Government Operations Review Personnel PDF Download

In our December 2001 report, "United States Postal Service: Information on Retirement Plans" (GAO-02-170), we raised the question of whether the United States Postal Service (USPS) was paying more or less than appropriate to cover benefit payments for the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) for which it is responsible. In May 2002, we asked the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to calculate a hypothetical "Postal Fund" balance and projected funding status by estimating the present value (PV) of the future benefits USPS is required to fund for CSRS retirees and survivors under current law and extent to which prior and projected future contributions required by current law would fund these benefits. OPM released its analysis in November 2002, indicating that, based on current contributions, USPS's CSRS obligations would be significantly overfunded in the future. The Administration has proposed legislation that addresses this overfunding. In this correspondence we will (1) review OPM's analysis for reasonableness and (2) analyze the legislative proposal to identify any issues needing further consideration.