Last thing I got from Topeka was that for 100% IU it would be sometime after 1 Oct 2008, no sooner. For less 50 - 90% their TARGET date was late this summer to START working on those cases. Apparently everyone in the chain of command above them is quite happy with those positions. Absolutely nothing out of retiree councils, new media or anyone else. Would be bad for morale to hold anyone responsible for past incompetence or piss poor planning or future performance for that matter. Besides, this whole issue only effects a few thousand retirees. Hopefully they will pay up before the end of the year.........if not, I hope all of you are pounding on their doors and loading up their email in boxes.

Anybody got any new news on this?

--Jim
Life is good!

quote:

Absolutely nothing out of retiree councils

Don't worry, as you can see... they are hard at work on these things.....




Wray...

A little something I found on the Veterans Benefit Network for those with disabilities rated at 50% to 90% with at least a 20 year retirement...You can actually go to the VBN and they have an email already set up that you fill in your information to send to your senators...Check it out...

Gunk


Full Concurrent Receipt for 50 % or more CRDP Lead [-]


Concurrent Receipt Amendment for the Senate Defense Authorization
Full Concurrent Receipt for 50 % or more CRDP


Senator Harry Reid (NV), Senate majority Leader will offer an amendment to the Senate Defense Authorization bill (S. 3001) that accelerates the phase-in of concurrent receipt (Concurrent Retirement and Disability Payments) for those with 50 percent or more but less than 90 percent disability ratings from December 31, 2013 to September 30, 2008.
FRA supports legislation authorizing the immediate payment of concurrent receipt of full military retired pay and veterans' disability compensation for all disabled retirees, and urges you to contact your Senators to ask their support for the "Senator Reid amendment to improve concurrent receipt."

Veterans Benefits Network post.

Link and forum posts.

--Jim
Life is good!

After 13 months of waiting, I finally got rated at 60%. Spoke to the local VSO last week and he said I would fall under concurent receipt rules and be entitled to both full compensation and retirement. I didn't read through all the posts under this topic, but I have a feeling the CG is still going to off-set retirement with what I get for compensation. Can anyone clarify what I can expect with this months deposits?

OK, I went through and read all the posts for this thread and it seems I am only starting the process of a confusing mess. Why in the world does this have to be so hard.

quote:

Originally posted by d53steeler:
OK, I went through and read all the posts for this thread and it seems I am only starting the process of a confusing mess. Why in the world does this have to be so hard.

It is confusing for several reasons. One is the issue of back pay. The CRDP law went into effect on January 1, 2004. Many retirees did not begin receiving their CRDP payments until a year or more later even though they should have gotten them right after the law went into effect. EMC's case is a good example, his VA claim was retroactive to 2002 I think, but he didn't start receiving payments until 2005, so the CG owes him CRDP from 1 Jan 04 to late 2005. See his third post on page 2 of this thread. This should not apply to you since you should start getting the CRDP payments as soon as the VA notifies the CG of your rating.

A second factor is the phase-in process. Even those retirees who are receiving their CRDP now are getting reduced payments which are increasing each year until the phase-in is complete (which is 2013 or 2014, I forget which).

Finally, improvements are being made in the benefits for certain classes of veterans. For example, those rated in the 50-90% range who are also rated 100% unemployable by the VA will begin drawing full CRDP payments (not phased-in) beginning in October 2008. In addition, according to Gunk's post above, Senator Reid is apparently going to introduce an amendment to the FY2009 defense bill which would authorize full CRDP for all non-chapter 61 retirees rated at 50% or above beginning in October of this year.

To calculate what you should be getting NOW (again as soon as the VA notifies the CG), go to this site: http://www.military.com/benefits/military-pay/retired-pay/crdp-pay-computation

Also, a military.com poster named TzaYad made an XLS spreadsheet to calculate your benefit. See his post in this thread.

I hope this helps.

Matt

Thanks for the reply Matt. I guess tomorrow morning (or maybe next month) will be like X-mas when I look at the checking account. Hope I dont get a lump of coal. Best of luck to all.

Steeler, Do not expect back pay for Concurrent receipt. I retired 1 Oct 05 and got my rating 1 Sept 06. back dated to 1 Oct 05. and to the best of my knowledge I did not get any back pay.

Mike

And that is the problem here. Since the CG does not owe the money it’s not a priority on their list of things to do. Each person has to have their situation reviewed since each case is different. The CG has actually met their financial obligation to each member however, because they are not sharing that information with the VA. So the back pay the VA owes members cannot be paid out because they don't know how long members were paid their full retirement. At least that is my understanding of the situation. There is supposed to be a Memorandum of Understanding being worked on which has been promised to be complete and in effect in the summer of 08 but I would not hold my breath it has been promised in the past.

Cajun,

I don't think it would be a priority even if the Coast Guard owed us the money. Since they are the ones who control getting the info to the VA, and we see how well that is working.

This is a DFAS link, but most of the info applies to all services.

VA Retro FAQ's

Once you get there you'll find a bunch of other informative links.

--Jim
Life is good!

Curious of any new news from Topeka on when they were going to start on 50%-90%. In a couple of days we are going to be in the middle of the summer. I wonder if they consider Labor Day to be the end of the Summer of if they are using a special Personnel Calendar in which Summer ends whenever they say it ends. Any ideas or comments?

Ideas & comments... sure.....I've tried to call to a person I was told was working on this issue. I havent been able to get in touch with him. Neither has EMC_

I suspect they are beginning the process, but my guess is.. with only 2 people working on it, it will take a year or so to complete, if that fast.

My comments would be the service on this issue sucks.... I have always had excellent service from Topeka, but .... not on this issue.... I think it is because it is not something they fully understand or want to do. While it is important to those of us getting it, to them, it is just an additional responsibility. If it was affecting the money they were getting it would be a different story.

Another sad fact here is they don't even want to talk about it... Many don't have a clue what it is. When was the last time you saw something published about this?

That's some of my "comments"...

Wray...

Wray,

I used to have a top notch person there also. Her name was Rachel. I had a very odd case with my retiring twice (TDRL, Years of Service) she helped me with many difficult questions. But, since she is no longer handling my record service at best is incompetent. My last conversation about back pay was no better. The lady I was talking to really was pretty clueless. she did complain about how difficult it is for PSC to do this project. When I mentioned that I've been owed this money since 2005. Her response was that's not important or that doesn't really matter, since they have only recently been tasked with paying us. I wonder how they would feel if they knew their pay was short several thousand dollars and would have to wait 3 years to get it back. Oh, and don't forget that we won't be getting it all back, because they are going to pull 25% out for taxes. So we won't see that until we file in 2009, and getting a lump sum in one year might cause us to loose more money in taxes. But, that's not really important.

Word is that the Summer payment is still supposed to happen. I was told that there are 20,000 people affected now, as I recall a year or so ago we were told there were around 2000. So some how we have 10 times the number now. That should help speed things up.

The initial CDRP money withheld by the VA is to prevent an overpayment status in our retired pay.

The CDRP money was withheld by the VA so it should come to us directly from the VA and the VA payments are not taxed. The CG needs to compute the part of our retirement pay that by law we are required to surrender. I suspect at that point, the CG will notify the VA, and the VA will split the CDRP money that was held into two parts. The part that we will receive and the remaining portion that we are required to surrender by law from our retire pay. The remaining part is what I suspect delayed the MOU. That portion must now be transfered from the VA back to our CG retired pay accounts. Transferring money from the department of the VA to our CG retired pay account will require many loops and is no easy process.

Again, I don't think the CDRP computations are that difficult or even that time consuming. The nightmare is going to be transferring the money from the VA coffers, through the Department of Homeland Security, to the proper CG accounts.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: jchandler,

I wonder how this will impact how the Coast Guard takes care of our retro pay?

VA Watchdog News Flash

Here you will find links to several interesting reports of how DFAS did with the retro pay for the DOD services.

My bet is that it won't help ours come along any sooner.

--Jim

If anything they will use it to justify their screwin the pooch even more than they already have.

Received the following email today. I don't share the Admiral's perspective, but at least some of us may actually finally start to get paid what is way overdue.

Members of the Commandant of the Coast Guard National Retiree Council: Greetings and Happy Coast Guard Day to all!



I’ve recently seen a number of emails between veterans and PSC concerning the process and timing of retroactive Concurrent Retirement and Disability Pay (CRDP) for 50 - 90% disabled veterans. Although I knew about the issue, frankly I wasn’t up to speed on the specifics as to where we are in the process. Hence, I corresponded with PSC and CGHQ’s to understand the issues to see if I can address the concerns of our veterans.



Background. CRDP allows veterans to receive payments of both their full CG retirement annuity and Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) disability compensation. Prior to that change, the VA disability compensation “offset” that amount in retired pay which often did not increase the actual amount received by the veteran. The monetary advantage to the veteran was that the VA portion would be non-taxable. The original law that established CRDP effective from 1 January 2004, included a phase-in schedule through 2013. Subsequent law repealed the phase-in period from 1 January 2005 forward for those disability rated as 100 percent. In 2006, unbeknownst to the CG, the Department of Defense (DoD) made an internal ruling to apply the same entitlement for those with ratings of 50% to 90%, that is they are also entitled to the full amount of the VA offset retroactively to 1 January 2005…and they began calculating and working with the VA to “restore” retired pay and/or disability compensation as a member may be eligible. Subsequently the CG also made the decision to follow the DoD’s ruling, hence the apparent “delay” in getting this resolved for our folks.



The Process -- General. This is an inter-agency process with two sources of pay decisions – one from the CG and one from the VA. Hence there are multiple steps in this process, some within the CG’s control and others beyond our control. As with most anything to do with military compensation, which I learned a long time ago, nothing is easy in working those issues, especially when related to “looking back” to resolve retroactive pay issues. Determining the amount due to about 3000 veterans is a manually time consuming…complex accounts may involve multiple VA rating adjustments, ex-spouse pay entitlements, and other issues that require in-depth record searches.



The Process – Coast Guard. The CG (PSC in particular) must thoroughly review (month by month) each veteran’s pay record with a rating of between 50% and 90% (about 3000) from 2004 on to create a record of what both the CG and VA paid and what the CG and VA should have paid. The difference, if any, would be what is owed to the member. PSC is targeting completing all record reviews by October; they have 2 full time people assigned and will shortly be ramping up to a team of 5 and using overtime as necessary. This month they will begin paying the CG’s portion of the retroactive compensation as they complete the review of each individual’s record.



The Process – CG to VA. Next, the pay record information is to be sent to the VA for their review and subsequent payment of what may be owed to the member by the VA. There has been considerable correspondence/discussion about the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) being worked between the CG and VA to facilitate sending the CG’s record review results to the VA for their action. PSC will be sending the pay analysis to the VA in the format specified by the VA according to the procedures of a MOA between the CG and the VA. The MOA is a complex process in itself. This MOA is a wholesale replacement for the current MOU that is 33 years old. It is a comprehensive document that addresses much more than CRDP. Also, the CG-VA MOA is largely the same but not precisely the same as the DoD-VA MOA. It is currently in process for approval at the VA and CGHQs is keeping close tabs on its progress. The MOA is critical as it establishes the process of how the information will be provided to the VA so they can take the next step to compare their numbers and pay any difference. Although we certainly cannot predict how long it will take to get the final VA signature, we think it’s more on the order of weeks at this point, barring any technical issues. However, PSC indicates they will begin to send the VA the pay record reviews in “batches” as they are completed with the intent that the VA should be able to begin to do their part while the MOA is still being finalized. PSC will make the MOA accessible via their website for those who desire to look at it once it is signed.



The Process – VA. The VA process to determine and make payments involves all 54 VA Regional Offices (VARO). On the plus side, those 54 VAROs have virtually finished processing their backlog from DoD so our retirees' cases should not be delayed by DoD cases. Also, the VAROs should be fairly good at the process by now. Once it gets to that point, our veterans will already have received their CG retroactive pay. Issues with VA action or inaction at that point will need to be addressed directly with the VA.



I know we all would like to have had this already resolved. My perspective is that the CG is fully committed to ensuring all veterans receive all back pay due to them in the most expeditious manner and is moving forward with earnest and due diligence. Hopefully this helps…thanks for listening. Please give this wide dissemination. Regards, FLAmes



RADM Fred L. Ames, USCG (Ret.) and MCPOCG Vince Patton, USCG (Ret.)

Co-Chairs of the Commandant of the Coast Guard National Retiree Council