 
Perlmutter, Colorado 7. I have had the pleasure of serving in 
my capacity as chief of his staff since January of 2007, and I 
have the unique perspective of being based in the district 
office since first opening our offices.
    Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee 
regarding modernizing district office procedures. I would like 
to begin my remarks by praising the creation of the CAO Coach 
Program. Since its inception last summer, the CAO Coach, in my 
opinion, is by far the most helpful and informative program the 
House has stood up in my 15 years on the Hill.
    Additionally, the trainings and briefings provided for 
staff through the staff academy are a tremendous opportunity to 
provide staff with professional trainings for on and off Hill 
work. I sincerely hope this committee and all Members of the 
House will continue to support the CAO Coach Program, and I 
encourage its future growth.
    Over the years, our district office, like many others, has 
grappled with technological challenges, antiquated House and 
agency systems, and confusion regarding the use of the 
appropriate House support offices. Regardless of these 
challenges, we found a way to make it work, to provide the best 
service possible to our constituents. However, I believe many 
of these problems can be solved if we reduce barriers and 
modernize systems.
    A significant technological challenge for us is the speed 
at which our office accesses and transmits electronic 
information. We tried many fixes over the years to the problem, 
from rewiring to purchasing our own server, neither of which 
alleviated the problem. The main issue is the House firewall 
and the need for data to travel to and from D.C. with every 
click, which is slow, resulting in loss to staff time and less 
productivity. One solution is to allow offices to use a secure 
cloud system, thus removing the obstacle of the time it takes 
for the data to travel back and forth.
    Another problem for district offices is the lack of WiFi 
capability. Since the House does not support WiFi in district 
offices, we resort to workarounds such as the use of hotspots. 
As we all experienced with the pandemic, having access to WiFi 
is critical for a fully functioning office and would provide 
staff more flexibility to be more mobile within the office 
workspace.
    Next, I would like to offer several thoughts regarding 
casework and the interaction with agencies.
    The digital privacy release forms. Not all agencies use 
digital forms which would enable casework in these high-volume 
issue areas to be less cumbersome, tedious, and time consuming 
for both staff and the constituents.
    Faxes. Not all agencies have gone digital, and some still 
use the fax. We recommend the elimination of faxes across all 
agencies.
    Agency contact lists. CRS provides a helpful agency guide, 
but it only has one point of contact for each agency, and all 
are located in D.C. Casework teams require a list of local 
field offices within each agency's region, including contact 
names, numbers, and emails.
    Service academy applications. Automating our application 
system in 2011 was incredibly helpful to us and it 
significantly cut down on the administrative time it took to 
process applications. We recommend CMS vendors establishing a 
template for the use for all offices.
    CRS inquiry reports. Standardizing these reports across all 
agencies would reduce confusion, increase staff efficiencies, 
and ultimately result in better outcomes for the constituent.
    As previously mentioned, standing up the CAO Coach Program 
is a tremendous tool for us and, coupled with a customer 
advocate assigned to each office, has streamlined 
communications and helped to clear up some confusion regarding 
the CAO and the services they provide. I hope this program will 
be highlighted during new Member orientation and that each new 
Member and their designated staffer will have the opportunity 
to meet one on one with their customer advocate.
    Lastly, I would like to take a moment to highlight several 
events I hope the House will continue to support. We 
participate in each of these events, and they all contribute 
greatly to the lives of our constituents and our community.
    The first is the Vietnam pinning program. Established in 
2007 by an act of Congress and a subsequent Presidential 
proclamation, the lapel pins were created to honor veterans who 
served during the Vietnam war. These ceremonies were more 
successful than we ever imagined. Our first one was held on 
March 24, 2017, and since that time, we have held eight pinning 
ceremonies, honoring more than 900 Colorado Vietnam-era 
veterans.
    The second is the Veterans History Project. We launched the 
program in our office in 2007, and produced, in conjunction 
with local schools, four feature-length films and several other 
smaller interviews with dozens of veterans serving in Iwo Jima 
to Vietnam to the Gulf war.
    The third is the Congressional Art Show. We have 
participated in the art show nearly every year since 2007, and 
have worked with hundreds of students to display their 
creations in our district and in the halls of Congress. Many of 
these students are alternative learners, and the program 
provides these young people, in many cases, with an experience 
they would not otherwise be afforded.
    Lastly, the STEM App Challenge is another favorite of our 
office. However, it could be improved with allowing offices 
more flexibility to hold these events during a time of year 
which works best for the office and the schools.
    So, thank you, Mr. Chair, Vice Chair, members, and staff, 
for taking the time to hear my testimony today. I hope the 
committee finds my thoughts helpful as you work toward 
modernizing House procedures. I look forward to answering any 
questions you may have.
    [The statement of Ms. Radovich Piper follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Piper. You got applause from 
your boss. That is a good sign.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Yay. Yay.
    The Chairman. Our next witness is Sarah Youngdahl. And 
before I formally introduce Ms. Youngdahl, I would like to read 
a short statement from Mr. Reschenthaler.
    He wrote: Although I could not attend today's hearing due 
to a previous scheduling conflict, I wanted to provide this 
statement welcoming and thanking my district director, Sarah 
Youngdahl, for testifying on this important topic.
    He writes: Sarah started working in my Pennsylvania State 
senate office in 2017, where she served as event coordinator. 
After election to Congress, Sarah joined my team as district 
administrator, and has since been promoted to district 
director. Sarah is a lifelong resident of western Pennsylvania 
and a tremendous asset to my office. Thank you for allowing 
Sarah to testify today, and I look forward to working with the 
committee to modernize district office operations.
    That, Sarah, may be better than any introduction I could 
give you, so I want to thank Mr. Reschenthaler for that 
statement. And, Ms. Youngdahl, you are now recognized for 5 
minutes.

                  STATEMENT OF SARAH YOUNGDAHL

    Ms. Youngdahl. Thank you so much.
    Chairman Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, and members of the 
committee, thank you for having me testify today. As the 
district director for Congressman Guy Reschenthaler, I am 
honored to share my experience and insight to help better 
operations in congressional districts across the country.
    My tenure with Congressman Reschenthaler began during his 
time in the State senate, and then transitioned to his 
congressional staff in 2019. It was evident from day one that 
it would be a challenge to establish offices for a freshman 
Congressman.
    Pennsylvania was in a unique position from the beginning. 
The State had just gone through a nondecennial redistricting. 
Happening outside the normal timeline, there was much confusion 
regarding offices start-up. We did not have the luxury to 
receive guidance from the outgoing Member or their staff. We 
would have to rely on our own experiences and instinct as we 
found no person or entity to guide us through this process.
    The following are some of my recommendations to make the 
new office process smoother, and once in the office, operations 
as streamlined as possible.
    Selection for a brand new office in a newly established 
district is challenging when there is uncertainty about finding 
the best-suited location, necessary office amenities, or 
acceptable and available furnishing. While the House Ethics 
provided general internet needs, pricing allowances, and the 
lease information, most basic logistics lacked guidance. Should 
a new office be established near other government buildings; 
should consideration be given to available security or safety 
features; is it more feasible to have separate staff offices; 
should a conference room area be considered, are all questions 
facing a new director.
    Freedom should be given to each office to fit their needs, 
but information of what those needs may or may not be would be 
critical in making the first decisions of the office and 
alleviate possible issues in the future.
    There are major differences as to how the flagship or the 
main office is to be set up versus a satellite office. Having 
one office designated as the main site gave us little 
decisionmaking for its set up. Everything from the internet to 
the phone contracts were made for us. While this was a welcome 
assistance, a satellite office requires staff to not only 
determine the needs but also contact a provider and oversee the 
installation. Due to differing providers, office staff, not the 
House technical staff, was also contacting providers to repair, 
maintain, or replace equipment or service as time goes on. 
Finances are separate for the multiple district offices, but 
the setup should be more connected when those offices in the 
end need the same thing.
    It was also found that transitioning constituent casework 
was more difficult than initially anticipated. Inquiries filed 
by the departing office became lost or delayed in processing at 
the Federal agency when the original office was no longer a 
proper contact. For many constituents, re-creating a previously 
filed inquiry delayed the receipt of Social Security or 
veterans benefits.
    While understanding the need for separation of districts, 
having immediate access to casework and regional contacts with 
Federal agencies would allow staff to be better equipped to 
help new constituents from day one.
    Over time, there has been an uptick in remote and alternate 
work for the district office and our Federal agency partners. 
While some accommodations were implemented, other issues were 
more complex and resulted in a slower response time. One 
suggestion to initiate quicker response times was to have 
digital signatures. This would eliminate the time-consuming 
printing, mailing, and returning of agency-required privacy 
forms. However, it was found that numerous agencies do not 
accept the digital format. A service that we would utilize to 
help constituents was not feasible due to the agency-placed 
limitations that we have been told should not exist.
    Lastly, events throughout the district pose problems in 
working with other organizations. Often it is found that State 
and Federal agencies have their own set of guidelines and 
practices they must follow. We frequently shy away from doing 
events partnered with others due to differing ethics rules. 
Being provided clear guidance regarding ethical practices for 
these events would be helpful in planning.
    For example, events targeting similar interested groups 
would make more sense done in conjunction with other agencies 
and organizations. While we can host and invite other groups, 
this causes limitations for everyone else in advertising and 
funding. There is also the possibility of constituents missing 
out on valuable resources and assistance if it is not all in 
one.
    Thank you all for allowing me to shed light on my district 
experience and the challenges that have come up from the start 
of the office to today. I hope my recommendations will better 
operations for not only Members and staff but the constituents 
we serve. Thank you.
    [The statement of Ms. Youngdahl follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Thanks a bunch, Sarah. Also getting good 
applause from members of the committee.
    Our final witness is George Hadijski. Did I get that right, 
George?
    Mr. Hadijski. Yeah, that is correct.
    The Chairman. All right. I am just going to skip it from 
here on out and call you George.
    Mr. Hadijski. Good. That is perfect.
    The Chairman. George is in charge of congressional 
programming at the Congressional Management Foundation. Prior 
to this, he served in the United States House of 
Representatives for 27 years, spending most of his career at 
the Committee on House Administration as director of Member and 
committee services and ending as a senior advisor. He earned 
his bachelor of arts in political science from the University 
of Miami.
    Mr. Hadijski, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.

                  STATEMENT OF GEORGE HADIJSKI

    Mr. Hadijski. Good afternoon. I thank Chairman Kilmer, Vice 
Chairman Timmons, and the rest of the select committee, members 
and staff, for inviting me to speak.
    First, let me say I am quite happy about the committee's 
focus on district offices, as they can many times be neglected 
when most of the legislative activity and focus is on 
Washington, D.C. In recent years, district staff have faced 
enormous challenges, as much of the work related in the 
pandemic fell on their shoulders with a groundswell of 
questions and casework from constituents. Anecdotally, CMF 
heard that total casework requests doubled in 2020 and 2021. It 
is these challenges that make for constructive lessons that 
would not only apply to the pandemic but also would be useful 
in future situations.
    Today I will focus on three categories: staffing, security, 
and district office transitions.
    In my experience, flexible policies can meet unexpected 
challenges and serve the institution best. Take, for example, 
how House Administration reconciled election year communication 
restrictions when faced with a district hit by a sudden natural 
disaster. House Administration modified the policy to allow 
Members to communicate information only related to the natural 
disaster to enable constituents to get vital assistance during 
the critical time. It is that lesson that I believe can apply 
to staffing.
    Over the last several years, congressional offices 
struggled with how to manage their unanticipated surge of work 
in the district office. An office that was at the staff ceiling 
had few options other than reallocating D.C. staff to help 
relieve some of the load on the district staff. Instead, 
offices would be well served with the ability to hire 
additional personnel when they are confronted with a public 
emergency.
    Currently, official allowance regulations provide for 
offices to hire temp agency personnel. However, those 
additional staff count towards the staff cap. It makes sense to 
examine a carveout to exempt temp agency staff during times of 
crisis. CMF has been an advocate for lifting the staff ceiling 
entirely and allowing Members to hire based on their office 
needs. But in the interim, I would recommend a measure that 
exempts offices temporarily from the staff cap in times of 
crisis. This change would help alleviate staff workload and 
could result in better constituent service.
    Another area I would examine is casework. While this topic 
could fill a whole hearing, I will just focus on the concept of 
digitizing forms which has already been mentioned. The House 
previously reformed processes with the finance office, and I 
believe many of those principles can apply to casework.
    Congressional staff spend significant time entering data 
and seeking privacy releases from constituents. Having the 
House or executive branch create a portal that is uniform that 
everybody can use where constituents can securely provide their 
information and digital signatures frees staff to focus more on 
engagement with agencies on behalf of their constituents.
    The next area I will discuss is security for district 
offices. While security is not my expertise, I would have House 
Administration examine how security expenses are paid. 
Currently, many expenses are paid from the MRA, where Members 
are weighing budgetary constraints and needs against their 
office security needs. In the past, the House took steps to 
authorize central funding for certain district office expenses. 
I would recommend a process whereby security needs are entirely 
paid through a centralized funding mechanism instead of the 
MRA, with the appropriate oversight and signoff by House 
Administration.
    The last area on which I will focus deals with how 
transitions take place. Currently, incoming members aren't 
allowed to expend funds for new district offices until the 
Congress begins, while D.C. offices begin their process in 
December. The result is D.C. offices are ready to go on day 
one, but district offices can take sometimes up to 2 months to 
be fully operational.
    I would recommend that the House authorize paying for these 
setup expenses early to expedite the setup of district offices. 
It may require the House to engage in short-term leases to 
access the properties prior to swearing-in day. However, this 
would create a degree of parity between the two offices so they 
are both fully operational on January 3.
    With that, I will conclude my remarks, and I have some 
other comments in my full statement and ask that the full 
statement be included for the record. And I thank the select 
committee for providing me the opportunity, and I am happy to 
answer any questions at the appropriate time.
    [The statement of Mr. Hadijski follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Terrific. Thank you, Mr. Hadijski.
    Before we begin a period of extended questioning, I want to 
invite Representative Perlmutter, if he has a few words. I know 
one of our witnesses is a special guest from your office. So 
let me recognize Mr. Perlmutter.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And Danielle Radovich has been my chief of staff for the 
whole time we have been here, and just very happy for her to be 
able to testify and kind of describe some of our experiences 
which, really, we have been--I think the district offices 
sometimes are thought of as the frontier and kind of forgotten 
in so many ways, particularly resources and some of the 
technological resources.
    So, Danielle, if you would kind of comment a little more on 
some of the things where we have struggled, particularly with 
the internet, with WiFi. You mentioned it a little bit in your 
opening, but if you could touch on that a bit. And then maybe 
one of George's comments about, you know, particularly during 
the pandemic, we were just swamped, both technologically but 
also in terms of demands on staff. We saw our casework just go 
through the roof. So if you could comment on that.
    Ms. Radovich Piper. Mr. Chair? Okay. Yes. Thank you.
    I think I can give one example that illustrates the real 
challenge, particularly the WiFi challenge and capability. So 
in March of 2020, when we all--when the pandemic hit and we all 
went to work from home, basically all at once, there was a run 
on laptops. There was a run on equipment for the House. It was 
hard to get laptops, iPads, what have you. We were able--we 
also took our internship fully remote, and that was the first 
time we had ever done that. We had never done a remote 
internship before. So we really didn't know what we were doing 
until we were doing it.
    The only--and, of course, as you know, because of the 
House, the firewall, the intranet, the use of the VPN, you have 
to have approved equipment. And in doing so, you have to have 
it set up correctly. So for our interns who, in some cases, 
were not all based either in Colorado or in D.C., they were all 
over the country, we had to set up iPads for the interns, and 
then we had to mail iPads across the country so that they could 
actually access the House information to be able to do their 
internship. And because we didn't have WiFi, and as you all 
know from iPads, you can't hardwire an iPad into the internet 
in your district office. So we--our staff assistant had to sit 
out in the hallway of our office, borrow the WiFi from the 
office suite next door to us for hours on end, setting up the 
iPads to get them out to interns.
    It was really challenging and very stressful, as you can 
imagine, because the whole work-from-home situation came at us 
really quickly, and things were a mess anyway. So that was a 
very challenging situation for us and would hope we could 
rectify that.
    The other technological piece of all of this, really, it 
does go back to it is the accessing and transmitting everything 
with every click that you have to go through D.C., right. So--
because you have to go to the main server, and it is the time 
it takes to have to transmit that information is really a lot 
of lost productivity.
    The other piece that I mention more in my longer remarks 
for written submission are the phone systems. There is not one 
standardized way for district offices to do their phone system 
for the purchasing, for setting it up with the provider, and it 
is all very confusing. And you have to work with three 
different people or four different people within the CAO in 
order to get it done, and it seems like there could be some 
real streamlining of services there.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you. I will yield back to the chair. 
I am just glad that Danielle--I have been hearing about this as 
the Member about, wait, why don't--why do we get treated like 
second-class citizens out here in the hinterlands. But, you 
know, we have been able to work around and, obviously, they 
figure it out. But we could make it easier, especially, you 
know, somebody new coming in, as Sarah was talking about, as 
George was talking about, if there is more attention paid to 
the district office, because this is where the rubber meets the 
road is out here in the district offices. That is where you 
touch the constituents on a, you know, hourly basis. So, thank 
you, Mr. Chair.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Perlmutter. And I will 
recognize myself and Vice Chair Timmons to begin a period of 
extended questioning of the witnesses. And just a reminder, any 
member who wishes to speak or ask a question can just raise 
their virtual hand or, you know, gesture like you are coming in 
for a landing or whatever you wish.
    I want to start by just asking about some of the challenges 
with regard to starting up an office. I think each one of you 
spoke in your testimony and provided more detail in your 
written testimony about just some of the challenges of setting 
up a district office for the first time.
    I would love to ask our witnesses, you know, one, what do 
you see as sort of the most difficult piece of that, and if you 
have a recommendation for the committee about how we could 
maybe improve that? I think we are keen to help there.
    Mr. Hadijski, you mentioned something that I think is kind 
of an interesting idea, and that is, you know, having the 
House, in essence, have a startup fund. You know, I am curious 
if folks have reactions to that and if there are things that 
you think ought to be--kind of ought to be covered and ought to 
not be covered in that type of a setup.
    But let me start with the general topic of, what is the 
toughest part of starting up an office, and what would you do 
to fix it?
    Go ahead, Mr. Hadijski.
    Mr. Hadijski. Yeah. I think you are hitting on a foundation 
question, right. The big problem right now is that not every 
location, not every district is wired well. And building on 
kind of the earlier discussion, that really is key for Members 
as far as like being able to talk about communicating with 
their constituents, having that first touch, when freshman 
offices in particular are affected, but it is going to really 
be an issue with regard to redistricting coming up when a lot 
of Members may have to move their district offices.
    But going into new facilities, getting that infrastructure 
wired up, and getting a head start would be helpful, I think, 
to incoming freshmen members, in particular, but to anybody 
that is really moving any district offices. Because getting 
that, you know, broadband access, getting wired up in the 
office, Members anymore these days, you know, that is how they 
communicate with their constituents. And you are talking about 
social media, whether they are, you know, communicating via 
electronic mail. It really is about a digital world and making 
sure that the Member is up and running.
    In many cases, particularly if Members are going into an 
older building, if they are, you know, going into a new space, 
they aren't wired upfront. And usually that process doesn't 
start until the beginning of the Congress when there is a lag 
and then Members aren't able to get operational right up on day 
one. And so that is a big challenge, you know. Your members are 
going to be dealing with constituents from day one, so it makes 
sense to have that office fully operational on that day one.
    The Chairman. So is that what you would cover--when you 
made the recommendation that there be some sort of a startup 
fund that the House covers, maybe not necessarily out of the 
MRA, is that the most significant investment that you are 
talking about, which is just getting wired, and so that on day 
one you have got phones and internet and you can get cooking?
    Mr. Hadijski. Yeah. That is a key component, because if you 
are----
    The Chairman. Is there something else?
    Mr. Hadijski. If your systems aren't ready, you know--I 
think the committee looked at staffing during that interim time 
period from after the election, and all of a sudden, it made 
sense to centrally appoint staff that are going to be working 
on setting up the office. Well, the same thing can be true on 
setting up district offices as well, right. If you have a 
central funding mechanism and you can access that, maybe the 
incoming Member doesn't have access since the outgoing Member 
represents that district until January 3, then at least getting 
the setup so that the Members that are coming in or any new 
district offices can begin on day one. I think that would be 
helpful to Members in general.
    The Chairman. Do either of our other witnesses want to take 
a swing at this?
    Ms. Youngdahl. I would be happy to. I think the biggest 
issue we found was casework. We were coming in, as I said, to 
brandnew districts, and we found that a lot of constituents 
reached out to us, one, when they finally were able to, once 
our phone systems and emails were all set up. They were saying, 
well, the outgoing Member said they weren't going to be my 
Member in 3 months, so they really didn't want to take up the 
case because they knew this was maybe a 6-month process.
    So there were a lot of constituents who went--by the time 
they got to us, they had already been waiting for normal 
processing time of possibly 6 months, 3 more months waiting for 
the election and the new swearing in. So hearing that and the 
constituents just already feeling so disenfranchised at that 
point was really tough.
    And having a lot of the setup where we would find out about 
it as we were going forward. So when I spoke on the internet 
for the satellite office, while that office is completely 
functional and where I sit today, the internet wasn't provided 
to us. We were told, you need to make the call to your internet 
provider. You need to set up the installation and stuff. While 
the flagship, they are like, it is set up, here you go, here is 
everything you need.
    And while I understand the finances were different and 
there is that separation, it just--it seemed like we as staff 
who didn't know what we were doing really, had to reinvent the 
wheel that was already made for us on the other side.
    The Chairman. That is helpful.
    Ms. Radovich Piper, do you want to take a swing or should I 
move on?
    Ms. Radovich Piper. I just--one thing, to not be 
repetitive. There is something, though, that I think is as 
important as tackling the technological piece. And when you 
first open an office, it is establishing what your Member 
priorities are. And this doesn't fit in the bucket of 
technology, but it does fit in the bucket of what kind of a 
congressional office do you want to be for your constituents, 
and that can sometimes dictate, then, how you set up your 
office and your offices.
    So if the emphasis really is on constituent and outreach 
and you are going to be the most accessible, you know, Member 
that you can be, those decisions, I believe, are more helpful 
made from the outset, because it can decide, well, how many 
offices are you going to have then? Well, and then what kind of 
technology do you need and how many staff members do you need? 
So I think something that is nontechnologically based but is 
equally as important is establishing those priorities early on.
    And back to the alphabet soup of acronyms that we have on 
the Hill, it really is that customer advocate now that has been 
set up for us is so critical. And if I--if we during new Member 
orientation had had that customer advocate to go to, I wouldn't 
have necessarily had to go, well, GAO does this and HIR does 
this and GSA does this, and you have to--I didn't know what any 
of those things were, not to mention I was 8 months pregnant at 
the time, so that was also a bit of a situation for all of us. 
I am not sure I would recommend it. But we definitely could 
have used that one person to say, okay, how do I have to get 
the phones?
    The Chairman. Great. Vice Chair Timmons, and then I have 
got you, Ms. Van Duyne.
    Mr. Timmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Beth, would you like to go first since you are in the car? 
You can go ahead if you want.
    Ms. Van Duyne. Thank you. Do you mind? I am sorry. Yeah. We 
are on the way to go to meet the [inaudible] as a freshman 
office, I can--first, I want to thank all of the witnesses, 
because we have experienced exactly the same thing.
    Something, you know, you are saying that you should be able 
to have everything set up, you know, so that you are ready to 
go on January 3. Technically, we are not allowed to do that. 
Budgets don't start till January 3, so, technically, you don't 
even have anybody who can do that because you don't have an 
employer--or employee at that time. So I don't know if there is 
anything that we can do about that, but that makes it very 
difficult, because you really can't even hire anybody until 
January 3. We didn't even get access keys to our office until 
January 3. So there definitely is a gap where your constituents 
aren't getting that kind of casework help that they need.
    Another thing that we found had to do with casework files. 
The previous Member in our case did not share any of those 
casework files, and the people who end up suffering is not our 
office, it is the constituents. So I don't know [inaudible] do 
we have other solutions to that when the former elected 
official is completely, you know, silent on that issue? What 
choice--what work do we--could we do to possibly change that?
    The Chairman. Go ahead. Would any of our--yeah. Go ahead, 
Mr. Hadijski.
    Mr. Hadijski. Yeah. I think on the issue--I will take the 
first one. On the issue of accessing the office, most of the 
setup I am talking about is basically getting the 
infrastructure and the office up and running. And so it is more 
dealing with the vendors and having maybe the CAO or 
contractors engage with the House where they can set up the 
office. The incoming Member may not be able to access it until 
January 3, but if the CAO can occupy even a short-term lease 
and pay for those expenses from a central fund and get the 
office kind of wired and get it set up so that the computers, 
wiring, the WiFi, all that stuff is ready to go, that might be 
helpful, and paying for that centrally instead of paying for it 
by the incoming Member or the incoming Member's staff. And so 
it would be more of an institutional thing.
    On the issue of casework, we had started to look--when I 
was at House Administration, we started to look at kind of the 
options for possibly standardizing transitioning casework. 
Right now, it is very deregulated, right. Each Member kind of 
decides whether they are going to give the casework back, have 
them start up with the incoming Member. Some Members, there is 
a friendly transition, and so it may be a little smoother.
    But casework is the one thing that is maybe one of the most 
significant things a Member engages in with their constituents, 
right. And so it might be helpful to look at some kind of 
standard process that everybody adheres to, and you just know 
up front, these are going to be the processes for transitioning 
casework. Because it is the one thing that is really--you are 
not talking about a partisan issue. You are talking about 
something that is about helping constituents, right. You are 
trying to secure their checks, and you are trying to help them 
engage, cut through the red tape with executive agencies that 
they are having problems with. And so you are really more 
talking about a customer service issue, and things like that 
should not really be a partisan transition thing. They should 
be more of a standard practice.
    And so that is why I would recommend maybe looking at some 
type of standard process for transitioning casework between 
Members, and then you don't have to deal with a friendly-
unfriendly transition.
    Ms. Van Duyne. Actually, that would be great, because, 
again, the people who suffer the most are your constituents, 
and it is completely nonpartisan. So anything that we can do on 
that side would be very helpful.
    Does anybody else have any kind of solutions, ideas on 
that?
    All right. Well, thank you.
    Ms. Youngdahl. Oh, I was just going to say that I think 
having the partnership with the agencies and speaking to them, 
I understand that they give our specific office authorization 
when the constituent signs off, but if the agency or there 
would be something where it would be to the House or where we 
wouldn't have to have the constituent re-fill out a privacy 
form and provide all that documentation they had given to the 
other offices would be helpful.
    Ms. Van Duyne. Okay. And then also having access to 
programs that the former Member may not have had but that are 
official programs that normal congressional offices could run, 
that would be also good. Because we were--like, for example, 
like the art competition and things like that, I know the 
previous office holder had not really utilized some of those 
programs, and it took us a couple of months to be able to jump 
into it. So having like a list of all of those things that we 
could potentially do for our constituents as far as a service 
for our office would be really helpful.
    I yield back. Thank you very much, Congressman Timmons, 
Ranking Member Timmons, for letting me have that moment. So we 
are here now, so we are going to sign off.
    Mr. Timmons. Happy to do it. Good luck with the rest of 
your day.
    The Chairman. Thanks, Ms. Van Duyne.
    And I think that is actually an interesting idea, this 
notion of maybe having just sort of, you know, the stuff your 
district office can do handbook. I mean, I was in office for a 
few years before I realized the opportunity to do the pinning 
ceremony that Ms. Radovich Piper mentioned for Vietnam 
veterans, just as an example. And so that is--I think we are on 
to something there.
    Vice Chair Timmons, let me yield to you.
    Mr. Timmons. Sure. I will jump in.
    So I wanted to--I really like the idea of facilitating 
better continuity between offices and allowing members that are 
going to be sworn in on January 3 to really get some sneak peek 
or start doing their--be ready to execute their job on January 
3.
    One thing that came to mind, when I was a freshman, we 
actually had Young Kim and Gil Cisneros both waiting on their 
election results. So, I mean, they both came to orientation. So 
while this would help the vast majority of the Members' 
offices, certain issues would be created, so I guess we can 
look into that.
    I want to start out with questions for the district 
directors. I would like to ask your perspective, district 
perspective on an issue that I always talk about, scheduling 
and the calendar and, in particular, how to achieve reliability 
and certainty for you in how we serve our constituents back 
home. Can you talk a little bit about what scheduling is like 
for you with a Member in the district and whatever challenges 
you face, particularly during busy committee workweeks like 
this? I had to gavel into Financial Services and Modernization 
at the same time. That was not fun. I am sure Mr. Cleaver had 
the same issue. So could you just speak to any challenges with 
schedule and the calendar broadly?
    Ms. Youngdahl. Yeah. I would----
    Ms. Radovich Piper. Go ahead, Sarah.
    Ms. Youngdahl. I would be happy to. I think that the 
biggest challenge that we see is just sometimes the uncertainty 
with when it comes to we are coming on, say, this committee 
week and we are trying to schedule a month in advance because 
we have a four-county district. So I know many other Members 
have much larger districts than ours, but even getting from one 
end of the district to the other takes maybe 2 hours. So we are 
trying to schedule as much as we can in certain areas, and we 
are trying to get everything scheduled. And then if something 
pops up where they have to be pulled into session again or 
pulled into a committee meeting, that totally upends it. And, 
unfortunately, sometimes it strains relationships with whomever 
we scheduled with because we are like, it is out of our hands. 
And they were all prepared and ready to have us, and sometimes 
we are able to fill in staff, which is great, but we promised 
the Member. So I think that is our biggest issue is just the 
uncertainty that comes with it.
    Ms. Radovich Piper. Yes. I agree with Sarah. I really 
understand--and I guess we will find out if my boss and I have 
different thoughts on this issue, but I certainly understand 
the reason behind the committee workweeks. I will tell you, 
from our perspective, the addition of committee workweeks has 
been the most challenging on this schedule, and the reason is 
because of the unpredictable nature of those committee 
workweeks.
    There is always a bit of unpredictability in what we do, 
right, and scheduling and working around at any time things 
have to be pulled down or brought back up on the schedule or 
pulled off the schedule or changed on the schedule. However, 
the addition of the committee workweeks has brought an 
additional layer of unpredictability that has made it much 
harder.
    Part of the reason is because we don't know what is 
happening on committee workweeks until the Friday or the 
Thursday before that week. So it makes it really hard to do any 
of the other things, meetings or outreach or other visits, 
during that week while, you know, our boss is in the district, 
whereas it is a little more predictable when you are in session 
and you have votes. There is a rhythm we all end up getting 
into, even though, you know, again, that rhythm changes. And 
then district work periods, there is more predictability there. 
But it is those committee workweeks that I feel like have been 
a real challenge for us from the scheduling perspective.
    Mr. Timmons. Sure. Thank you. I have got two quick 
questions.
    Mr. Hadijski, could you talk a little bit more about, I 
guess, the challenges that Member offices face with constituent 
services in terms of natural disasters? I have been fortunate, 
in my 3 years in Congress, to not have any natural disaster 
occur in my district, but I can imagine that when you have 
thousands or tens of thousands of constituents that need help 
from the Federal Government, it can be overwhelming. We had a 
Member retreat recently and this came up. I mean, is there any 
thought of having a float constituent services team that can go 
wherever it is needed? I mean, just talk a little bit about 
that broadly.
    Mr. Hadijski. Yeah. Those are always really, you know, 
tricky situations because, in many cases, when your district 
has been hit by something that badly, all of a sudden, it is 
like even your infrastructure is not, you know--trying to 
communicate with constituents becomes the first order of 
business. And over the years, the CAO has kind of done a really 
good job at trying to figure out how do we get, like, 
equipment, how do we get, you know, set up basically like a 
temporary shop in those areas that are hit by natural 
disasters. And so usually House Administration will engage and 
find out what is needed.
    The issue is more on the rules side, right, because there 
are a lot of entities that are providing assistance, but they 
may not be governmental entities. And Members in the past have 
been limited as far as like what interactions, you know, they 
can have with private entities and how much assistance they can 
get because of the ethics rules. You can't have private 
subsidies of official activities. And so in those areas, that 
may be, you know, ripe for examining just kind of like, during 
those situations, if it is assistance, is there a way to see if 
there is a way to exempt the rules to allow, you know, for that 
interaction.
    Currently--or when I left, the Members were allowed to 
engage and put information on their websites. They can send out 
information, but it was typically limited to what was provided 
on government websites. It was what was provided on the 
executive branch assistance websites or ones that contracted 
with the government, so there were some limits. But it may be 
worth examining, like, the ability to kind of interact so that 
Members--constituents are getting whatever assistance they 
need, you know, at a time of crisis.
    And so that might be an area to explore as far as like 
looking at House Admin and the ethics rules and seeing if there 
is more that can be done, because there are still--even now, 
even relaxing them over time, there are still restrictions that 
Members have to be mindful of as far as what resources you are 
promoting, what interactions you are having when you are trying 
to provide that assistance.
    Mr. Timmons. Sure. Thank you. I have one followup, but I am 
going to wait till everybody goes.
    Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. I saw Mr. Perlmutter raised a hand. I don't 
know if it was in followup to something that Ms. Van Duyne 
asked. But I am happy to see if others want to pull on this 
thread around district office startup, and, if not, we can 
shift gears.
    Go ahead, Mr. Perlmutter.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Yeah. Beth was asking about, you know, sort 
of the transition stuff and felt like apparently she had--I 
can't remember who preceded her, but was not much help in terms 
of the transition. I can say the guy who preceded us--and, 
Danielle, you can chime in--you know, they basically didn't 
assign somebody to us, but they were very helpful to us during 
our transition. And, in part, they had chosen to go--the guy 
who preceded me, Bob Beauprez, ran for governor, so he knew he 
was on the way out.
    And, you know, as we are transitioning out, we found that 
there are steps that we can take. Do we continue to take new 
cases all the way to the end or do we at some point cut it off 
so that we can finish the work that we have had. And, you know, 
our goal is to be able to, you know, hand it off to a Democrat 
or Republican, hopefully a Democrat, but hand it off in as 
clean a fashion as possible, and we will see, you know, how 
that works. But we are doing this in advance.
    If you have got that other situation, William, you 
mentioned where, you know, you have got--you got it through the 
election, almost, you know. The person loses. You know, how 
happy are they to be, you know, handing it off to the person 
who just beat them. That is a whole other dynamic than what we 
are facing. But there is a pretty good system, and Danielle's 
already been involved with it. If you are leaving in advance or 
you know you are leaving, there is a pretty good transition 
approach that is taken.
    The Chairman. Ms. Williams.
    Ms. Williams. Hello, everybody. Just to chime in, because I 
am still going through the freshman office woes, thinking 
through the transition of not only casework but also like 
database of, like, constituent communications, email lists. 
When I asked this question during freshman orientation, I was 
told that the previous Member could sign off to transfer things 
over to the new Member. Well, but I had a unique case because 
the previous Member, Mr. Lewis, passed away. And so they said, 
then, typically they revert to the wife to act--so that the 
wife could transfer information to the new Member, but Ms. 
Lillian passed away before Mr. Lewis did. So they said that I 
was in a unique situation, and so I started from scratch. Zero. 
Nothing. Because staff were not allowed to transfer information 
over, it had to come specifically from the Member is what I was 
told by House Administration during new Member orientation.
    And so I think that this information shouldn't belong to a 
Member. It should belong to the district or to the--like, we 
are doing work for people here, not for our own benefit. And 
then to complicate things even worse, there was someone for 30 
days in this seat who opened up a ton of cases and had people 
thinking that all of this work was going to happen when he was 
in Congress for 30 days, and nothing was closed. And so I had 
all of these things waiting where people were, like, we were 
told this was going to happen.
    And so coming up with a way that this information does not 
belong to the specific Member but it belongs to the district 
and so that it goes from office to office regardless of the 
party that is in the office, regardless of who the person is so 
we are not waiting on a Member to grant someone permission to 
serve the constituents that we are supposed to be serving.
    The Chairman. I think this is a really good topic. Do any 
of our witnesses want to chime in on that, the challenges with 
regard to casework when you are in startup mode, but even on an 
ongoing basis? I know some of you testified about some of the 
just challenges on the casework front. Anyone want to give us--
give the committee some recommendations we ought to be thinking 
about in that space?
    Go ahead, Mr. Hadijski. I saw you unmute.
    Mr. Hadijski. Yeah. I can talk a little bit about this. A 
lot of times, it is--there are agreements, obviously, privacy 
release forms, things like that, Social Security numbers, and 
so there is a lot of data that is viewed as an agreement with 
that specific Member. So I am wondering, I don't know if it is 
possible, but maybe there is a way that some of the information 
can be segmented, and things that are official legal agreements 
with the previous Member, those, you know, can be separated 
out. And maybe the database, the valuable information to an 
incoming Member of names and addresses and topics and issues, 
maybe those kind of things can be separated out and transferred 
over to an incoming Member.
    I am not the--technical expertise is not my strong suit, 
but there may be something where you can provide the incoming 
Member with the data that would be helpful that takes, in many 
cases, years to accumulate. And those kind of lists, 
distribution lists, and topic, you know, IDs with certain 
constituents, but maybe there is a possible way of doing that. 
It just probably has to be looked into.
    The Chairman. Ms. Radovich Piper.
    Ms. Radovich Piper. Yes, exactly. Well, thank you. There 
might be actually a more simple fix to this, potentially, by 
adding some language to the privacy agreements that are already 
standardized, but maybe you add some kind of transfer language 
to the privacy agreement where the constituent has to initial. 
I assume the Office of General Counsel would need to take a 
look at all of that, but that might be the way of--a more 
simple way of fixing the problem is adding that language to the 
privacy release, because we all need privacy release forms 
anyway from the constituent to do the work with the agency. So 
if you add that transfer language and they have to initial, 
that might help to solve some of this.
    Ms. Williams. Thank you. At the end of the day, our 
constituents want--if they are reaching out to a congressional 
office, they are usually at their last straw because they have 
exhausted other resources. And so then to tell them that they 
have to start all the way over because I am a new Member, it 
just doesn't seem fair to the constituent.
    Mr. Perlmutter. If I could just jump in. From a legal 
standpoint, and, William, David, you could jump in too. I mean, 
I would consider everything that I do is district business and 
it is not my business. And so I am a little bit surprised by 
House Administration's, you know, conclusions here. So I would 
like to take a look at that as well.
    And even with the privacy release, it is still with the 
office. It is not with me, you know. It is not with you. It is 
with your office. So I think we ought to take a look at House 
Administration, and I wish Zoe were on here because that 
doesn't make sense to me, what they told you.
    The Chairman. Ms. Williams, do you have anything else you 
want to ask about?
    Ms. Williams. No. This was--right now, this is it.
    The Chairman. I think you are on to something, and I think 
that is another great topic for us to explore with the 
potential of making some recommendations for reform in this 
space. Because, again, if the idea is to help our constituents, 
this should be more seamless for them. So great, great topic. 
Thank you for raising it.
    Mr. Cleaver, I see your hand up.
    Mr. Cleaver. Yes. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, this is 
actually one of the reasons that I have become obsessed with 
GSA playing the role of a landlord in terms of them getting our 
offices and getting them ready. I think when we start talking 
about the wife makes the decision, it harkens back to a day 
that I think--that I thought we had left behind. Dick Bolling 
was in Congress 34 years in the Fifth District, you know. He 
was, you know, one of the old bulls of the House. His wife, who 
I love, she was very helpful to me in my campaign. She was his 
chief of staff, essentially. And I just think, you know, this 
preordained role for a spouse--for wives, not spouses, wives is 
just kind of--it gives a bad taste in my mouth.
    But the other part, what I really want to talk about is 
this is one of the reasons I think GSA is important. I was 
elected in some weird situation that essentially didn't have an 
office anyplace, and I didn't even know what kind of office I 
needed. I mean, you know, I didn't know if I needed an office 
like I have in the church that I pastored. I didn't know if I--
you know, I didn't know anything except that I had just won an 
election. And nobody called and said, this is what you need to 
do, do this and do that and do this. Nobody.
    And the previous people had put offices near their homes, 
you know, the previous members from the Fifth District. And, 
anyway, I ended up going into the Federal building paying 
almost $100,000 a year in rent, and then leaving as soon as I--
once I realized what was going on.
    I think to do all of this stuff without--all of this, you 
are just getting--like, all the stuff falls in on us, and then 
we have to go out and become a realtor, you know, trying to 
find an office. And it is just--I think we are making it 
difficult. And I think let's make life difficult for GSA. I 
mean, everybody who works over there, they understood when they 
took that job what it was. You know, we didn't take a job, you 
know, about finding office space.
    And so the GSA people, when you talk to Robin Carnahan, the 
GSA Administrator, she will tell you, yeah, we have headaches, 
and it was her--what she said to me. Well, when you apply for 
job at GSA, you are saying, I like to have a headache. And so 
let's give it to them. I think, you know, we can save ourselves 
a lot of distress.
    And when we had this discussion with the Missouri 
delegation last week, Roy Blunt said it has been going--the GSA 
has been doing this for us so long that nobody even remembers 
when it didn't happen. And so I just think we are making life a 
little more difficult than it should be.
    Thank you.
    The Chairman. Any of our witnesses want to respond to that 
or react to that?
    Go ahead, Ms. Youngdahl.
    Ms. Youngdahl. Yeah. I have a funny story about the GSA. 
When we started, being that we were in a brandnew district, we 
had the leftovers of the leftovers in terms of picking 
furniture. And myself and the district director at the time 
were in a warehouse opening up crates and trying to figure out 
what we needed for spaces that we weren't even sure we had at 
that moment. So we were like, is this printer even working? 
Does this laptop connect to internet?
    So I must echo that. I think GSA could do a really better 
job in preparing, because we didn't know what we were doing and 
it was quite a headache to even find matching chairs for us. 
And, again, there was an office prior to us who got first dibs. 
And while we did get a stipend to fill in what we weren't given 
from the GSA, it was still--even then we didn't know what we 
should buy. We didn't know what was the best thing for our 
buck.
    Mr. Timmons. To that point, let me just add something real 
quick. I am getting hit in the campaign issue because I purch--
I spent money to up the office that I am saving money because I 
consolidated, so there is a political issue that is associated 
with this as well. I mean, I had to buy furniture because they 
didn't have any left, so, I mean, whatever.
    Mr. Cleaver. And that is one of the points, Mr. Chairman 
and Mr. Vice Chair, is that, you know, if you come in and buy a 
new cute chair, then you are just--I mean, you are going to 
make plans to read about it, you know. It is $2.98, whatever it 
is, you know, he is already going out and spending a lot of 
money. He or she is already buying drapes and so forth. Let GSA 
do it. I mean, nobody gets mad at GSA, I mean, unless 
somebody's stealing ballpoint pens or something, you know. Let 
GSA handle that.
    We have got--we are supposed to be running the Nation and, 
by extension, the world, and we are running around trying to 
find chairs. You know, I just--I don't get it. I don't 
understand it.
    The Chairman. I am just jealous. I heard Ms. Youngdahl say 
that they have matching chairs in their office. I am still not 
there, so that is amazing.
    Mr. Cleaver, do you have anything else you wanted to ask 
about or--okay.
    Anyone else want to ask about the startup stuff? Otherwise, 
I might want to shift gears. I don't--Vice Chair Timmons, did 
you have something on this topic?
    Mr. Timmons. Sort of. I mean, with respect to the 
technology issue, I know we have talked about WiFi. My follow-
up question was, what other technology issues do you have? I 
lasted, I think, 3 months on the House servers. I now use 
Gmail. I just said--I just can't--I can't manage it. It was 
constantly creating problems. So, I mean, what other challenges 
relative to technology have you all experienced?
    And I guess the other thing was, how prepared were you all 
for COVID when you had to send people home? Was that a huge 
challenge as it relates to getting technology that they could 
work from home with?
    The Chairman. Go ahead, Ms. Radovich Piper.
    Ms. Radovich Piper. Yes. Thank you.
    Well, I will answer the COVID question. The answer is yes. 
It was a huge challenge, a big surprise, and I wasn't quite 
sure that we were going to--I wasn't sure how we were going to 
make it work. We did.
    Our issue was that not everyone between--we have two 
offices, one in D.C. and one in the district. We just have one 
district office. We have 15 total staff, including myself, and 
then our intern program.
    As I mentioned earlier, not all of our full-time staff had 
laptops leading up to March of 2020. I just couldn't foresee 
that a global pandemic was going to hit and we were all going 
to have to work from home. I also couldn't foresee, before 
March 13 of 2020, how a district office would work remotely 
either, because we are so ingrained in the community and we 
depend so much on being open and our office being open and 
having face-to-face contact with our constituents. So that was 
one of the biggest challenges was just wrapping my mind around 
how we were going to do this and still serve our constituents 
the way we have held ourselves to the standard.
    And then not having enough laptops for everybody was a real 
challenge, which is--and then the House had a run on laptops, 
so they didn't have enough laptops, so that was why we 
purchased so many iPads. And so not only for the intern program 
did we have to purchase iPads, but we had to purchase iPads for 
our full-time staff. And then that created a problem because we 
use Fireside as our CMS provider, and our caseworkers who were 
on lap--on iPads, excuse me, were having a devil of a time 
connecting to Fireside. And so they were having a really hard 
time doing their casework, which resulted in us having to ask 
our D.C. staff, our leg team, to actually pull some casework 
duty because some of them had laptops that were easier to work 
on.
    So, those first 3 months were a real rodeo, if you will. 
And then we, finally, in the summer when we were able to get 
laptops for each staffer, we then were able to sort of ease 
into the new normal at that time. So that was pretty tough.
    I would say to your earlier question, the first question 
around navigating the technology, I think for my boss, really, 
he has not used the intranet all that much until--and has his 
own email. We just didn't use a lot of the official channels 
with him. So it was not as hard early on.
    Thank you.
    The Chairman. Anyone else want to respond on this? A 
rebuttal by Mr. Perlmutter?
    Mr. Perlmutter. No. Just--my question is, is this being 
recorded?
    The Chairman. Yes. I want to shift gears--go ahead, Mr. 
Hadijski.
    Mr. Hadijski. Just real quickly. We also found, you know, a 
lot of times people forget that a lot of times these 
individuals come in, and this is kind of in our--you know, in 
our basket here of management practices, right. A lot of the 
things--you are coming into a Capitol Hill office, and a lot of 
people have never had management experience before. This is 
where professional development and educational training, we 
think, you know, would be beneficial.
    We initially, when the pandemic started and everybody had 
to kind of go to their--go remote, we had a training session 
for staff specifically in this area on just kind of developing 
plans, and this is a shameless plug for our publication. We 
have one that is specific to district offices called Keeping it 
Local, and it is a guide for managing congressional district 
and State offices. That hits on a lot of areas as far as like 
crisis management. It tells you kind of like how to develop 
plans.
    A lot of, you know, staff aren't aware of these things, and 
these kind of training sessions sometimes can be really helpful 
to managers, particularly if they don't have any background in 
those areas. And so those are things that--like exactly what 
Danielle was talking about, we found a lot of people didn't 
have the right equipment, and we just need to develop kind of a 
strategic plan and what exactly are your needs and how do you 
fulfill those needs, so----
    The Chairman. I will give two quick public service 
announcements on that front. One, Mr. Hadijski, I want to just 
commend CMF. I got to listen to the first podcast directed at 
Members, and I thought it was terrific, looking at how we--how 
Members manage their offices. I think that type of--it is 
strange being in Congress in that there is not really 
professional development opportunities for Members, and I think 
we are working to change that, and I really commend CMF on that 
podcast.
    Also, since we have, I think, covered well the topic of how 
we start up offices and technology. We are working with HIR to 
pilot WiFi in a few offices. You know, I think, again, sort 
of--private industry has sort of figured out how to use WiFi. 
We are working to make sure any sort of security issues would 
be addressed and the network could be protected from many bad 
actors trying to access it, so that has been the slowdown. But 
the--I think that is something that we have heard as we have 
engaged district directors and district staff along the way, so 
it is something we are working on.
    I did want to just shift gears because I think at least one 
of you mentioned it in your testimony, the issue of how offices 
work with community partners, you know, when we do job fairs or 
when we do tax preparation services for constituents to talk 
about, you know, how do you get the Child Tax Credit or things 
like that.
    I just want to get your sense of how that is going and what 
has been challenging on that front and if there are fixes you 
could suggest to just better facilitate those working 
relationships with outside organizations to serve your 
constituents while also complying with ethics rules. Any 
reactions to that topic?
    Go ahead, Ms. Youngdahl.
    Ms. Youngdahl. Yeah. Coming into Congressman 
Reschenthaler's office from being the event coordinator in his 
State senate office, I did a ton of events from our State side, 
and doing senior fairs and that--those type of events for 
constituents. So I knew what was available through the State 
side, and I knew how meaningful it would be to partner with the 
State offices, and then now that we were on the Federal side, 
working with the Federal agencies, very similar how we did on 
the State.
    But we have come into multiple cases where we speak with 
the agency or the State office, and they say, well, we can't 
have you saying that you are hosting it. We have to say we are 
hosting it. Well, we can only be--we can only have the 
Congressman as a speaker then.
    So the verbiage just back and forth between ourselves and 
with whomever we want to partner with almost makes it not worth 
it, and then at the point of which we might strike out on our 
own and just do an event ourselves. Then somebody down the road 
is doing possibly the same event and constituents might be 
getting all the information they need, but they might have to 
go to four events to get what they are looking for.
    So I think that is the biggest thing, that if we could have 
more understanding of what can be done overall. I know 
Pennsylvania is very unique in the sense of how involved the 
State legislature is in their agencies. And I know, speaking 
with some of our colleagues in other States, sometimes the 
State legislature is not as big and the congressional offices 
have to pick up what our State legislator does.
    So understanding those lines as well as understanding how 
we can cross over would be a huge help whenever we are wanting 
to plan, and then making it easier for whenever, going back to 
new offices, understand what they can do and can't do when they 
want to do this outreach.
    The Chairman. Mr. Hadijski, I think you referenced this in 
your testimony too. Do you have any reactions to this and areas 
where you think we could make some reforms?
    Mr. Hadijski. Yeah. I think, you know, just examining how 
those rules with private entities, you know, and those 
interactions should be examined. Most of this stuff, you know--
I am not the ethics expert, but the Ethics staff has really 
good staff there in their Advice and Education and kind of 
sitting down and maybe talking with them about examining some 
of these rules. You know, some of these rules date back to even 
the Watergate era. And so you wonder over time, you know, have 
they evolved to kind of capture or ensnare more things that 
were maybe not intended as a rule restriction.
    And these kind of things, particularly with attention to 
serving constituents, where the Member is more just a 
facilitator of getting constituents, you know, assistance or 
information or resources, those are kind of areas that, you 
know, the private sector may fulfill a need that maybe the 
government entity may not. And so it may be worthwhile 
examining, you know, those specific rules, and can you put in 
something with some carveout or some checks in place that 
prevent exactly what the intent--the rule was prevented--you 
know, intended to prevent, like subsidizing official activity 
with private resources versus resources and information that 
can go directly to constituents, and the Member just more acts 
as a facilitator in that regard. So I think there is definitely 
room for reform and probably examining some of these rules.
    The Chairman. Terrific.
    Let me open up to the committee. Are there other topics 
that you all want to explore? I think we have unearthed some, I 
think, really good ideas in this space. But let me see if 
others have questions that we haven't hit.
    Go ahead, Mr. Perlmutter.
    Mr. Perlmutter. And Mr. Hadijski hit on one, and you were 
talking about it too, Derek. I think we end up tripping over 
ourselves. We really ought to go back and kind of do a look at 
some of the ethics rules that, you know, one guy 42 years ago 
did something that went a little too far, and then we put a 
rule in place that then creates a monster, where you really 
could help constituents.
    We had--we ran afoul of this one a little bit many years 
ago where a woman who was in charge of our military and 
veterans stuff very much wanted to improve the lives of women 
in the military, and she got involved with some organization 
and was said to have been promoting it, which was in violation 
of whatever, you know, ethics rules and, you know, had to do a 
mea culpa and all that stuff. And all she was doing was helping 
women in the military, you know. And so we need to take a look 
at some of those things.
    We have had this big fire up north that wiped out a 
thousand houses. And so then the question becomes, can we only 
work with FEMA, or can we work with the Red Cross, and how does 
that--you know, how does that all play out, you know. And the 
private sector and the non-profits, you know, really play a big 
role in this, but there is this limitation that we have in 
assisting them or them assisting us.
    So, I think, Derek, you are right, we ought to take a look 
at some of those ethics rules, because we just pile them on and 
we never go back and, you know, say, okay, this one was--just 
doesn't make sense anymore.
    The Chairman. Ms. Radovich Piper, go ahead.
    Ms. Radovich Piper. There is another example that I could 
add to that that would underscore the need to possibly review 
some of those rules, and that was several years back in one of 
the government shutdowns. Our office, you know, as we know, 
that during that time of the government shutdown, it was 
Federal employees obviously were the most impacted immediately, 
and we had Federal employees. We don't--our district office is 
not housed in a Federal building; however, we do have an IRS 
office in our building and some other Federal agencies. And we 
had Federal employees come to our office who were just 
distraught over the shutdown and not getting paid and not sure 
what they were going to do and how they were going to do it and 
how they were going to pay their rent. And it was coming up on 
the first of the month at the time. I think this was in 2013, 
if I am not mistaken.
    And one of the things that we wanted to do was provide--
well, we were providing computer space for folks so they could 
come in. We could help them with unemployment. We were 
providing just a safe space for them to be and actually talk 
about their situation and how scary it was, helping them with 
housing situations, but we wanted to provide them some food and 
be able to take home, for instance, a sack lunch or something, 
right, and the House said no, that we can't--we couldn't do 
that, and we couldn't pay for that kind of thing out of the 
MRA. And, you know, these were for Federal employees. We 
weren't, you know, feeding the whole town. So it is just 
another example of something that could be looked at that seems 
maybe a little out of date or archaic.
    Thank you.
    The Chairman. I am just looking to see if any other members 
have questions. I do--Ms. Youngdahl, I am curious. You know, a 
lot of our recommendations have come from Members who served in 
a State legislative body and said, hey, why is Congress like 
this? That is stupid. Are there other things that you witnessed 
when you served within the Pennsylvania State legislature that 
you thought, gosh, as we look at how district offices function 
or, you know, some of the rules or the resources, things that 
you think we ought to be looking at within this committee?
    Ms. Youngdahl. Yeah. I think going back to the idea of 
sharing casework and stuff, now with the House, we all have our 
different CMSs, but in the State legislature, we were all using 
the same one under the different caucuses. So Congressman 
Reschenthaler was able to access data dating back to two, three 
senators of his district prior. And it was just in our CMS. It 
wasn't separated, and we could see if we had a frequent flyer 
or something like that.
    We have brought over a lot of kind of the tactics that we 
used in terms of tackling casework, and it really helped us to 
understand what our needs would be also with the district in 
terms of the offices and the location. And I think having for 
each State, understanding what, like I said, the State can do.
    So I know I worked with--I believe it was a Virginia office 
or a Maryland office, because they don't have a department of 
transportation on the State side with the legislators, and that 
is handled by the Congress, congressional office, so we were 
having kind of across State lines issue. While, for us, the 
department of transportation, any of those type of issues are 
handled through the State legislature.
    So that understanding--I couldn't imagine coming into our 
office and not knowing where our congressional office fit, not 
knowing that, oh, this PennDOT issue, this department of 
transportation issue, that is a State issue, and just being--
trying to figure that out and possibly even going to the point 
of which I would reach out to the Federal Department of 
Transportation, and they would be like, no, no, no. It is this 
level. So I think those clear guidelines of where things are 
handled through the States would be invaluable information, and 
it is just so different across the country.
    The Chairman. Super.
    Before we wrap up, any topics that our witnesses wanted to 
share that we didn't touch on? Otherwise, we will let you get 
on with your day. Any closing thoughts, or did we hit it?
    I think I see mostly nodding heads. Terrific.
    I thought this was great. And I just want to commend all of 
our witnesses. And I texted Mr. Perlmutter, Ms. Radovich Piper, 
he is lucky to have you. And, Ms. Youngdahl, Guy is lucky to 
have you too. So I am glad you are part of these terrific teams 
and have dedicated some of your professional time to serving 
the good people of Colorado and Pennsylvania, respectively.
    I think we pulled some interesting ideas out of this, the 
idea of having some sort of a, you know, ready for day one fund 
that might be able to help you move into an office on day one 
that may have--in that it would be an office where the tech is 
ready to go. I think that is something that we should look at.
    These issues around casework transition, I think, are also 
really valuable because, again, if this--if the goal of our 
committee is, you know, make reforms so that Congress works 
better for the American people, that casework, to Ms. Williams' 
point, should rest with the office, not with the specific 
Member, because having that kind of turn and making our 
constituents start over from square one doesn't seem right or 
fair.
    Some of these issues around partnering with regard to, you 
know, resource fairs or with community organizations I think is 
a thread we can continue to pull on.
    And then, Mr. Hadijski, I know you mentioned the issues 
related to staffing, particularly when there are issues--when 
there is an emergency or a natural disaster or something like 
that. I think those are good ideas that we can hopefully find 
some common ground on as a committee. So thank you all for your 
recommendations.
    With that, I also want to thank our committee staff for 
pulling together such terrific witnesses and for helping us put 
together another successful virtual hearing.
    Without objection, all members will have 5 legislative days 
within which to submit additional written questions for the 
witnesses to the chair which will be forwarded to the witnesses 
for their response, and I ask our witnesses to please respond 
as promptly as you are able. Without objection, all members 
will have 5 legislative days within which to submit extraneous 
materials to the chair for inclusion in the record.
    And, with that, this hearing is adjourned. Thanks, 
everybody. Appreciate you.
    Mr. Timmons. Thank you all.
    [Whereupon, at 1:27 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

      

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