Civil Service Retirement System and Federal Employees' Retirement System: Secondary Position Definitions

OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT <CFR>5 CFR Parts 831 and 842</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID: OPM-2024-0020]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3206-AO72</RIN> <SUBJECT>Civil Service Retirement System and Federal Employees' Retirement System: Secondary Position Definitions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Personnel Management. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) proposes to amend its retirement regulations to revise the definition of secondary position for law enforcement officers, firefighters, nuclear materials couriers, and customs and border protection officers. The changes remove the requirement that experience in a primary position is a mandatory prerequisite for an executive level position. This change will provide agencies with greater flexibility when recruiting for executive positions. Agencies retain the discretion to require experience in a primary position as a mandatory prerequisite to their secondary positions. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before March 6, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by the Regulation Identifier Number (RIN) “3206-AO72” using the following method: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for sending comments. The general policy for comments and other submissions from members of the public is to make these submissions available for public viewing at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> without change, including any personal identifiers or contact information. This rule is limited to the definition of secondary positions. Comments on other matters are out of scope and will not be considered. Before finalizing this rule, OPM will consider all comments within the scope of the rule received on or before the closing date for comments. OPM may make changes to the final rule after considering the comments received. In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(4), a summary of this rulemaking may be found in the docket for this rulemaking at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Cynthia Reinhold, (202) 606-0299. Email: <E T="03">RetirementPolicy@opm.gov,</E> with Attn: Secondary Position Definition Regulations in the subject line. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> OPM has government-wide responsibility and oversight for two federal employment retirement systems: the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and the Federal Employees' Retirement System (FERS). These systems provide retirement and disability benefits to the majority of the civilian federal workforce. Retirement plan participation (or coverage) is generally determined by the employee's date of entrance into federal service. Most federal employees who entered federal service prior to January 1, 1984, are covered under the CSRS, while employees who entered federal service on and after January 1, 1984, are covered under the FERS. OPM and its predecessor, the Civil Service Commission, have the statutory authority to prescribe the necessary regulations to administer the CSRS and FERS retirement programs. Federal civilians who participate in CSRS and FERS contribute 7% for CSRS and between 0.8% and 4.4% for FERS and, with 5 years of service, are eligible to receive their retirement annuity benefit beginning at age 62. Retiring earlier is possible, but the retirement benefit may be reduced if the employee is under age 62 and/or has less than 30 years of service. The annuity benefit is based on a percentage of the high-three average salary multiplied by the years of service. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Enhanced Retirement Benefits for Certain Employee Groups</HD> The Civil Service Retirement Act was amended in 1947 to permit agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to retire earlier with a more generous retirement benefit. Over the years, these enhanced retirement benefit provisions were modified to expand to other federal law enforcement officers and other employee groups. Currently, under both CSRS and FERS an employee who is considered a law enforcement officer for retirement benefits purposes is eligible to retire at the age of 50 after serving at least 20 years as a law enforcement officer. Under FERS, a law enforcement officer can retire at age 50 with 20 years, but also at any age after serving at least 25 years as a law enforcement officer. This is earlier than the age at which most Federal employees can qualify for voluntary immediate retirement benefits and is based on shorter service requirements. However, law enforcement officers, unlike most Federal employees, are subject to mandatory age separation requirements. In addition to earlier and mandatory retirement, law enforcement officers receive a larger retirement benefit through a more generous calculation formula. Law enforcement officers contribute a larger employee retirement deduction during employment, half a percent more than other employees. The agency share of the cost of the enhanced retirement benefit is much greater. The enhanced benefit provisions for law enforcement officers were enacted to enable the Government to retain employees in physically challenging occupations while also providing retirement before the demands of the job became too physically strenuous for continued employment. Comparable retirement benefit provisions exist for firefighters, air traffic controllers, and other demanding occupations that require career service from young and vigorous employees. The enhanced annuity calculation makes it economically feasible for employees in these occupations to retire earlier with less service. The current statutory definition of law enforcement officer was enacted in 1974 and covers both an employee whose duties are primarily the investigation, apprehension, or detention of individuals suspected of criminal offenses (primary or rigorous positions) and employees engaged in those activities for at least 3 years who transfer directly to a supervisory or administrative position (secondary positions). For retirement benefit purposes, the definition of law enforcement officer has a narrow meaning. In general, police officers, building guards, and inspectors are excluded from the definition of law enforcement officer because their primary duties involve maintaining law and order, protecting life and property, guarding against or inspecting for violations of law, or investigating persons other than persons who are suspected or convicted of criminal offenses. To administer the enhanced retirement benefits, OPM prescribed detailed regulations that define the various duties law enforcement officers may perform and how the enhanced retirement coverage applies to primary and secondary positions. Because enhanced retirement benefits are more costly to the government and advantageous to the employees who receive them, OPM's regulations reserve the enhanced retirement benefits to only those employees in the designated field, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> law enforcement or firefighting. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Primary and Secondary Positions</HD> By regulation, a primary position is one in which the duties are primarily the investigation, apprehension, or detention of individuals suspected of federal criminal offenses. These duties must also be sufficiently rigorous that employment is limited to young and physically vigorous individuals. A secondary position is a position that: (1) is clearly in the law enforcement field; (2) is in an organization having a law enforcement mission; and (3) is either supervisory, such as a position whose primary duties are as a first-level supervisor of other law enforcement officers, or administrative, such as an executive, managerial position for which experience in a rigorous primary position is a mandatory prerequisite. The primary position experience requirement may be met with equivalent experience outside the federal government. The employee is considered a law enforcement officer in a secondary position if he or she transfers directly to the secondary position after performing duties in a primary position for at least 3 years. The break in service between primary and secondary positions may not exceed 3 days and the law enforcement officer's federal service must be continuous after transfer to the secondary position. The mandatory experience requirement for secondary positions corresponds to the statutory requirement that enhanced retirement benefits apply only if the employee in the primary position transfers directly to a secondary position and reserves the enhanced retirement benefits for employees engaged in a specified field of work. These statutory and regulatory requirements work together to meet Congress' objectives in enacting the enhanced retirement benefits for employees performing rigorous duties and positions that are directly related. That objective is to provide a retirement benefits structure that makes it possible for the Government to maintain a young and vigorous workforce through youthful career entry, continuous service, and early separation. The statutory and regulatory provisions work in combination to accomplish these goals. Since the early and enhanced retirement program is more costly to the government than the basic retirement programs, the coverage is limited to a small group of employees to meet the objectives of the program. In addition to employees across the Federal Government who meet the definition of law enforcement officer, comparable retirement benefits exist for firefighters, air traffic controllers, park police, uniformed Secret Service officers, Capitol police officers, nuclear materials couriers, Supreme Court police offi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 61k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━