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PHIL PIEMONTE, MANAGING EDITOR • E-MAIL: [email protected]
FEDERAL
EMPLOYEES
NEWS DIGEST
Retiree advocates
decry small COLA FEDERAL RETIREES WILL RECEIVE a mere
1.7 percent cost-of-living increase in their
pensions, the government announced last
week—a scant raise that disappointed
What’s Inside44
Salary Council calls for new localities... 2
Congress addresses GSA leave report.... 3
Informed Investor........................ 6
Federal Benefits Q&A.................... 7
retirees, federal employees’ unions and
many pension policy experts alike.
The COLA, which applies to both federal
civilian annuities and Social Security benefits, is based on a measure of inflation
calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics called the Consumer Price Index for
Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers,
or CPI-W.
Like several other federal employee
unions, the American Federation of Government Employees assailed the COLA as
insufficient—and inaccurate. Instead of a
1.7 percent rise, the union maintains that
a much more substantial rise would be
more representative of the actual inflationary pressure weighing on seniors’ limited
funds.
“More than 2.5 million federal retirees
will receive a 1.7 percent increase in their
retirement checks in January due to the annual cost-of-living adjustment, while retirees under the newer Federal Employees Retirement System will see the same increase
in their Social Security checks,” AFGE president J. David Cox said in a statement. “This
is the third consecutive year, and the fifth
time in six years, that the increase will be
less than 2 percentage points.”
“This is unfortunate,” he said, “especially since the costs for items that most
seniors spend their money on—health care
and groceries—are rising faster than the
overall inflation rate as measured by the
government. For instance, premiums for retirees and current employees in the federal
health insurance program will rise 3.8 percent next year.”
“While any increase is better than no increase, the fact of the matter is that for
millions of seniors, retirees and federal
employees, these annual increases will be
gone before most even receive them,” he
said.
The retiree advocacy group National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association also weighed in against what it sees
as an insufficient COLA. “[Despite] the partial relief this 1.7 percent COLA will provide, the announcement
is a reminder that our method for calculating the increasing cost of goods and servic-
INSIGHT
B Y
M I K E
C A U S E Y
Come on,
get happy
IN THE LATE 1920s, singer and
bandleader Ted Lewis became famous in
a movie (one of the first
talkies) where he introduced a song called “Is
Everybody Happy?” It
was a great hit and
became his trademark
for the next 30 years.
Later, David Hasselhoff of Baywatch
fame made an album which included
the song.
Fast forward to the 21st Century, a
time when we measure, quantify, calculate and analyze things. All the time.
So how about the question of job
satisfaction, which is a critical form of
happiness?
According to recent survey analyses
by the government, the Partnership for
Public Service and other good-government groups, feds have rarely been less
happy with their work, their bosses and
their careers.
The most recent survey by the
Partnership concluded that in 2013 feds
were less satisfied with their jobs, i.e.,
less happy than in 2012. And in 2012
they were less satisfied than the year
before. You get the picture.
All of the above, the misery of feds,
makes some people wonder if it can get
any worse. How low can it go?
And some people ask the question:
Is this really true? Or are people saying
it because they think it is the desired
answer? Or maybe they are not all that
unhappy, but just want to fire a shot
across the bow to let politicians know
they are upset about shutdowns, furloughs and peanut pay raises.
Which prompted a friend (we were
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es is out of sync with the reality faced by
millions of federal annuitants, Social Security recipients and military retirees, who
spend more than twice as much on medical care than the population measured
by the current CPI-W formula,” Joseph A.
Beaudoin, president of NARFE, said in the
group’s COLA statement.
BETTER MEASURES
“There’s a very strange thing about the
CPI-W, as far as using it for retirees is concerned,” Monique Morrissey, an economist
and retirement security expert with the
Economic Policy Institute, told FEND. “It’s
based on the spending of working age
people.”
The use of CPI-W to calculate COLAs is
really an historic artifact, Morrissey said.
“When the government began adjusting
benefits for inflation, the CPI-W was basically what was available,” Morrissey said.
“There are better measures now, especially
with respect to retirees, their spending
and how it is affected by inflation.”
“The CPI-U—which is technically for
urban wage-earners—is actually the most
commonly cited and used index for other
[related measurements], and considered
more accurate, now,” she told FEND. “It’s
the overall standard that is used.”
But it’s another measure called the
CPI-E that some unions, including AFGE,
are pressing to be applied instead of the
CPI-W.
“The CPI-E is based on the CPI-U and
the whole population, including retirees,”
Morrissey told FEND. “It is a better measure.”
Morrissey also explained why federal
unions and other retiree advocates have
been so vehement in rejecting numerous
proposals to switch COLA indexing away
from the CPI-W to the so-called “chained
CPI.”
“Contrary to popular belief, all of the
existing indexes and measures—including the CPI-W, which is used, already take
into account some substitutions people
make when some items’ prices rise and
fall,” she said. “That already is happen-
ing. The problem with the ‘chained CPI,’ as
it is proposed, is that it would do significantly more of this than at present, and
across different categories of spending. In
any case, the problem with this is that, in
fact, it has a tendency to lower the costof-living adjustment for retirees.”
Morrissey explained that the net effect
of this is an indexed rise of approximately
0.3 percent less per year—which over a
long retirement makes for a very large
reduction in COLAs for federal and other
retirees.
POLITICIZATION MIGHT BE GOOD
“Politicization of the issue, in my view,
can be a good thing,” Morrissey told
FEND. “That’s because the CPI that’s used
has been sold as just a ‘technical fix,’ but
if you use an inaccurate one, it’s not.”
“It always has been political. Even if
you believe that chained CPI is an improvement, to implement that fix without
a lot of others that are needed actually
shows bias. As I said, the CPI-W doesn’t
look at seniors—so focusing on the one
fix that tends to cut benefits shows that
there has always been a political element.”
“I and many others wouldn’t be opposed to ‘chaining’ the CPI, if it accurately included more lower income and older
people [and their spending behaviors],”
Morrissey added.
ANOTHER VIEW
Olivia Mitchell, a professor of business
economics at the Wharton School of Business, is an advocate—with some stipulations—of using the chained CPI.
“From a theoretical point of view, you’d
like to get the best idea of how people’s
consumption and expenditures are changing over time,” Mitchell told FEND. “This
is something that changes over time—
we’re not buying horse-drawn buggies and
buggy whips anymore, and so their pricing is irrelevant to us now. You have to
always change your consumption bundle,
and make it representative.”
“In general, I’m a supporter of using
the CPI with a chained approach,” she
said. “It is a very complex issue. As long
as we are using the CPI-W for Social Security, though—that is the way we ought to
go for all of these retirement pensions.”
But Morrissey noted that the CPI-E and
some other measures are better because
they take into account the higher proportion of income retirees spend on necessities in general, and health care in particular, making the measures more accurate
in depicting inflationary pressures hitting
older Americans year-over-year.
Or as NARFE’s Beaudoin put it, “We need
a cost-of-living formula that doesn’t force
these Americans to take one step forward,
then two steps back.”
Federal Salary
Council reiterates
call for new pay
localities
THE FEDERAL SALARY COUNCIL —a
group of union representatives and pay
experts who examine salary statistics collected by the federal government—in a
report released this month called on the
administration to implement the panel’s
earlier recommendation to create 12 new
pay localities.
The President’s Pay Agent, an advisory group composed of three top officials—the secretary of labor and the
directors of the Office of Management
and Budget and the Office of Personnel
Management—in May 2013 tentatively
approved creation of the new localities.
But the White House has not yet acted
on the recommendation and the localities have yet to be established.
The 12 metro areas where the new
localities would be created include
Albany, N.Y.; Albuquerque, N.M.; Austin,
Texas; Charlotte, N.C.; Colorado Springs,
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Co.; Davenport, Iowa; Harrisburg, Pa.;
Laredo, Texas; Las Vegas, Nev.; Palm Bay,
Fla.; St. Louis, Mo.; and Tucson, Ariz.
“While the Pay Agent tentatively
approved establishment of the 12 new
locality pay areas, it did not complete
the needed regulations, presumably due
to the President’s alternative pay plans
for 2014 and 2015, which hold locality pay percentages at 2013 levels,” the
council’s report stated.
The council voted to advise the Pay
Agent to publish the necessary regulation
to implement the new locality pay areas,
and recommended the creation of one
more locality, Kansas City, bringing the
total to 13.
The purpose of locality pay is to close
some of the gap between the public
and private-sector pay. According to the
council’s most recent analysis, taking
into account existing locality pay rates,
federal employees overall still currently
earn 35.18 percent less than private-sec-
tor employees performing similar work.
The American Federation of Government
Employees urged the administration to
move on creating the new localities.
“Here we are in October 2014 and the
administration is still being coy, saying
it cannot move forward just yet,” said
AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr.,
who accused the White House of fearing
the backlash that could result from the
pay increase.
“They are scared to find out what
might happen if they actually do something positive for federal employees,
worried that anti-government extremists
will somehow hurt them,” Cox charged.
“It is time for this administration to
conquer its ridiculous fears and do the
right thing.”
“The administration cannot say with a
straight face that they’re still working on
the regulations,” Cox said. “We know that
they were written long ago. The delay is
unconscionable. The 12 new localities
need to be created right away.”
Lawmakers
zero in on paid
administrative
leave
NUMBER OF LAWMAKERS have
latched onto findings contained in a
new Government Accountability Office
report which they say illustrate agencies’ profligate use of paid administrative leave.
GAO found, for example, that the
federal government paid an estimated
$31 million over a three-year period to
263 employees who charged between
one and three years of paid administrative leave.
“Given the GAO’s report showing
the incredible amount of money being
spent on leave, Congress must know
how it is possible that agencies’ current processes result in gross overuse
A
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of paid administrative leave, wasting
taxpayer funds,” said House Oversight
and Government Reform Committee
Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).
Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley
(R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, sent letters to 17
agencies cited in the report to demand
more information about their use of
paid administrative leave.
Agency officials told GAO that personnel matters—such as investigations into alleged misconduct—was the
most common reason those employees
received such large amounts of paid
administrative leave.
Most employees charged far less
than the most extreme example. About
$858 million of the $3.1 billion in
paid administrative leave charged by
employees from fiscal 2011 through
fiscal 2013 went to 944,441 employees
who charged two to five days of such
leave. Another $855 million went to
385,970 employees who took six to 10
days. Over the three years, about 97
percent of employees charged 20 days
or less, according to the GAO report.
“Of the $3.1 billion in estimated
salary costs, 77 percent of salary cost
estimates are associated with federal employees who charged 20 days
or less of paid administrative leave,”
the report stated. “While 3 percent of
federal employees charged between 1
month and 3 years of paid administrative leave across three fiscal years, that
same amount of paid administrative
leave accounted for 23 percent of the
estimated salary cost of paid administrative leave.”
Agencies have authority to grant
paid administrative leave and to set
policies governing its use. To get a
better look at those policies, GAO
reviewed five agencies for the report—
Departments of Defense, Interior and
Veterans Affairs, the General Services
Administration and the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID).
While the agencies’ policies and
guidance listed several common activities for granting paid administrative
leave—such as voting and blood donations—there were variations depending
on agency mission and how leave was
categorized in agency policy, GAO said.
USAID and DOD officials told GAO
that they grant paid administrative
leave for rest and recuperation to
employees serving six months or more
in Afghanistan, for example. Among
employees who received large amounts
of paid administrative leave at the five
agencies, the most common reasons
for the leave were personnel matters
such as investigations into alleged misconduct or criminal actions, physical
fitness-related activities, and periods
of rest and recuperation for employees
working in overseas locations.
GAO recommended that the Office
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Informed Investor
CREATE AN ONLINE SOCIAL SECURITY ACCOUNT
THE SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
(SSA) announced last month that it will
resume mailing benefit statements every
five years to most working individuals.
At the same time, the SSA encourages
all working individuals to create personalized Social Security accounts online
at www.socialsecurity.gov. Those with
online SSA accounts are able to access
and check their benefit information at
any time.
In September 2014, SSA started
mailing statements to workers aged
25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55 and 60 and
who have not registered for a “My
Social Security” online account. These
statements are due to arrive in the mail
about three months before a worker’s
birthday. After age 60, individuals will
receive a statement every year. SSA
expects to send nearly 48 million statements out annually.
SSA began mailing annual estimated
benefit statements to workers age 25
and older starting in 1999. The paper
statements became an important planning tool that provided individuals with
details about future retirement income.
Most importantly, the statements served
as a reminder for all individual to save
more for their retirement.
In mid-2011, SSA stopped mailing
statements as a cost-saving measure and
switched to online digital delivery. While
the switch saved the federal government
$20 million annually in printing and
postage, it proved to be unpopular. That
is why SSA resumed mailing out statements starting in September to individuals who had not set up online accounts.
In spite of the fact that SSA has
resumed mailing statements to those who
have not established online accounts,
SSA encourages all individuals to create
online accounts. The following table is a
sample benefits statement.
In addition to showing what an individual’s benefits and their family’s ben-
YOU HAVE EARNED ENOUGH CREDITS TO QUALIFY FOR BENEFITS. AT YOUR CURRENT
EARNINGS RATE, IF YOU STOP WORKING AND START RECEIVING BENEFITS
Retirement
At age 62, your payment would be about
$940 a month
If you continue working until your full retirement age (67 years), your payment
$1,343 a month
would be about
At age 70 your payment would be
$1,665 a month
Disability
You have earned enough credits to qualify for benefits. If you become disabled
$1,248 a month
right now, your payment would be about
Family
If you get retirement or disability benefits, your spouse and children also may qualify for benefits.
You have earned enough credits for your family to receive survivors’ benefits. If you die this year,
certain members of your family may qualify for the following benefits:
Survivors
Your child
$972 a month
Your spouse who is caring for your child
$972 a month
Your spouse, if benefits start at full retirement age
$1,343 a month
Total family benefits cannot be more than
$2,386 a month
Your spouse or minor child may be eligible for a special one-time death benefit of $255.
efits will be, the statement shows the
individual’s earnings history during his
or her working years. The earnings history is obtained from the individual’s
W2 statement sent to the SSA by his
or her employer. It is from the earnings
information that the SSA is able to generate the individual’s monthly benefits
information.
Individuals are highly encouraged to
check their Social Security statements for
errors. In particular, they should check
their earnings history for accuracy, and
should contact the SSA to correct any
errors in their earnings information.
Any person age 18 and older can create an online account by providing a
Social Security number, mailing address
and a valid email address. In addition, in
order to protect privacy, individuals must
answer questions that only they are likely
to know and that match the information
on file will the SSA and on one’s credit
report.
For example, some of the questions
asked involve: (1) the names of former employers, and (2) former mailing
addresses. These types of questions are
called “out of the wallet” questions,
meaning that if an individual lost their
wallet containing credit cards and a
V i s i t u s o n t h e I n t e r n e t a t w w w. F e d e r a l S o u p . c o m
Social Security number, a fraudster would
most likely not be able to answer these
questions.
Note that if an individual has a security freeze, a fraud alert, or both on their
Experian credit statement, they will not
be able to create a “My Social Security”
account online. The recent credit card
breach at Home Depot and the debit
card breach at Target Co. has resulted in
security freezes and fraud alerts on an
individuals’ Experian credit accounts. The
freeze and fraud alert must be removed
before an online SSA account can be
set up.
The alternative to creating a personalized SSA account online without removing the security freeze is to visit a local
Social Security office and ask to set up an
SSA account in person.
Edward A. Zurndorfer is a Certified
Financial Planner and Enrolled Agent
in Silver Spring, MD. He is also a
registered representative with FSC
Securities Corporation, branch address: 833 Bromley
St. - Suite A, Silver Spring, MD 20902. Phone:
(301) 681-1652. Securities offered through FSC
Securities Corporation, member FINRA/SIPC. EZ
Accounting and Financial Services and FSC are independent companies.
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7
Federal Benefits
Q&A
QUESTION: “I am a Civil Service
Retirement System retiree. My husband is a non-federal retiree who is
currently receiving Social Security
benefits. If he predeceases me, do I
get survivor benefits from his Social
Security?”
ANSWER: As a CSRS annuitant, you
are subject to the Social Security’s
Government Pension Offset (GPO)
which reduces—in most cases, eliminates—any type of spousal or former
spousal Social Security benefit or
widow/widower benefit.
Readers are encouraged to ask questions
related to general employee benefits—such as
CSRS, FERS, the Thrift Savings Plan, tax and
estate planning, insurance, Social Security and
Medicare—at the “Federal Benefits Q&A” at
www.FederalSoup.com.
7 PAGE
production line from as many as four
to one and authorizes a 400 percent
increase in the maximum line speed per
inspector from 35 birds per minute to
140 birds per minute.”
The union said the sole federal
inspector will need to examine about
2.3 carcasses per second.
“The USDA’s new inspection process
flies in the face of reality and will allow
potentially contaminated and diseased
poultry to be sold to American consumers,” said AFGE National President J.
David Cox Sr.
AFGE said that under the new rule,
USDA inspectors examine carcasses
only after they have been eviscerated,
sorted, trimmed and reprocessed by
employees.
“The new inspection system will
impair the ability of federal inspectors
to detect unwholesome and adulterated
chickens because they will no longer
be presented with the viscera of each
carcass,” the union said. Moreover,
AFGE said, the viscera—or giblets—
will receive an official USDA inspection
legend even though they have not been
inspected for wholesomeness by a federal inspector.
The union filed the lawsuit Oct. 20 in
the U.S. District Court for the District
of Columbia.
4
of Personnel Management “develop
agency and payroll provider guidance
regarding the recording and reporting
of paid administrative leave.” OPM
agreed to update its guidance on the
matter.
To see more, go to: www.gao.gov/
products/GAO-15-79.
Lawsuit targets
new USDA poultry
inspection rules
THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF
GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES last week
sued the Department of Agriculture in
an effort to block implementation of
a new poultry inspection system that
replaces most federal inspectors with
processing plant employees.
The lawsuit charges that the system,
which went into effect Oct. 20, will
hinder federal inspection of chicken
and turkey carcasses, and could result
in tainted poultry making its way to
consumers.
Under new inspection rules, poultry
processors—rather than federal inspectors—assume primary responsibility for
carcass inspection. According to AFGE,
“the new rule simultaneously reduces
the number of federal inspectors on the
Thrift Savings Plan Share Prices
Funds
Oct. 22
G Fund
F Fund
C Fund
S Fund
I Fund
Lifecycle Funds
L Income
L 2020
L 2030
L 2040
L 2050
14.5572
16.7131
25.3167
33.6333
24.1746
17.2005
22.2553
23.9345
25.3170
14.3007
One Month Ago
One Year Ago
14.5297
16.4514
26.1594
34.7369
25.8296
14.2268
15.8875
22.5645
32.2562
25.2659
17.2978
22.7028
24.5688
26.0974
14.8166
16.6269
21.3046
22.8142
24.0660
13.5850
Register free to get rates of return and other TSP info at: www.FederalSoup.com/pages/resources/thrift-savings-plan.aspx
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SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
1
newspaper reporters at the same paper
back in the day) to remember some
other surveys. We loved them back
then. It gave us something to write
about. Somebody else had done most
of the work, and it was credentialed.
And it was bad news. Which is good in
the news business.
He remembered, for instance, that in
the 1960 election in Virginia, Richard
Nixon won the popular vote and the
state’s 12 electoral votes. Nixon got
404,521, or 52.44 percent of the
popular vote. JFK got 362,327 votes,
or 46.9 percent of the Old Dominion’s
vote. Virginia then, as now, was chock
full of federal workers, military personnel and retirees from the civilian and
military branches.
Kennedy barely squeaked by nationally. He was elected with just over 303
electoral votes and got 49.72 percent
of the popular vote.
Yet in 1962, following the Cuban
Missile Crises, JFK was given—according to every poll—a record-high
approval rating by the public. In fact,
70.1 percent of respondents said he
was doing an excellent job.
At the peak of his approval rating, somebody took another survey of
Virginia voters. In it, more than 60
percent of respondents said they had
voted for him, even though the official
total was less than 47 percent. So what
happened?
Was the election rigged? Was he
cheated out of Virginia’s 12 electoral
votes? Or were people having second
thoughts? Did many who actually voted
for Nixon WISH they had voted for
Kennedy? Did they, retroactively and
mentally, change their votes?
My friend recalled another survey
which we ran with and loved. This one
was about how people got most of
their news. TV was tops, then newspapers. But a lot said their primary
source of information was magazines.
The survey asked which ones they read
on a regular basis.
According to recent
survey analyses by
the government, the
Partnership for Public
Service and other
good-government
groups, feds have
rarely been less happy
with their work, their
bosses and their
careers.
The top 10 magazines—the ones
people said they read weekly or
monthly (according to the publication
cycles)—included three that had not
been printed in several years. They had
gone out of business. One was Collier’s,
which folded in 1957. But of the top
10 sources of news and information
indicated by respondents, three did
not exist.
So what does that say about surveys? And the people who take them?
And those who report on these surveys,
get reaction and make a living doing
it?
I don’t know about you, but I’ve
never been happier. But how about
you? Are you nervous in the civil
service? Are things worse, and going
downhill? Is there light at the end
of the tunnel and if so, is that your
destination when all that is good will
be revealed? Or is that light a train
speeding toward you at 70 mph to
squash you?
We should have the definitive answer
to the morale question soon. I understand next month’s issue of Collier’s
will have a full report. Personally, I
can’t wait.
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