Whether you are young, old, a short-timer or a newcomer there is one thing that many feds can’t wait to happen: The implementation of the nearly 3-year-old phased retirement law. A plan that would let senior feds retire and return to work part-time to help mentor their successor.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) says the program will save the government lots of money in salary and training dollars. He told the Federal Times he doesn’t understand what’s the holdup.

The idea seems simple enough: You retire but continue to work a 20-hour week. Part of your time would be mentoring. Simple, right?

Wrong! This is the government. Nothing is simple. Often, for good reason.

When it comes to letting some people take phased retirement, one of the questions is who gets it, and who doesn’t? There is also the issue of people who are long-retired but want to come back, work part-time, then retire again!

Is phased retirement an entitlement, or a management option? Could an employee work one month on, one month off, and have that count as phased, part-time retirement?

What about annual leave accrual during phased, part-time retirement? And can you continue to contribute to the TSP? If so, at what rate?

Finally, the one thing the law makes clear is that people in phased retirement must spend at least 20 percent of their time “mentoring.” Fine. So define “mentoring.” Ask a dozen people get at least half a dozen different answers.

All of the above questions — plus 100 more — must be answered and approved before the program will kick off. For the answers to many of them, you can click here to get a special report from benefits expert Tammy Flanagan and Federal News Radio’s Shefali Kapadia. One look at it explains, at least in part, when the phase-out program is taking so long to phase-in.

Federal Managers Association will hold its 77th annual convention-training seminar March 8- 11, at the Double Tree Hotel in Arlington, Virginia.

NEARLY USELESS FACTOID

By Michael O’Connell

Martin Landau was Producer Gene Roddenberry’s first choice to play Mr. Spock on the original Star Trek TV series. Leonard Nimoy eventually won the role. He went on to replace Landau when that actor left Mission: Impossible a few years later.

Source: IMDB

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