The Empire Plan is a unique health insurance plan designed especially for public employees in New York State. Empire Plan benefits include inpatient and outpatient hospital coverage, medical/surgical coverage, Centers of Excellence for transplants, infertility and cancer, home care services, equipment and supplies, mental health and substance abuse coverage and prescription drug coverage.
ANDREW M. CUOMO
Governor
LOLA W. BRABHAM
Acting Commissioner
NY19-16
TO: Agency Health Benefits Administrators
FROM: Employee Benefits Division
SUBJECT: NYSHIP Sick Leave Adjustment for former NYSCOPBA employees
DATE: June 7, 2019
One of the provisions contained in the recent Agreement between the State of New York and the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association (NYSCOPBA) include retroactive salary adjustments for employees in Bargaining Units 01 and 21. As a result of this provision, employees who retired on or after April 1, 2016 may be entitled to an increase in their monthly sick leave credit based upon the retroactive salary increase, which resulted from the adjusted hourly rate of pay at the time of retirement.
We have identified enrollees who are potentially eligible for an adjustment of their sick leave credit and have created a new NYBEAS worklist for your agency. The worklist, “Retroactive Sick Leave Adj”, includes the retirees EBD identified as potentially requiring an updated sick leave credit based on the retroactive salary increase formerly employed by your agency.
Please see below, for the retroactive sick leave adjustment page template. You must update the template with the Work Hours to report the enrollee’s former daily work schedule based on a 7.0, 7.5, or 8.0 hour workday. We have extracted and populated the New Salary information from the records produced by the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC). For most instances, we expect this amount to correctly reflect the new salary adjustment effective April 1, 2016. You should enter a “Y” in the corresponding box to confirm that this is the correct adjusted salary for each enrollee. If the amount is incorrect you can enter “N” and then you will be able to update the correct annual salary amount. You must comment the record in the appropriate box to advise of the reason for the difference in the annual salary amount you reported versus what we received from the PayServ System.
The sick leave credit adjustment will not reflect in the NYBEAS billing panel until EBD runs the new data for processing (we expect to run the update on July 3, 2019). After you update the sick leave information you may check what you keyed at Main Menu > Benefits > Transactions > Retro Sick Leave Adjustment.
In order to have the adjusted sick leave credit reflected by July 2019 you must complete this information no later than June 28, 2019. EBD wills end a confirmation letter to the retiree once the sick leave credit adjustment has been processed.
If you have any questions, regarding this or any of your other NYBEAS worklists, contact the EBD HBA Line at 518-474-2780 to speak with a processor. Thank you for your assistance in updating sick leave credit for the retirees from your agency.