Two retirement security groups are highlighting a little-known provision in the federal government’s rules that could hurt some spouses or children of federal employees under the Civil Service Retirement System. If a CSRS employee leaves the federal government, but dies before applying for a pension, that employee’s spouses, former spouses or children would not receive a survivor annuity, the Pension Rights Center and Women’s Pension Project note. In a letter sent yesterday to the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, the groups asked the agency to send a notice to CSRS employees reminding them of this wrinkle. Survivors of Federal…
Browsing: Office of Personnel Management
Snow is closing schools and causing fender benders around the Washington area. But if you’re a federal employee hoping for permission to go home early and get started on that snowman, it’s not looking likely. The Office of Personnel Management just told Federal Times that the weather isn’t prompting the government to make any major scheduling changes. But keep reading, and we’ll update you as soon as we hear anything new. And please drive safely tonight and tomorrow morning — we’re now expected to get one to three inches of snow today, another inch or two tonight, and possibly sleet and freezing…
President Obama just named Kathie Ann Whipple to be acting director of the Office of Personnel Management. Whipple, who had been deputy general counsel, will immediately replace Michael Hager, who served as acting OPM director since last August. Whipple thanked Obama for the appointment in a statement issued this morning: I am humbled to have been designated by President Obama to serve as the acting director of OPM, an agency it has been my pleasure to serve for the past eight years. I look forward to leading OPM until the president appoints and the United States Senate confirms the next director.
The speculation that President-elect Barack Obama has all but named National Zoo Director John Berry to be the next Office of Personnel Management director may be a little premature. Federal Times has just learned that Berry told a Senate staffer yesterday that Obama has not offered him the job yet, though he has been engaged in preliminary discussions with the transition team. So while it looks like Berry is indeed in the running, OPM is not as close to having a new boss as we thought yesterday.
The Washington Post’s Al Kamen reports this morning that John Berry, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park, has accepted an offer by President-elect Barack Obama to become director of the Office of Personnel Management. Berry previously served as executive director of the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, a congressionally chartered nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of the nation’s wildlife, and before that, as assistant secretary of the Interior Department for management. In the mid-1990s he directed government relations for the Smithsonian and, between 1985 and 1994, served as legislative director for Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md. Among the…