[Mathregionals] Early Retirement and VSRP

[Eisworth, Todd]

Hi all,

PLEASE read through the email from Elizabeth Sayrs, as there is critical information on Early Retirement.  I'm including the most relevant information below:

An important consideration in deciding whether or not to participate in the VSRP may be your eligibility for the faculty early retirement plan. With that in mind, I wanted to update you on some important developments. While creating the VSRP Plan Document, representatives from the Office of Legal Affairs, UHR, and the Provost's office explored the possibility of offering current participants in the early retirement program the option to participate in the VSRP. While consulting with outside legal counsel about this possibility, it was explained that key provisions of our early retirement program are not compliant with IRS regulations.

In the interest of ensuring that faculty have as much information as possible, I want to outline what will need to change, and how we will alter the early retirement program processes so that faculty who wish to continue teaching or their research after retirement may still have an opportunity to do so. We know it will take time to work with Faculty Senate to update the Faculty Handbook to reflect the necessary changes, but we are committed to offering a version of the early retirement program that retains as much of the spirit of the original program as possible while being fully compliant with the law.

Here are the things that we know we have to change about the early retirement program to be fully compliant: 1) The faculty member must retire without a promise, plan, or assumption of future re-hire.  2) To rehire a retiree, the University must be able to document, through the UHR hiring process, what the IRS defines as a "business necessity" for rehiring.  3) A gap of at least six months between retirement and rehiring is typically necessary (this is already the case for many early retirees due to Affordable Care Act requirements for health insurance coverage).

We recognize that these parameters are quite different from the current early retirement program. However, we will now be able to extend a revised early retirement program to both STRS and ARP participants, instead of only to STRS participants.

Todd

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