Temp Buyback

The federal program for employees expired, and it simply was not renewed.

We’d like them to renew the program.

Below is a press release from the National Federation on Federal Employees discussing the buyback program that used to allow federal employees to pay for their temporary time to be added to their retirement contribution.
We would add that currently, employees can earn a year of service credit for working 6 months, a typical fire season, so we’d like to see the buyback time be calculated so 6 months would earn one year of credit. These are not a typical 6 months as federal wildland firefighters are often working over 1,000 hours of overtime in those 6 months and paid for only 2/3rds of their time gone from home, so it can surpass even a full-time, 12 month work year easily.