Working overtime

In April, federal employees could start taking home more pay for the work they do beyond a 40-hour work week.

Many civil servants logged far more than eight hours a day last year. FBI agents and other law enforcement officers have been in overdrive, IRS employees worked overtime to send out tax rebate checks in the summer and firefighters put in extra hours during the peak fire season to put out wildfires.

Federal workers accustomed to a lot of overtime, weekend and holiday work, night shifts and hazardous duty know that a cap on their pay prevents them from making more during a two-week period than the biweekly rate for GS-15, Step 10, the highest pay rate on the General Schedule pay scale.

But thanks to a change to the law that governs premium pay, that cap will change on April 27 to be the greater of either the biweekly rate for GS-15, Step 10, or the pay rate for Level V of the Executive Schedule. The new cap rule will mean a few extra bucks in the pockets of people whose pay hits the caps. In the Washington area this year, for example, the change would mean $74 more in a two-week period. The new pay cap also applies to law enforcement officers, who in the past have been covered by a separate cap.

The news gets even better for some employees. Agencies have always been able to waive the biweekly cap for employees-except law enforcement officers-who responded to emergencies that threaten life or property. Now they can waive the cap for law enforcement officers as well as any employee "who receives premium pay to perform work critical to the mission of the agency." It's up to agency heads to decide what kinds of work are critical.

For employees whose agencies take advantage of the waiver, an annual limit on pay will still apply. But as with the biweekly cap, the annual cap will now be the greater of GS-15 Step 10 or Level V of the Executive Schedule. Using the Washington area example again, the change could be worth nearly $2,000 in pay.

The premium pay changes were included in the 2002 Defense Authorization Act. The Office of Personnel Management will issue regulations to implement the changes by April 27.

The Long Good Buyout

If you won the lottery, would you take the money all at once or in installments?

What if you got a buyout?

It used to be that Defense Department employees could only take a lump-sum buyout of up to $25,000 when offered one by the department. Now employees can take their buyouts in two payments or in biweekly installments.

In a Jan. 4 memorandum, J.L. Schrader, acting deputy assistant secretary of Defense for civilian personnel policy, announced the new payout rules.

"For financial planning purposes, it may be advantageous for some employees to request the buyout by installment," Schrader explained.

The three buyout options are now:

• A lump-sum payment upon retirement.
• A two-part installment plan, with half of the buyout six months after retirement and the other half six months later.
• A biweekly installment plan in which the buyout would be divided up among equal biweekly payments selected by the employee. Under this option, payments can't be made more than one year after the date of retirement.