Norton and Davis Bill to Aid Federal Employees Forced to Work Beyond Retirement Age
NORTON AND DAVIS BILL TO AID FEDERAL EMPLOYEES FORCED TO WORK BEYOND RETIREMENT AGE
Washington, DCCongresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today introduced the District of Columbia Court, Offender Supervision, Parole and Public Defender Employees Equity Act of 2005, a bill designed to correct a "shameful example of unequal treatment" affecting retirement eligibility and benefit losses suffered by employees of three local court entities under federal control. The bill, cosponsored with Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA), would restore to employees of the D.C. Courts, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA), and the D.C. Public Defender Service (PDS) retirement credit that they earned but then lost when the federal government took over D.C. Court functions and non-judicial employees became federal employees. Congresswoman Norton, who has been working to correct this problem since the Revitalization Act was passed, said, "Seldom have I seen so clear an unintended injustice with such large consequences. After many months of meetings with my staff and others resulting in offers and concessions, H. Theodore Newland Jr., Strategic Human Resources and Retirement Policy Advisor of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), simply shut down discussions and refused to give a reason. The federal government and OPM had nothing to lose and gained nothing by robbing federal employees of years of credit toward retirement that they have earned in public service."
Federal jurisdiction began in 1997 with congressional enactment of the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act, unintentionally uprooting the years of "creditable service" of the former D.C. employees. Astonishingly, if an employee is 60 years old today and has worked, for example, 20 years (i.e. since 1985) for the D.C. Courts, under this bill, like most employees in the federal government and all other workers in the United States, he would be eligible for federal retirement today, but at present, he will have to work another twelve years! The Norton-Davis bill will amend the law to require that years of service by these employees before the 1997 transfer would count towards their overall federal retirement eligibility as creditable service. (Employees at the Public Defender Service were transferred in 1998, so their service would be counted prior to that year.) The amount of the annuity they would be entitled to under the Federal Employee Retirement Service began only from the date of their transfer. The bill includes a provision to prevent "double dipping" by employees still entitled to their D.C. retirement benefits.
"This is a minimalist provision that costs the United States government nothing, but costs these federal employees precious years of their lives they have given to public service but lost because the jurisdiction of their agency was transferred from one government entity to another government entity. These employees are doing the same jobs and giving the same service but are being held prisoner of a patently unjust retirement system. We are going to ask the Administration and OPM at a higher level to endorse this Davis-Norton technical correction bill to put this unequal treatment behind us," Norton said.
http://www.norton.house.gov/issues2.cfm?id=11243