§8461 Authority of the Office of Personnel Management

Summary

The Office of Personnel Management must pay all benefits under subchapters II, IV, V, and VI from the Fund. The Office must run the parts of this law that are not assigned to the Board, the Executive Director, the Secretary of Labor, or another agency. The Office decides and rules on claims and on questions of disability and dependency for the items it administers. Those disability and dependency decisions are final except as explained below. The Office can order medical or other exams when needed and can suspend or deny an annuity if someone refuses to be examined. If an administrative action affects someone’s rights under what the Office runs, it may be appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board under the Board’s rules. If the Office found someone partly or fully disabled because of a mental condition after an agency applied for disability retirement under section 8451, the appeal follows the procedures of section 7701 and the Board’s decision can be reviewed in court under section 7703. The Office sets fees for outside doctors who do exams under subchapter V, and pays their fees and travel costs from appropriations. The Office may make regulations to carry out its duties. Each government agency must give the Director the information needed to run this law, and the Director must set safeguards so the information is used only for the allowed purpose. When the Office figures “actuarial equivalence,” it must use the same economic assumptions it last used to set the System’s normal-cost percentage. For employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Director of Central Intelligence may, in ways that fit the Office’s administration, do many retirement functions for CIA staff—such as deciding benefits, keeping records, computing benefits, collecting deposits, and making disbursements—except for duties under subchapters III and VII. The Office and the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board must provide information and services to the Director of Central Intelligence on a reimbursable basis as requested. For the Thrift Savings Plan, the Director of Central Intelligence may keep exclusive records, account for contributions in the aggregate, make disbursements and allocations, and do other related tasks except investing funds; the Executive Director of the Board cannot act where the Director of Central Intelligence does. Rules about CIA employee information (including subsections (h)(1), 8439(b), and 8474(c)(4)) must protect intelligence sources, methods, and activities. The Director of Central Intelligence must make regulations, with the Office and the Board’s Executive Director, that include procedures for OPM to inspect and audit Fund disbursements, and must send those regulations to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees before they take effect. Under Office rules, employees who move to or from certain nonappropriated fund instrumentalities described in section 2105(c) without a break in service of more than 1 year, and who have not already made an election, must be given 30 days after the move to make an irrevocable choice about which retirement coverage will apply; similar 30-day election rules apply to employees moving the other way who are not eligible under section 8347(q).