House Civil Service Subcommittee Chairman John Mica, R-Fla., and ranking member Elijah Cummings, D-Md., have urged Congressional budget and spending leaders to ensure that federal employees are allowed a retirement open season this year.
In a letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La., and Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, Mica and Cummings expressed opposition to the recommendation in President Clinton's 1999 budget to repeal the 1998 open season. The open season would permit federal employees currently enrolled in the Civil Service Retirement System to switch to the Federal Employees Retirement System.
"Now that federal employees have had greater opportunities to understand the improved flexibility and portability of the FERS benefit, we have encountered strengthened interest in a second open season," Mica and Cummings wrote in the letter, which was also signed by eight subcommittee members.
In October, a last-minute addition to the Treasury-Postal appropriations bill provided for an open season from July 1 to Oct. 31 of this year. Later that month, Clinton used his line-item veto power to cancel the provision. In response, the National Treasury Employees Union filed suit, challenging the constitutionality of the line-item veto law.
Early this year, Clinton renounced his veto of the measure as part of an agreement with NTEU to settle the suit.
"This sequence of events has already injected an unnecessary element of disruption and confusion in preparing for the open season," Mica and Cummings said in their letter.
The letter also said the executive branch should avoid "chaos" by beginning to prepare for the open season immediately. "Employees will need time to evaluate their retirement options and make an informed decision which, after all, will carry life-long consequences," the letter said.
An Office of Personnel Management official said the agency will be ready if necessary. "We've had ten years or so of experience administering changes" to the retirement system, the official said. "Between that experience and employees' increased knowledge about FERS, we are in a position to administer an open season."
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