December
9, 2020
The Honorable James Lankford
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
The Honorable Krysten Sinema
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senators Lankford and Sinema:
I am writing on behalf of the more than 29,000
members of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association to offer our strong
support for S. 4977, the "Retirement Annuity Supplement Clarity Act.” This important legislation will address OPM’s
four-year assault on the retirement security of thousands of former federal law
enforcement officers, firefighters, air traffic controllers, and other federal
retirees who are recipients of the Federal Employees’ Retirement System (FERS)
Retirement Annuity Supplement (RAS).Passage of S. 4977 is of the highest priority to our organization, and
we are grateful for your leadership and commitment to this important issue.
Since 2016, OPM has carried out an extralegal
and unconscionable assault on those federal retirees whose FERS benefits were
divisible between the retiree and his or her former spouse in cases of divorce,
annulment, or legal separation. For the
first 30 years of the FERS statute, OPM interpreted the requirement to divide
retirement benefits between a retiree and a former spouse under a state court
order as excluding the RAS unless the RAS was expressly cited in the
plain text of the order. That all
changed in July 2016 when OPM secretly implemented a fundamental
reinterpretation of the law and began applying the state court-ordered share to
both the basic annuity and the RAS even where the order was silent on the
RAS. Over the past four years, OPM has
applied its reinterpretation retroactively and with little to no regard for the
financial harm it has inflicted on retirees.It has created individual retiree debts due to the federal government of
as much as $30,000—debts for which OPM has sought repayment in the form of both
retroactive and prospective assessments from annuitants’ retirement
benefits.
OPM’s 2016 policy change was implemented
without notification to impacted retirees, the general public, or the Congress,
and without regard for the court-ordered and previously-litigated provisions of
the specific divorce settlements of the affected retirees. Instead, retirees and their former spouses
only learned of OPM’s actions when their annuity payments changed, in some
cases years after the parties had divorced and a state court had ordered a
former spouse’s marital share. In fact,
it is not clear that OPM has ever made publicly available any guidance or
instructions to even current employees planning for retirement that their
benefits are subject to reduction under this revised policy. Even the OPM Office of Inspector General and
the Merit Systems Protection Board have found that the agency acted improperly
in this matter, noting that OPM’s actions constituted a reinterpretation of current
law that was outside of the agency’s authority and was done absent a specific
grant of authority from Congress.
To this day little is known about how or why
OPM determined to launch its sneak attack on federal retirees, but we do know
that the agency’s reinterpretation of law has cost our members dearly. That is why we are proud to support this
important legislation. S. 4977 will
clarify current law on the standards for dividing a RAS between a retiree and a
former spouse, put an immediate stop to OPM’s collection efforts against
retirees, and require the agency to repay every dollar it has improperly
seized. Most importantly, S. 4977 will
help to restore the sense of financial security in retirement that OPM has
sought to strip away over the past four years through its actions.
On behalf of the membership of the Federal Law
Enforcement Officers Association, thank you again for your leadership on this
important matter. We look forward to
continuing to work with you both to see it swiftly enacted into law.
Sincerely,
Larry Cosme
National
President