Three pieces of legislation have been introduced in the House. The topics include FERS participants, on-duty beath benefits, and temporary service.
In this week’s roundup of recent news pertaining the federal workforce, we look at three pieces of recently introduced legislation. First, we’ll look at a bill that was reintroduced and revolves around removing limitations to temporary service that can be included in one’s FERS retirement calculation. The next bills were introduced for the first time in 2023. If passed, one would add non-federal workers to FERS and the TSP and the second would increase the on-duty death benefit for civilian feds by a multiple of 10.
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Temporary Service
Under the current rules, feds can only make deposits for temporary service if that service was conducted in 1988 or earlier. These deposits for “non-contributory service,” which entails mostly temporary and seasonal positions, usually equate to about 1.3% of a fed’s salary, plus some interest. The Federal Retirement Fairness Act, which was first brought forth to Congress in 2021, was just reintroduced by the Democrat Representative from Washington State, Derek Kilmer. If enacted, the law would remove the 1989 restriction, meaning all temporary service from 1989 on would be eligible for a deposit that could not only reduce the time needed for a federal worker to qualify for retirement, but also increase the income from their pension.
TSP and FERS Coverage for Non-Feds
The Parity for Tribal Educators Act was introduced by a Democrat representing New Mexico in the House, Gabe Vasquez. The legislation would add about 10,000 non-federal employees to both FERS and the TSP. This would be first time that any non-federal workers were covered by either. While there are tribal schools run by the federal government where employees are already contributing to FERS and the TSP, the bill would include a large swath of “tribally controlled schools,” allowing the teachers at these facilities to contribute to the Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS) and the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). The Bureau of Indian Affairs, a subagency of the DOI, would provide the government’s portion of FERS for the teachers and also the agency match for their TSP contributions. A spokesperson for the TSP’s governing body commented on the bill, saying the board has “no objections” to the bill.
Increased Death Benefit
The last piece of recently proposed legislation that we’ll covering today is truly bipartisan, being introduced by Gerry Connolly, a Democrat representative from Virginia, Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican representative from Pennsylvania, and Krysten Sinema, an Independent Senator of Arizona. The Honoring Civil Servants Killed in the Line of Duty Act would increase the current on-duty death benefit tenfold, going from $10,000 to $100,000. Note that the death benefit for military and foreign service personnel is already closer to the $100k amount. This bill would increase the death benefit for civilian feds to bring it more in-line with the comparable benefit for those in the military. This death benefit is also for government workers who pass away while specifically performing federal service, not just within the timeframe that they were employed by a federal agency. The amount of the on-duty death benefit has not change since 1997, meaning inflation has strongly diminished the value of this lump-sum payout. The bill would also multiply the current payment to cover funeral costs by 10, too – going from $800 to $8000.
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