By Brian Trompeter
Delivering on a promise, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors on July 16 made additional groups of public-safety personnel eligible to purchase retirement credits for previous service with law-enforcement agencies, the military and now universities as well.
Supervisors on May 21 permitted sworn county police officers, uniformed fire personnel and animal-protection police who had prior active-duty military service or full-time work with other U.S. federal, state or local law-enforcement agencies to buy up to four years’ credit toward their retirement plans beginning July 1.
Initially eligible personnel had to participate in the Police Officers and Uniformed retirement systems.
Supervisors acted in accord with recent collective-bargaining agreements made with the International Association of Firefighters Local 2068 and Southern States Police Benevolent Association, but the new policies did not apply to Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office employees, police helicopter pilots and public-safety communications personnel.
After copious – and pointed – feedback from those groups, supervisors promised to re-evaluate the policy over the summer and include them in the policies. Supervisors were “caught flat-footed,” as Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay (D) put it at the June 18 Personnel Committee meeting, by the outcry in May from public-safety workers who weren’t eligible for the buybacks.
Supervisors on July 16 extended the policies to those previously excluded groups and also offered buyback opportunities to personnel who have worked full-time at private or public universities in the United States.
The board made the code amendments retroactive to July 1 so all eligible groups could begin making date-of-service purchase-cost calculations from the same date. Eligible employees have up to 30 days from the adoption date to file the required paperwork.
Program participants will pay the difference between the retirement benefit they would receive with the credits, less the value of the benefit without them. They may pay the entire sum up-front, possibly by rolling over moneys from deferred-compensation accounts, or purchase the credits with interest over an up-to-four-year period.
Those benefit costs will vary by how long employees live and work and the levels of their salary increases and retirement cost-of-living adjustments, county officials said.
The board’s action drew praise July 16 from Siobhan Chase, Fairfax County Chapter vice president of the Southern States Police Benevolent Association.
“Public-safety is a diverse field that encompasses a multitude of transferable skills,” she said. “A former dispatcher, police officer or firefighter could thrive as a sheriff’s deputy or vice versa . . . I believe this will be an invaluable recruitment tool [and aid] retention as well.”
