How Elected & Appointed Officials Report Time Worked

Regulation requires elected & appointed officials to keep track of their time

Source: Wikipedia Photo: UpstateNYer CC BY-SA 3.0

As an elected or appointed official, the time you work for your public employer gets reported to us as paid service, and we use that data to determine your service credit towards retirement. However, some elected and appointed officials usually don’t work a fixed schedule or have preset hours like other NYSLRS members, so determining the time they’ve worked is a little bit more involved. In recognition of Election Day and the new terms and appointments that will result of it, let’s take a look at the member responsibilities of our elected and appointed officials.

The Record of Activities

Elected and appointed officials have been required to record and submit a record of work-related activities (ROA) to their employers since 1976. The ROA is a daily detail of hours worked and duties performed by the official, including official duties performed outside normal business hours. Activities can include attending an employer-sponsored event, addressing constituent concerns and responding to an emergency. Activities that would not be considered work-related include time attending electoral and campaign events, time spent socializing after town board meetings, attendance at a candidates forum, and on-call time.

To help ensure that elected and appointed officials receive appropriate service credit, changes and additions to the process of reporting elected and appointed official went into effect in August 2009. Elected or appointed officials who do not participate in a time and attendance system that tracks or verifies their actual work hours now must prepare a record of their work-related activities for three consecutive months within 150 days of the start of a new term or appointment.

The old requirements stated that elected and appointed officials only had to prepare a one-month ROA of time worked, or that they were required to submit their ROAs to a legislative body. Now they’re specifically required to submit the ROA to the clerk of the legislative body and others for their review. The ROA enables their employer to provide us with accurate information about the days they’ve worked so that their retirement service credit will be correct.

For more detailed information about the reporting of elected and appointed officials, feel free to visit our website at http://www.osc.state.ny.us/retire/members/member_elected_appointed/index.php

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