National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association Serving over 1000 Federal annuitants and their families in Howard County

Transcription

1 National Active & Retired Federal Employees Assoc. Non-Profit Org. NARFE U.S. Postage Chapter 1734 PAID 5801 Clipper Lane #208, Clarksville, Md Permit No. 19 Columbia, MD Time Value Mail Next Meeting Sept 15th National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association Serving over 1000 Federal annuitants and their families in Howard County Howard County Chapter 1734 News & Notes Sept 2010 NEXT MEETING: Wed, 15 Sept Business Meeting 10:00 Senior 50+ OFFICERS President Bob Wesloh Service Officer William Kelly Past President Jim McConnell Service Officer Stephen Huza VP-Memb. Burdelle Dowdell PR Chair Stuart Hirsch VP-Fed. Leg. Frank Chase Luncheon Chair Burdelle Dowdell VP-State Leg. Carole Graves Alzheimer s Chair Robert O Brien Secretary Barbara Dooley Welcome Joel Turner Treasurer Jim McConnell Telephone Tree Joy Cohen Sunshine Natalie C. Yopconka Newsletter Editor Sethanne Howard Auditor Ed Kuespert Newsletter Mailing Sue Neri Program Chair VACANT Newsletter Mailing Burdelle Dowdell IMPORTANT TELEPHONE NUMBERS Sen. Barbara Mikulski on web at Sen. Ben Cardin on web at Rep. John Sarbanes Rep. Elijah Cummings rep.cummings@mail.house.gov NARFE HOTLINE White House president@whitehouse.gov 1

2 NATIONAL ACTIVE AND RETIRED FEDERAL EMPLOYEES ASSOCIATION News & Notes Chapter 1734 September 2010 Howard County Maryland President s Message: Bob Wesloh For my first message as president of the Howard County of NARFE, I will outline some of my priorities for the chapter for the coming year. My first priority will be on increasing membership. NARFE has been losing members at all levels in the organization for many years. This has resulted in a financial crisis at the national level. Recently, NARFE national held a recruiting contest. The top chapter was from my home state of MN. This was chapter 2243 in NW Suburbia Twin Cities, MN; they recruited 192 new members during the contest. Six other chapters recruited at least 100 new members each. In Maryland, the St. Mary s County Chapter was the top recruiter. In just over one month, they recruited 44 new members. The St. Mary s County Chapter is very involved in their community and has many good contacts. In other chapters it was a matter to talking to people who are current or retired federal workers or retirees. Howard County has many people who are eligible to join our chapter who are not aware of who we are or what we do. This, we need to change! What is NARFE? NARFE, one of America s oldest and largest associations, was founded in 1921 with the mission of protecting earned rights and benefits of America s active and retired federal workers. The largest federal employee/retiree organization. NARFE represents the retirement interests of nearly five million current and future annuitants, spouses and survivors. NARFE is the only organization with that only represents the interests of current and retired federal employees. Current concerns of NARFE include the work of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. In recent testimony before the commission, Margaret Baptiste, current president of the National NARFE, she noted the difference between federal retirements and health benefits and other entitlement programs. There is one significant difference: civil service retirement and health benefits are earned by employees and designed to attract and retain a skilled workforce. They are not modeled on social insurance, health-based, or means-tested. Baptiste said. The work of the commission needs to be watched closely to help protect our earned benefits. For several years I taught classes on leadership. One of the principals I covered in detail was for anyone in a leadership position in any organization, especially in a volunteer organization was to mentor the person who could follow them in their position. If you like your position and enjoy what you doing, there is not a problem with continuing in the position for several years. Once you have decided to move on to something else you should start looking for someone who will follow you in your position. I have been doing this for years and found that this works well. Often the next person just needs to be asked. There have been times when the person who followed me not only came with new insights but soon proved to be a better leader of the group than I had been. As soon as I was elected President of the Howard County Chapter of NARFE, I started talking with Burdelle Dowdell about following me as president of our chapter. Burdelle Dowdell has served in many positions with the chapter including her current positions as VP for Membership, Luncheon Chairman and has helps with the Newsletter Mailing. She also attends the National and state conventions and is aware of current issues and concerns of our membership. I feel that she is well qualified to be our next president and only needed to be asked. As you will note at the end of my autobiography I did not start this too soon. I highly recommend that all of our officers consider mentoring the person who can follow them as soon as they decide that the time has come for them to move on. Other issues, concerns and priorities will follow in the coming months. Your ideas and suggestions will be greatly appreciated. CALENDAR OF ACTIVITIES Date Time Activity Location 08 September 10:00 Cardin Presentation Vantage House 15 September 10:00 Business Meeting Senior October all day Senior Expo 20 October 11:30 Luncheon TBD ****** * 2

3 Welcome New Members! We welcome all of the retirees, spouses, and especially current federal government employees who have recently joined or re-joined NARFE. Please attend our meetings and luncheons so that we can meet you and so that you can find out more about NARFE on the local level. It is the local Chapter level that drives the NARFE national agenda. Business meetings start at 10:00 AM followed by a speaker. There is usually a social half hour starting at 9:30 AM. Business meetings are held in September, November, January, March, and May. Luncheons typically start at 11:30 AM and are held in October, December, February, April, and June. There are no meetings or luncheons in July and August. Chapter meetings or luncheons are held on the third Wednesday, September through June, and are canceled whenever Howard County Schools are delayed or canceled due to weather. Dues and contributions to NARFE are not deductible as charitable contributions for income tax purposes. **** Our chapter web site is **** Is the birthday of the Social Security Administration Friday October 15 is the annual Senior Expo Please contact the President at bobwesloh@comcast.com to help with our booth. ******************************************* Volunteer tasks done by chapter members are vital to the smooth operation of our chapter. Please consider volunteering for one of our positions or to back-up the incumbent. For example, we are looking for a back-up to the editor position. Please contact Sethanne Howard at sethanneh@msn.com if you are interested in helping with this. Contact Sue Neri at asn6672@aol.com if you are interested in helping with the newsletter mailing. September Meeting Program The program for the Wednesday, September 15 meeting of the Howard County Chapter of NARFE will be Meet Your Howard County State Senators and Representatives. Issues of interest to the senior citizens of Howard County will be the primary topics covered in this session. A list of topics to be discussed will be provided to each of them prior to the session this will be followed by a question and answer period. Chuck Thomas will moderate the session. Our Chapter is a co-sponsor for the Senator Ben Cardin presentation on September 8. He will speak on Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and Health Care & Education Affordability Reconciliation Act What the new Health Care Reform Law will mean for seniors Affordable Quality Health Care for All Americans Wednesday, September 8, am Vantage House Please RSVP by September 3 to Jennifer at or jordanj@vantagehouse.org The program is free, seating is limited. Protection of Federal Benefits: NARFE protected benefits by defeat of an amendment to the fiscal year 2010 House Budget Resolution that would have cut federal civilian retirement and/or health benefits by $10 billion over 10 years. Safeguards: NARFE-drafted language would safeguard the FEHBP under a plan to have OPM manage health plans for non-federal civilians (p. 8). Threatening Amendments Dropped: Proposals were dropped that would have required federal workers to join health exchanges and that would have opened the FEHBP to non-federal civilians without separate risk pools. 3

4 State Legislative Report Carole Graves State Legislative Committee (SLC) Chairman Ed Bice reports that SLC has initiated actions with regard to the September 14 primary elections and the 2011 General Assembly session beginning in January. The NARFE 2011 state legislative program was finalized and the SLC legislative pamphlet updated and reproduced. All primary candidates were sent a copy of the pamphlet with a cover letter and a survey requesting support for three priority issues. Candidates were asked if they would support the issues and whether they would sponsor or cosponsor legislation on the following SLC priorities: 1. Equalize the dollar value for the senior exemption for all seniors over age 65 or blind. 2. Allow an annual tax credit for the payment of long term care insurance. 3. Reduce the tax burden on senior homeowners. The committee mailed 526 letters, one to each candidate, with a requested return date of July 28. On July 30, SLC sent a letter and spreadsheet with the 217 responses by legislative district to the Chapter Presidents in the Federation by . Ed mentioned that some of the legislators indicated that they had co-sponsored our issues in the past. This information will be used. It was noted that House Speaker Michael Busch and Senate President Mike Miller did not respond. Members of the SLC and various chapters have attended candidates' campaign fundraisers around the state. Attending fundraisers, Bice reports, is "crucial to any success that we will have in regard to our 2011 legislative program." Dave Roseman, Political Action Committee Chairman, reports that the MD-PAC balance is $4,936.50; $2, has been collected this legislative year; 18 events have been supported at a cost of $1,

5 NARFE MEMBER AUTOBIOGRAPRIES As the new president of the Howard County Chapter of NARFE I have been asked to start a series of autobiographies to help our members get better acquainted with each other in the chapter. We will be looking for others to continue the series. I was born on a farm in Princeton, MN and graduated from Princeton High School in Following graduation from high school, I took an accounting course at a business college in St. Cloud, MN. I then went to work in the Office of the Secretary of State for the State of Minnesota for the next year. I was drafted in to the U.S. Army in May, 1953 where I served as an Army Medic for the next two years. Following my discharge from the Army, I attended St. Cloud State College, (now University) where I received my BA in Business Administration. This was a very enjoyable time in my life and where I met my Wife, Marolyn. I graduated from St. Cloud in March 1959 and we were married on June 28, I went to work for the Social Security Administration as a Claims Representative in Hibbing, MN. Marolyn taught first grade. I also spent some time in the Social Security office in Cape Girardeau, MO. We moved to MD in the spring of 1962 when I was promoted into a Management Analyst position the in the Social Security central office. I completed my MA degree in governmental administration at the George Washington University in Washington, DC in For most of the balance of my 30 years with the Social Security I managed an area where my office served as the IRS to State and local government agencies. We conducted audits of all of the States and a sample of local entities. While I was in this job I was able to travel to all of the states except Alaska and Hawaii. Our family has traveled to many other places including England and Canada. For ten years following my retirement from the federal government, I conducted Pre-Retirement Seminars for the Graduate School, USDA in Washington, D.C. While many of these we were held in Washington, D.C., others took me as far north as Buffalo, NY as far south as Miami, FL and as far west as LA CA. One of these was held in the World Trade Center in NYC, NY. For the past 16 years, I have worked as worked as a Financial Analyst in a variety of areas including the current management of an endowment fund. I have continued to be active in churches, Lions Clubs and NARFE. I was a charter member of the Carroll County Chapter of NARFE where I served in several positions, including President for two years. Early in the spring of 2005, we sold our home of 30 years in Eldersburg, MD and moved into a new condo in Clarksville. It is now apparent that we should have started downsizing about 40 years earlier. While it is a very nice condo in a convenient community, we have had difficulty parting with many memories that we have collected over the past 51 years. We now realize that our move was timely because of the health changes that I have experienced since the move. In August 2005 I was hospitalized for a few days with an inflamed pancreas. While attempting to determine the cause of this problem, I was diagnosed with a partial blockage of the main artery to the heart. This resulted in a quadruple bypass in November In June of 2009 prostate cancer was discovered and treated with 42 radiation treatments. In July of 2010, I had a sudden total kidney failure. After eight days in the Howard County General Hospital, I was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer which has spread to the liver. I am on kidney dialysis three days each week and will soon start a cycle of chemo treatments. This was not the way I had planned to end this message when first requested to start the series and your continued patience, support and prayers are sincerely requested. Bob Wesloh 5

6 Swearing in of officers at the June Luncheon 6