Federal retirement COLA news and other reports

Govexec.com reports on the federal annuitant cola of living adjustment announcement made today.

The 2.8 percent increase applies to retirees under the Civil Service Retirement System. Those under the Federal Employees Retirement System will receive 2 percent. FERS employees only receive the full percentage increase if it is less than 2 percent. If the change is 2 percent to 3 percent, FERS retirees get 2 percent. And if the increase is 3 percent or higher, FERS retirees receive 1 percentage point less than the full increase.

The new COLAs will take effect starting with federal retirees’ December 2018 benefits.

Federal News Radio reports that OMB Deputy Director Margaret Weichert is taking on her new part time job as OPM acting director with gusto. Govexec.com adds that

Weichert said OPM is moving forward on its reorganization plan, and has already taken steps on the administration's proposal to consolidate background checks within the Defense Department and to move many of OPM's transactional functions to the General Services Administration. She pledged to push forward the plan to fold what remains of OPM into the Executive Office of the President in the White House, a key point of tension between the administration and Pon [according to Govexec.com]

“Independence [of OPM] if it’s not delivering the actual mission, isn’t of the primary concern,” Weichert said, adding that there is “no better place” for the strategic direction of federal personnel issues than the White House. She explained that Trump asked her to serve as acting director in part because she has “a lot of experience in delivering complex, large organizational change.”  

That reorganization plan also would move the FEHBP and other federal benefit operations to GSA.

The FEHBlog was taken by this Weichert observation from the Federal News Radio article:

Though Weichert said she and OPM were celebrating and acknowledging the 40th anniversary of the civil service reform law, today’s federal workforce has outgrown the statutes and provisions that informed the 1978 act. * * *

“Although incredibly well-intended, all of the original components of Title 5 and updates to it since then were well-intentioned, but layers and years of statute and added regulation have made it very complex and very cumbersome to operate nimbly and agilely in the 21st century,” Weichert said.

Amen to that. In the FEHBlog's view, the same problem afflicts the FEHBP even though the nearly sixty year old original law was the model of simplicity.