US consumer finance agency to bring staff back to office year after closure

By Douglas Gillison

WASHINGTON, May 12 (Reuters) – Leadership at the U.S. consumer finance watchdog plans to recall staff to the office more than a year after the Trump administration shuttered its Washington headquarters and tried to eliminate the workforce, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

The return-to-office plan for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has not yet been announced to staff and timing remains uncertain, the people said.

The agency’s downtown headquarters are now partly occupied by the Office of Management and Budget, whose Director Russell Vought also leads the CFPB, the three sources and two others briefed on the occupancy said.

It was unclear whether staff would be recalled to CFPB headquarters and whether the mandate would include agency staff based outside Washington, three of the people said.

CFPB representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. The Trump administration in February canceled the lease on the CFPB’s headquarters and handed the property to the General Services Administration, as Reuters previously reported.

After calling for the CFPB’s outright elimination last year, top administration officials now say they have scaled back plans to slash the agency’s workforce. A judge’s provisional order blocking this remains in place after a lower court previously found that the administration planned to wipe out the CFPB before the legal system could decide whether this was legal.

With agency work sharply curtailed and its future uncertain, many CFPB employees have left the agency, which was created following the 2008 financial crash to protect the public from predatory practices in consumer finance. Headcount is down about 30% since the start of the Trump administration, according to court filings.

Top administration officials including President Donald Trump have described the CFPB as a politicized burden on free enterprise, while Democrats and agency defenders have described efforts to eliminate it as a giveaway to corporations at the expense of consumers.

(Reporting by Douglas Gillison in Washington; Editing by Daniel Wallis)