All service rendered as a state employee is counted for retirement service. You will not receive additional service for overtime. Also, you cannot receive more than 1 year of service (YOS) for any year that you work.

Service can only be granted for actual hours worked. If you work less than full time as a permanent intermittent employee, you will receive credit for the hours you have worked, not to exceed 80 hours per pay period. For example, if you have worked on a 50% basis for 20 years, your service will equal 10 years.

For more information, go to Service Credit — Earning and Purchasing.

All wages and hours that may be used toward retirement are reported to ORS. However, there are limits to the amount of service we can credit in a period. You may have worked your hours faster than the law allows us to credit service. If you worked your 2,080 hours in fewer than 26 pay periods, you would not receive a full YOS. We cannot credit more than 80 hours per pay period or 2,080 hours a year.

No. Banked leave time and furlough hours were credited as if you had worked and been paid when the hours were scheduled.

The service that you are repaying is not reflected in your statement because no service credit is granted until the refund is repaid in full.

However, if you are repaying your refund of contributions with a TDP agreement, any activity on your agreement (including the service that will be credited once the repayment is paid in full) is reflected.

To verify the amount you have paid on a TDP agreement, contact ORS. If you have established an agreement and deductions have not started, please contact the MI-HR Service Center.

If you participate in the TDP program to purchase service credit, your service credit will be included after ORS receives the final payment.

If your TDP agreement was established on or after Oct. 1, 2004, and has been in effect for one full year, you were charged 8% interest on the balance as of Oct. 1. Interest will continue to be assessed annually at this time until your agreement is paid in full.

If your continuous hours total in MIHR is not the same as the service reflected in your member statement, it is likely due to provisions of the retirement statute that directs how service for the purpose of retirement can be credited (example: military service, refunds, leaves of absence, or grievance settlements). ORS relies on data from your human resources office and a retirement system database to ensure compliance with the statute when determining your retirement service.

In rare cases, an employee's varying continuous hours and retirement service totals may be related to the inadvertent counting of long-term disability time by a human resources office, or discrepancies in part-time or intermittent service.

Your time in the military may count toward your retirement service. The retirement statute specifically directs how the military service must be credited for retirement purposes. Because of this you must submit your military discharge (DD214), directly to ORS to ensure your time is counted in your retirement service. Even if your continuous hours total on account with your human resources office reflects your military time, you still have to submit a DD214 form to ORS.

If your military time occurred during your state service, you may be entitled to retirement service credit at no cost. If your military time did not interrupt your state service, you may purchase military service credit. For additional information regarding purchasing military service, please refer to the military service credit rules.

Some leaves of absence are creditable for retirement purposes, while others are not. If you received workers' compensation or were paid by the state during your leave of absence, you should have continued to accumulate retirement service. However, if you did not receive workers' compensation or payment from the state, you did not earn retirement service for that period of time.

Please contact ORS to see whether retirement service credit can be given for your particular type of leave.

Yes. If you received a grievance settlement involving retroactive crediting of retirement service, then you should have received retirement credit. Make sure ORS has received documentation of the settlement. If you are unsure if the settlement has been credited, please contact ORS.

Part-time employees (including job-share and part-time intermittent positions) earn service credit in proportion to the hours worked. Overtime hours do not increase service credit. The following table shows how full-time and part-time employees earn service credit.

Examples of How Service Credit is Earned