Norton Bill to Restore Lost Retirement Years Moves to House Floor (3/18/09)

Norton Bill to Restore Lost Retirement Years Moves to House Floor

March 18, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A bill by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) to restore retirement time loss by employees when their District agencies were transferred to federal jurisdiction was reported to the floor today by the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. The Congresswoman's bill corrects an oversight that short-changed hundreds of employees who worked for the District of Columbia Courts, the Pretrial Services Agency, the Department of Corrections, and Adult Probation and Parole Services before those agencies were transferred to federal authority by the 1997 Balanced Budget Reconciliation Act. To strengthen chances of passage, the Congresswoman has now gotten her bill included in a larger package to correct, "one of the clearest injustices, however unintended, to federal employees."

The Congresswoman previously introduced the "District of Columbia Court, Offender Supervision, Parole, and Public Defender Employees Equity Act" to correct the loss of time credited for public service, affecting hundreds of workers who became federal employees in 1997 when their District agencies became federal agencies. "These employees lost precious time towards their retirement years that were accumulated when they were D.C. employees through a mistake of the government," Norton said. "If this error had been corrected 10 years ago, many of these employees would now be retired instead of starting all over again to build up service time. This is an intolerable mistake, especially for the federal government to allow it to go on for so long." Norton's provision will restore credit for their years worked in the agency prior to the transfer.

Norton has introduced this bill every session to correct the oversight. Many employees lost "creditable service" years towards their retirement, accumulated when they were D.C. employees, because some of the years they worked in those agencies prior to the transfers were not credited. Norton's bill allows time served by these employees before 1997 to count towards their overall retirement eligibility. No problem of "double-dipping" is involved because the employees are still entitled to their D.C. retirement benefits and the Norton bill does not count the pre-1997 years spent as D.C. government employees towards the amount of federal retirement annuity an employees is eligible to receive.