Norton Gets Hearing on Bill to Restore Lost Retirement Rights for D.C. Court Employees

Press Release

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton's (D-D.C) bill, the "District of Columbia Court, Offender Supervision, Parole, and Public Defender Employees Equity Act of 2008" will get a hearing tomorrow, Tuesday, July 15, at 2 p.m., in room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building, before the Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia to finally resolve "creditable service" retirement concerns of employees of the D.C. Courts, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA), and the Public Defenders Service (PDS) whose retirement eligibility was seriously hurt when the federal government took over their agencies. Norton will address these concerns at a hearing on H.R. 5600, the "District of Columbia Court, Offender Supervision, Parole, and Public Defender Employees Act of 2008."

Norton and Congressman Tom Davis (R-VA) introduced this bill in March to correct a long overdue oversight affecting hundreds of non-judicial employees of these agencies. Under the 1997 Balanced Budget Reconciliation Act, the federal government assumed authority for the District of Columbia Courts, the Pretrial Services Agency, the Department of Corrections, and Adult Probation and Parole Services, making employees of those agencies federal employees. In 1998 employees of PDS were similarly transferred as part of the District of Columbia Courts and Justice Technical Collections Act. Some of these employees lost "creditable service" years towards their retirement, accumulated when they were D.C. employees, because some of the years they worked in those agencies prior to the transfers were not credited. Norton's bill, H.R. 5600, allows time served by these employees before 1997 to count towards their overall retirement eligibility. To avoid a problem with double-dipping, in as much as, the employees are still entitled to their D.C. retirement benefits, the Norton bill does not count the pre-1997 years spent as D.C. government employees towards the amount of federal retirement annuity an employees is eligible to receive.

Norton said, "Elementary fairness requires that the court and related services employees who started their jobs with the expectation that they would be able to retire without penalty after 20 years or more of service should be allowed to do so. Our bill restores their lost time."

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