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.
KATHY HOCHUL
Governor
TIMOTHY R. HOGUES
Commissioner
NY23-22
TO: New York State Health Benefits Administrators
FROM: Employee Benefits Division
SUBJECT: NYSHIP Sick Leave Adjustment for former Management/Confidential (M/C) and Council 82 AFSCME AFL-CIO (C82) employees
DATE: October 4, 2023
One of the provisions contained in the Agreement between the State of New York and Management/Confidential (M/C) employees include retroactive salary adjustments for employees in Bargaining Units 06, 18, 46, 66, 78, 79 and 98. As a result of this provision, M/C employees who retired on or after April 1, 2021 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.
Additionally, the State of New York and Council 82 AFSCME AFL-CIO (C82) reached an Agreement and one of the provisions includes retroactive salary adjustments for employees in Bargaining Units 61 and 91. As a result of this provision, C82 employees who retired on or after April 1, 2019 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 retirees formerly employed by your agency that EBD identified as potentially requiring an updated sick leave credit, based on the retroactive salary increase.
We have already extracted and populated new salary information from the records produced by the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) to update the majority of your agency retirees’ sick leave amounts in NYBEAS. For the retirees populating your worklist, OSC was unable to provide their new salary information. Therefore, you’ll need to verify and provide their New Salary amount in the retroactive sick leave adjustment page template, shown below. 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. 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 November 4, 2023). 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 November 2023, you must complete this information no later than November 4, 2023. EBD will send 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.