Retiree Benefits Open Enrollment is Underway
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For those of you who have County health insurance or other retiree benefits, the County Department of Human Resources is conducting open enrollment for retirees this month. Specifically:
October 31 through November 17
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This open enrollment window is open once a year and is the only time that you can make changes to your benefit selections. Now would be a good time to review what benefits you have and to make any changes that you need to and can make.
For more information, use the following button to access the Department of Human Resources' retiree benefits page.
As you may or may not know, there are several groups or associations that retired Fairfax County employees can belong to. Depending upon where you worked at the County, one of the following groups is there to support you. Click on the relevant link to access their websites.
Each of these groups provides resources, has meetings, and offers other services to retired County employees. If you are not already a member, we encourage you to check them out.
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As recently enabled by the State, the County has now entered into collective bargaining with select employee unions. To-date, unions representing active police officers and firefighters have entered into collective bargaining with the County. Neither we (Retirement Systems), the Retirement Boards of Trustees, nor retirees are party to collective bargaining, but we know that at least some retirees have questions about how this may or may not affect them. |
There is some good background information on the County's website at the following link:
While no collective bargaining agreements have been ratified as of yet, they could include (among other things) salary increases for active employees. As you likely know, the means for retirees to receive increases in their retirement benefits is via the annual cost-of-living (COLA) process that is defined in County Code. While active employee salary increases have never been correlated with or the same as retiree COLAs, there have been years that active employees did not receive any increases (including merit increments) while retirees received COLAs based on inflation (via the Consumer Price Index: CPI-U). |
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Additional or ad-hoc COLAs are possible but, per the County Code, can only be granted when the funded status of the retirement system is 100%. The reason for this is that, when underfunded (less than 100% funded), the priority is to do everything possible to increase funding to 100%. Until the system is 100% funded, providing any ad-hoc COLA would require the County to fully pay for it in advance.
It is important to note that the Board of Supervisors has always contributed (funded) exactly what the systems' actuary has recommended that they need to contribute - all in an effort to achieve full (100%) funding for all 3 retirement systems. This has often resulted in significant increases in their contributions from year to year.
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We are planning to host another virtual retiree meeting in December to discuss how we invest your retirement benefits funds.
Stay tuned for a future email announcing the date and time. In the meantime, if you have specific questions about investments, click this link to let us know what you would like to address.
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