Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey is on a mission to get the county's public servants back to the office.

There are roughly 5,300 employees on the taxpayers' payroll. According to Commissioner Ramsey, 35% have some form of telework.

"That could be one day, it could be four or five days, but some of these employees are working full time from home," Ramsey told KTRH News.

That means nearly 2,000 Harris County employees are still working remotely and we're three years removed from the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Commissioners meet Monday. Commissioner Ramsey said he will make a motion to "return all employees back to work" and he believes he will get a second on his motion.

"Hopefully this will get us on a path to get our employees back to work," he said.

The move is similar to what the Trump administration is doing with the federal government by asking federal workers to return to the office full time or be fired.

Commissioner Ramsey said he has 400 people working in Precinct 3. All of them work in the office.

"What they have in common is they all work hard and they all come to work," Ramsey said. "There's not a single person out of 400 that are working from home."

According to Ramsey, the Department of Economic Equity and Opportunity employs 74 people. 86% of them are telework. It's a similar story for the Harris County Flood Control District. Ramsey said of the 360 employees there, 59% are telework. Also, Harris County Community Development has 270 employees with 99% of them being involved in telework.

"This is all in the interest of waste and I think employees clearly employees are not nearly as efficient or effective when working from home so this is right at the top of the list of some of the wasteful spending we need to address," Ramsey added.

Houston's Morning News with Jimmy Barrett