A cadre of Massachusetts pols is calling the head of the U.S. Small Business Administration to keep the agency’s satellite office in Springfield open and fully staffed after it was “inexplicably" targeted for closing by the Elon Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency.

The office, currently located at 1 Federal St. in Springfield, was among 17 leases that the quasi-governmental DOGE terminated during a flurry of actions in March, MassLive previously reported . The lease on the 894-square-foot space had been set to end in June 2028.

The decision leaves Western Massachusetts, and the Pioneer Valley specifically, “without access to vital SBA services and support,” Democratic U.S. Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren wrote to SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler in a letter shared exclusively with MassLive.

“With this office closure, the Trump administration is continuing its nonsensical war against small businesses, dismantling the infrastructure that supports them and undermining the foundation of American entrepreneurship,” Markey and Warren wrote in the letter set to be made public on Wednesday.

They were joined on the letter by U.S. Reps. Richard Neal, D-1st District, and James P. McGovern, D-2nd District, whose constituents would be hit by the office’s closing.

Loeffler, a former corporate executive, former Republican U.S. senator from Georgia, and a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, has been making deep cuts at an agency that’s a critical resource for small business owners across the country, The New York Times reported last week .

The changes, which include rolling back access to credit, have hit businesses run by women, immigrants, and people of color, as the Republican White House also rolls back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the government, the newspaper reported.

Markey, the ranking Democrat on the Senate’s Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, has pressed Loeffler for information on the changes. But she has ignored those inquiries, the Malden Democrat told the newspaper.

“It’s unconscionable that the Trump administration would treat such a vital agency so callously,” Markey told the Times.

“They’re destroying the areas where they do have expertise and it’s vital to invest, and then moving over areas where the agency is going to wind up overwhelmed,” Markey continued.

That includes inheriting a $1.66 trillion student loan portfolio from the mostly gutted U.S. Department of Education, according to the Times.

In their letter Loeffler, Markey and the other Bay State pols noted that the lease for the Springfield SBA office costs less than $61,000 a year, and that there are no longer any workers in that office because they’ve since left. And there are no current plans to relocate it or to hire new employees, they wrote.

Without an outpost in Springfield, the nearest extant SBA office is in Boston, they wrote.

Shuttering the Federal Street office “will place a tremendous burden on small business owners, forcing them to take time away from their work and drive hours — in some cases a six-hour round trip," they wrote.

The half-century-old agency expanded rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic, swelling to 10,000 employees, which dropped to 6,000 under the former Biden administration, the Times reported. It was expected to contract more after that.

The agency’s lending arm doled out $56 billion last year, and its flagship loan program is generally supposed to operate without a government subsidy, the newspaper reported.

In March, the Trump administration announced it was cutting the agency’s staff by 43%, or about 2,700 employees. Current and former agency employees told the Times that the reductions were not organized.

In addition to their plea, the Massachusetts lawmakers also sent Loeffler a series of questions, giving the SBA until Friday to respond.

They include identifying the person, or persons, who approved the decision to spike the Springfield lease, the justification that was provided for that decision, whether there are plans to relocate it, and how the agency intends to serve small business owners in the western part of the state.

“The SBA’s physical presence in Springfield, Massachusetts, ensures that entrepreneurs in underserved communities, particularly those in rural areas, have the resources they need to compete,” the lawmakers wrote.

“Closing the Springfield district office is a grave mistake that will hurt small businesses, harm job creation, and weaken the economic foundation of our region,” they wrote.