Q: How do you cure a unique-to-government ailment that costs the taxpayers an estimated $68 million per year?
A: You urge workers to eat right, get plenty of sleep, floss before bedtime and, perhaps most importantly, you give them a cash incentive not to call in sick when they really are going to get a pedicure, want to catch an afternoon matinee (movie!) or they have a Friday tee-time.
Legislation that would do just that, reward workers for using sick leave only when actually sick, has been introduced in the House. It is an improved version of a bill the House cleared easily last year. It didn't become law because the Senate - half of whose members were running for President - was preoccupied with campaigning and with not approving federal agency budgets.
The new bill, by Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and Frank Wolf (R-Va.) would give equal treatment in the sick leave department to workers under both the older CSRS retirement system and the FERS program that replaced it.
Currently CSRS workers can, when they are otherwise eligible to retire, credit their unused sick leave toward retirement. An employee with a year of unused sick leave (many have more time than that) could boost his or her lifetime, indexed to inflation annuity by about 2 percent.
That sick leave credit is not available to FERS employees.
But that would change under the Moran-Wolf bill. Federal unions love it and believe it will sail through the House and Senate.
Backers of the bill say it isn't so much a new perk for FERS employees, as a way to save money. Government studies indicate that heavy sick leave use in the last year of employment (I call it "FERS Flu") costs the taxpayers $68 million a year. How they arrived at that figure is one of the Washington mysteries-of-numbers. Anyhow, they say it's a lot. And that it would be cheaper to give workers slightly larger pensions spread over decades if they could stop the FERS Flu.
Arguments over what sick leave is and isn't have been going on since the FERS program replaced CSRS for new hires. (More on that by clicking here.)
Some people say sick leave is for when you are sick. Period.
Benefits expert Tammy Flanagan views it as the government version of a Long Term Disability insurance policy.
Some feds under the FERS system save up their sick leave and use it for elective pre-retirement surgery. Others see it as a use-it-or-lose it benefit. "Why should I give back the government something I earned, just because I didn't take it?" is the way one IRS employee put it.
Several readers have done the math and say, any way you crunch the numbers, it is more cost-effective to use up your leave than to apply it to service time for a slightly larger annuity.
Given the easy time a similar sick-leave credit bill had in the House last year, this year's has a good shot of becoming law. To read it for yourself, click here.
New Voice In Town
Deej Lundgren, communications director for the Senior Executives Association is one of the area's newest fathers. With the assistance of wife Betsy, they have a 7 pound (19 inch) son. No word on the name, but Michael certainly has a nice ring to it.
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Nearly Useless Factoid
NASA provides today's NUF: "How Big is the Milky Way? Imagine that our entire Solar System were the size of a quarter. The Sun is now a microscopic speck of dust, as are its nine planets, whose orbits are represented by the flat disc of the coin. How far away is the nearest star to our sun? In our model, Proxima Centauri (and any planets that might be around it) would be another quarter, two soccer fields away." Now imagine me with two quarters to spare.
(Editor's Note: Happy Birthday Mike! It's my turn to buy the coffee. sk)
To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com