OPM Director Asks Congress for Help in Pruning Back Retirement Paperwork
The president's chief civil service adviser appeared before a House subcommittee yesterday with a file cabinet drawer. It was stuffed with paperwork -- a symbol of the rising number of retirement requests from federal employees.
In 2003, the Office of Personnel Management received 90,000 retirement claims to process, and in 2004 and 2005, about 100,000 each year. The claims are filed on behalf of employees from all three branches of government.
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Syndicate/SubscribeOPM projects modest increases in retirement claims in coming years but says the government could face a surge in 2008-2010 as more baby boomers hit retirement age.
Each retirement claim requires a tedious, and sometimes lengthy, search for personnel folders and other paperwork -- "a shameful way" of doing business, Linda M. Springer , director of OPM, told the House federal workforce subcommittee.
She urged the subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.), to support a fiscal 2007 budget proposal that would provide $26.7 million for OPM to undertake a "retirement systems modernization project."
Upgraded computer systems will make it easier for OPM to speed up pension payments and to reduce the time that a retiree remains on interim retirement pay while a final annuity is being calculated.
OPM cannot begin processing retirement claims until it receives data on the departing employees from their agencies, which can take more than 30 days. For February, Springer noted yesterday, OPM had about 12,000 retirement cases on hold, pending the receipt of employment and work history information.
Once the data arrives, OPM employees pull the rest of an employee's work history from records stored in a Pennsylvania mine. The personnel files fill 144,000 drawers in 28,000 file cabinets, Springer said.
The retirement program is a significant part of OPM's entitlement spending. The agency pays more than $52 billion per year in benefits to about 2.4 million retirees and their survivors.
Porter said he was pleased that the president's budget is seeking funds to create a more efficient system for processing retirement claims. But he expressed concern that OPM also will be absorbing $13.7 million in separate program reductions under the budget.
Springer said OPM would reduce staffing by 26 positions through attrition, delay some technology improvements and cut back on contractors as it tightened its budget.
Porter called the hearing to discuss OPM's new five-year strategic plan, and most subcommittee members praised Springer's approach to reaching goals through the use of deadlines that can be monitored by Congress.
Subcommittee Democrats, including Reps. Danny K. Davis (Ill.) and Elijah E. Cummings (Md.) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.), told Springer they had concerns about some of the budget recommendations, including the president's pay proposal and plans to overhaul the civil service system.
Davis said the president's proposed 2.2 percent pay raise in 2007 "is markedly lower" than raises provided in past years. He warned that the budget's plan to use part of the raise to finance higher salaries in hard-to-fill jobs would reduce the amount of money available for the rest of the workforce.
Norton counseled Springer to move cautiously on a proposal to overhaul the civil service system, noting that "a very big experiment" has begun at the Homeland Security and Defense departments to install a performance-based pay system and make other changes.
Pointing to federal court decisions that have upheld union complaints, Norton suggested that the administration has reached too far in allowing the departments to void collective-bargaining agreements and reduce employee protections in disciplinary actions.
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Stephen Barr's e-mail address isbarrs@washpost.com.
