The Trump administration decided to fast-forward that culling. In March, it announced a 43 percent staffing reduction, amounting to 2,700 employees. Current and former employees say the cuts have not been carried out in an organized way. Probationary members of the staff were the first to be let go, followed by those who took advantage of the Department of Government Efficiency’s deferred resignation program. After that, workers were fired.
As a result, many district offices have been hollowed out, slowing response times.
An agency spokeswoman, Caitlin O’Dea, did not elaborate on the distribution of the cuts, but wrote in a response to questions that the reorganization would “redirect all resources to support the core mission of empowering small businesses and driving economic growth, instead of supporting the partisan programs that took root under the Biden administration.”
During a Senate hearing on Wednesday with Ms. Loeffler, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, said her state’s district office had been cut to three employees from seven, and she asked whether the positions would be restored. Ms. Loeffler replied that she would rehire some of those workers who had retired, but did not provide a timeline.
One corner of the agency that has been hobbled is the servicing of Covid-era disaster loans. The agency kept the loan operation in-house when it began in 2020, requiring hundreds of agents to handle payments and other issues. As those employees started being pushed out or leaving of their own accord, live assistance on the program’s phone line was shut down. According to Ms. O’Dea, this was a four-day outage while call center infrastructure was upgraded, yet reports of unanswered calls predate that period.
Shelly Haywood took out a disaster loan to keep her vintage furniture store in Orange County, Calif., afloat during the pandemic. Business never quite recovered, and in March she decided to shutter her company. To do that, she needed to talk to the S.B.A. to figure out what to do with her loan, which still carried a balance of $57,000.
