Some Federal Offices Targeted By DOGE in Wisconsin Still Open
DOGE terminated leases for 16 offices, but several are still open.
Elon Musk speaking at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. Photo by Gage Skidmore. (CC BY-SA 2.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
Some federal offices in Wisconsin remain open after the Department of Government Efficiency targeted them for termination earlier this year.
As of Friday, the DOGE website identified a dozen lease contracts for termination at federal offices in Wisconsin. However, WPR found at least several offices will remain open for the time being.
Earlier this year, the initiative formerly led by billionaire Elon Musk terminated leases for at least 16 offices in the state. The cancellations affected office space for agencies like the Social Security Administration, Defense Contract Management Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service among others.
But some of those terminations have since been revoked. One of those is the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Ashland. In February, the U.S. General Services Administration, or GSA, notified the office’s owner, Tanenbaum Equity Partners, that its lease would end this month. Bill Broydrick, a consultant representing the building’s owner, said the federal government revoked the lease termination for the office leased by Tanenbaum subsidiary RTD Ashland-BIA, LLC.
“The council of all of the Native tribes in Wisconsin put together a resolution of opposition to closing the office, which is used by the tribes for a lot of services,” Broydrick said. “On that basis, the decision was made by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to keep the office open.”
On March 12, The Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council, a consortium of 12 tribes in Wisconsin and Michigan, adopted a resolution opposing the closure of several offices in Ashland and Shawano as well as Bemidji, Minnesota. The resolution states the Ashland office is a “critical regional hub” that helps tribes with land trust applications, real estate management, education assistance, law enforcement support and more.
The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa is a member of the council. Bad River Tribal Chair Robert Blanchard said closure of the office would have been a hardship for the tribe.
“We would have probably had to go to Minneapolis or some other place further away from us to get services,” Blanchard said.
The office employed around 40 workers at the beginning of this year, and it will remain open through January 2028 under terms of the original lease. The Bureau of Indian Affairs said in a statement that the Ashland office provides “mission-critical services” to Wisconsin tribes.
“Throughout this process the BIA remained in contact with the tribes to assure that, regardless of the outcome, BIA would continue to fulfill its treaty and trust obligations to them,” the agency said. “BIA is working with GSA to ensure adequate and appropriate space continues to be available to support services delivery.”
The agency did not provide details Friday on the status of the Shawano and Bemidji offices.
Lease terminations have also been revoked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Federal Highway Administration offices in Madison. Garrett Peterson, spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement its lease termination was rescinded in early August. The original lease extended through August 2028.
“The office remains open and in-use. We are working with GSA on finalizing a plan for the lease,” Peterson said.
The GSA revoked the lease termination for the Federal Highway Administration office in July, and it will remain open through September 2027 under the original lease. A government source who was not authorized to speak publicly said the office is at roughly half its staffing levels from earlier this year as employees have opted to take part in the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program.
Employees with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will also move into that office. The DOGE website states a lease for that agency’s Madison office has been terminated. A spokesperson with the federal transportation agency said employees are generally moved to another federal space nearby when a lease is terminated.
DOGE had also targeted Social Security Administration offices in Green Bay and Wausau for lease terminations earlier this year.
“Neither Green Bay or Wausau are fully manned sites,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement. “Both sites are used as needed by administrative law judges to conduct hearings in the local areas. No federal workers have been transferred or laid off from these locations.”
The agency said its occupancy at those sites expire in June and November of next year. Those dates reflect terms of the original leases for those offices.
Other offices in Wisconsin that have been targeted for lease terminations include space for the Rural Housing Service in Stevens Point. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it’s aware of the proposed lease termination.
“We are working with GSA on this matter and will continue working with them until a final decision has been made,” the agency said.
Other federal agencies did not respond to requests for comment or referred questions to GSA. As of July, the federal government leased 114 offices with a combined annual rent of $34.6 million.
Targeted by DOGE for termination, some federal offices remain open in Wisconsin was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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