Moran Announces FERS Sick Leave in DoD Conference Agreement

October 7, 2009 – Congressman Jim Moran, Northern Virginia Democrat, announced this afternoon that three key federal employee provisions he has championed have been included in the Department of Defense’s FY’10 conference agreement.

“This is a major victory for federal employees,” said Moran. “These revisions to the federal retirement system are long overdue. We’re putting in place reforms that promote conserving sick leave and incentivize both CSRS and FERS employees to return to government service later in their careers—making it easier to recruit and retain top talent when we need it the most.  I appreciate the conferees willingness to listen to our arguments for including these vital provisions to strengthen our civil service, many of whom work day-in and day-out directly alongside our men and women in uniform.”

The three Moran provisions include:

• FERS Sick Leave: Allows Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) employees’ unused, accumulated sick leave to be used in computing their annuities upon retirement.  This provision puts FERS employees on par with those in the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) (which includes employees who joined the civil service prior to 1984). 

• CSRS Part-Time Fix:  Allows CSRS workers to phase-down to part-time status at the end of their careers without reducing their final annuities/pensions (currently, part-time service occurring during the final years of CSRS service negatively impacts the high-three annuity calculation, leading to earlier full-time service being calculated as part-time). 

• FERS Redeposit:  Allows returning FERS employees, who earlier left federal service, to repay a deposit to the civil service trust fund, with interest, in order to be able to combine their past and new federal service for future annuity credit purposes.

Status of the agreement: The House is now ready to consider the FY’10 DoD authorization conference report as early as tomorrow.  Senate action is expected this month. Once both the House and Senate have passed the agreement, the bill will be sent to the President for his signature.

Background:

--Last month, Congressman Moran spearheaded a letter to the Defense Authorization conference committee signed by every member of the Washington regional delegation calling for inclusion of these provisions.

--Moran is the original author of H.R. 828 the “FERS Redeposit Act,” H.R. 958 the “FERS Sick Leave” bill, and H.R. 1198 the “Part-Time Federal Employees Act.” The provisions in the conference agreement were modeled after these pieces of legislation and included at Rep. Moran’s request.

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