Long Island Federal Service: Northport VA, the FAA, and Long-Service FERS

Long Island specifics

Start by confirming that you are actually a federal employee

This sounds like a strange place to start, and it is the most useful paragraph on the page. The largest federal-sounding employer on Long Island does not put its staff in the Federal Employees Retirement System at all.

Where you work	Who actually employs you	Retirement system
Northport VA Medical Center	Department of Veterans Affairs	FERS
FAA New York TRACON at Westbury, and the Farmingdale, Garden City and Islip offices	Federal Aviation Administration	FERS, with special provisions for controllers
The federal courthouse at Central Islip	The United States Courts, Eastern District of New York	FERS for court, probation and pretrial staff. Article III judges are on a separate scheme entirely
Plum Island Animal Disease Center	Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology, with the Department of Agriculture	FERS
Brookhaven National Laboratory	Brookhaven Science Associates, under a contract with the Department of Energy	Not FERS. A 401(a) plan and a 401(k), both through TIAA

If you work at the Laboratory, none of the FERS material below applies to you. Your retirement is a defined contribution retirement: an employer contribution of 9% of base salary, or 10% if you were hired before 2011, plus whatever you put into the 401(k). That is a different set of decisions with a different set of deadlines, and the corporate page is the closer fit.

The distinction matters more than it sounds. Someone who has spent thirty years at the Laboratory and expects a federal annuity to arrive is planning around money that does not exist.

Locality pay is 37.95% here, and it counts toward your high-3

Nassau and Suffolk are both inside the New York-Newark locality pay area, and for 2026 the locality payment is 37.95%. That is not a bonus sitting alongside your salary. The Office of Personnel Management treats a locality rate as basic pay for retirement deductions and benefits, which means all of it flows into the figure your annuity is built on.

Your annuity is built on your high-3: the highest average basic pay you earned during any three consecutive years of service. Three consecutive years, not necessarily the last three, and not necessarily aligned to calendar years. Overtime, bonuses and cash awards do not count. A locality increase does.

2026, New York-Newark locality area	Annual rate
GS-13 step 1	$125,431
GS-15 step 10	$197,200, capped at Executive Schedule Level IV

The cap at the top of GS-15 is worth naming because it is a real ceiling on a high-3. Once the table rate plus locality would exceed Executive Schedule Level IV, the excess is not paid and therefore is never in your basic pay. An employee sitting at the cap for the last three years has a high-3 that has stopped growing, and the only remaining levers are service credit and the retirement date.

If you control air traffic, most of the general rules do not apply to you

The New York TRACON at Westbury is one of the busiest air traffic facilities in the country, and controllers are covered by the special retirement provisions rather than the ordinary FERS rules. Four differences matter.

• You can retire far earlier. Unreduced at age 50 with 20 years of service, or at any age with 25 years.
• The formula is better for the first twenty years. 1.7% of the high-3 for each of the first 20 years, then 1% for each year after that. Ordinary FERS is 1% throughout.
• You do not choose the date. A controller with 20 years of service must be separated on the last day of the month in which they reach age 56. Everything else has to be planned backwards from a date that is already fixed.
• The earnings test on the supplement is suspended. The reduction for excess earnings does not apply to controllers, law enforcement officers, firefighters or military reserve technicians until they reach their Minimum Retirement Age. A controller who retires at 52 and takes a second job keeps the supplement in full for several years.

There is a fourth thing that is easy to miss on the Thrift Savings Plan side. For most federal employees the 10% additional tax on an early withdrawal goes away only if they separate in or after the year they turn 55. For a public safety employee, which includes air traffic controllers, it goes away on separation in or after the year they reach age 50, or once they have 25 years of service. On a career that ends at 52, that is the difference between reaching the money and not.

The probation and pretrial services officers at the Central Islip courthouse are federal law enforcement officers for retirement purposes, so most of this section applies to them too.

The survivor election, priced

This is one election, made once, on the retirement application, and it is the most expensive single choice on the page.

Election	What your spouse receives	What it costs you
Maximum survivor annuity	50% of your earned annuity	Your annuity is reduced by 10%
Partial survivor annuity	25% of your unreduced earned annuity	Your annuity is reduced by 5%
None	Nothing, and their health insurance ends	No reduction

Read the third row twice. Electing no survivor annuity does not only end the income. It ends your spouse’s ability to continue Federal Employees Health Benefits coverage after your death. A household that declines the survivor annuity to keep 10% of the annuity has also, in the same signature, cancelled a surviving spouse’s health insurance. That is rarely what anyone intended, and it cannot be fixed afterwards.

Put a number on it before you decide. On a high-3 of $150,000 with 30 years of service, the basic annuity is $45,000 a year at 1%, or $49,500 at 1.1%. The maximum survivor election costs 10% of that, so roughly $4,500 to $4,950 a year, and it buys a survivor roughly $22,500 to $24,750 a year for life, plus the continuation of health coverage. Whether that is a good trade depends on ages, health and what else the household holds, which is exactly the calculation worth doing on paper rather than in your head at the retirement seminar.

New York tax: the annuity is exempt, and the Thrift Savings Plan is an open question

New York is unusually generous to federal retirees and unusually quiet about one part of it.

• Your FERS annuity is fully exempt from New York income tax. Pensions of the United States are subtracted in full, with no age requirement and no dollar cap.
• Social Security is fully exempt, and so is Railroad Retirement, by federal preemption.
• Private pensions, 401(k), 403(b), 457 and IRA distributions get the $20,000 pension and annuity exclusion from age 59 and a half, and no more than that.

Which leaves the question a Long Island federal employee with a seven-figure Thrift Savings Plan balance actually needs answered: which of those two rows does a TSP withdrawal fall into? We could not find New York’s published guidance saying. The instructions to Form IT-225 name government 457 plans explicitly and say they do not qualify for the federal pension subtraction, but qualify for the $20,000 exclusion instead. They do not mention the Thrift Savings Plan at all, in either direction, and neither does the Department of Taxation and Finance’s page for retired persons.

On a $1 million balance drawn down over twenty years the difference between full exemption and a $20,000 exclusion is a large number, so this is worth getting in writing from the Department or from your preparer before the first withdrawal year, rather than discovering the answer on an assessment notice. We are not going to guess at it here.

Property tax is the other Long Island number, and it is a number federal retirees can leave on the table. Enhanced STAR, Basic STAR and the senior citizens exemption under Real Property Tax Law section 467 are all income tested, and the tests differ from each other. The New York retirement taxes page sets out which is which.

The Social Security Fairness Act probably did nothing for you

This needs saying plainly because a great deal of confident misinformation circulated after the law passed. The Social Security Fairness Act of 2023 repealed the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset, effective for benefits payable from January 2024.

Neither of those provisions ever applied to FERS service. FERS employees pay Social Security taxes on their federal wages, so a FERS annuity is not a pension from non-covered employment and never triggered either rule. A career FERS employee gets nothing from the Act. The federal employees who did benefit are those under the older Civil Service Retirement System.

There is one place it can still reach a Long Island household, and it is worth checking rather than assuming. If you or your spouse holds a pension from employment that was not covered by Social Security, including public employment in another state, that pension may have been reducing a Social Security benefit and may no longer be. Most New York State and local public employment is covered by Social Security, so most households here saw no change, but the check takes one phone call and the answer is occasionally worth several hundred dollars a month.

How FERS works

You have three parts, not one

Everything above is the part that carries the most money. What follows is the reference material: the rules that apply to every FERS employee, in the order they usually come up.

FERS pays from three places and they arrive on three different calendars. The basic annuity, which the Office of Personnel Management pays monthly for life. The Thrift Savings Plan, which pays whatever you tell it to and nothing you do not. And Social Security, which you claim separately, on your own timing, between 62 and 70. A retirement plan that treats these as one pot will be wrong about at least two of them.

Your Minimum Retirement Age depends on the year you were born

Your Minimum Retirement Age, the MRA, is not 55 for anyone retiring now.

Year of birth	Minimum Retirement Age
Before 1948	55
1948 to 1952	55 plus 2 months per year of birth, reaching 55 and 10 months
1953 to 1964	56
1965 to 1969	56 plus 2 months per year of birth, reaching 56 and 10 months
1970 and later	57

There are four ways to retire immediately, and one of them is penalized

An immediate annuity, meaning one that starts within 30 days of separation, is available four ways:

• Age 62 with 5 years of service
• Age 60 with 20 years
• Your MRA with 30 years
• Your MRA with 10 years, and this one is reduced. See the next section.

MRA plus 10 is the trap, and postponing can be the answer

Retiring at the MRA with at least 10 but fewer than 30 years of service produces a permanent reduction of 5% for every year you are under 62. That is five twelfths of 1% for each full month. Someone leaving at 57 takes a 25% cut, for life, on every payment.

There is an exception worth knowing: the reduction does not apply if you have 20 years of service and the annuity starts at 60 or later. And there is an alternative. Instead of taking the reduced annuity now, you can separate and postpone the start of the annuity to a later age, which reduces or removes the reduction entirely. Postponing also lets you re-enter Federal Employees Health Benefits when the annuity begins, which a deferred annuity does not.

If your service is short and the alternative is a deferred annuity rather than a postponed one, the health insurance consequence can be the deciding factor rather than the annuity arithmetic.

The FERS Annuity Supplement, and who does not get it

Between the day you retire and the month you turn 62, FERS pays a supplement that approximates the Social Security benefit you are earning but cannot yet claim. It is not a bonus and it is not Social Security. It is a bridge, and it is the piece to plan around carefully.

• Who gets it: anyone with at least one full calendar year of FERS service who retires on an immediate annuity before 62.
• Who does not: anyone retiring at 62 or later, anyone on an MRA plus 10 annuity, anyone on a deferred annuity, and disability retirees.
• How much: roughly your age-62 Social Security amount, multiplied by your years of FERS civilian service divided by 40, capped at 40.
• The earnings test: above the Social Security annual exempt amount, $24,480 in 2026, the supplement is reduced by $1 for every $2 of earned income. Only earned income counts. Your annuity, your Thrift Savings Plan withdrawals and your investment income do not.
• When it stops: the last day of the month in which you reach 62. It stops whether or not you have claimed Social Security, so the gap between 62 and whenever you actually claim has to be funded from somewhere else.

That last point produces a specific and avoidable mistake. Someone who retires at 57, lives comfortably on the annuity plus the supplement, and plans to delay Social Security to 70 for the higher benefit, has an eight-year hole starting on their sixty-second birthday. The plan can still be right. It just has to be funded on purpose.

The 1.1% multiplier, and why one more year can be worth 10%

The basic annuity is 1% of your high-3 for each year of service. It becomes 1.1% if, and only if, you are at least 62 at separation and have at least 20 years of service. Both conditions, at the same moment.

That is a 10% increase in every payment for the rest of your life, and it turns on a birthday and a service anniversary. Someone separating at 61 and 11 months with 25 years gives up 10% permanently, for the sake of one month.

Unused sick leave counts toward the 20 years for this purpose. The Office of Personnel Management has said so directly: a retiree who is at least 62, whose actual service is under 20 years but rises to at least 20 with unused sick leave credit, has the annuity computed using the 1.1% formula. If you are close, the sick leave balance is worth checking before you pick a date.

Health insurance in retirement: the five-year rule

To carry Federal Employees Health Benefits into retirement you must have been continuously enrolled, or covered as a family member, in any FEHB plan for the five years of service immediately before the annuity starts, or for the full period since your first opportunity to enrol if that is shorter.

Two things inside that sentence save people. It does not have to be the same plan, so switching plans at open season costs you nothing. And coverage as a family member on a spouse’s federal enrollment counts, so a household with two federal careers has more flexibility than it thinks.

One thing inside it catches people. The five years are the five years immediately before retirement. Dropping coverage at 58 because a spouse’s private plan was cheaper, and re-enrolling at 61, does not satisfy it. There is effectively no waiver, and the coverage is worth far more than the premium that was saved.

FEGLI at retirement: three elections, and one of them is free at 65

Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance can be carried into retirement if you retire on an immediate annuity, are enrolled at retirement, have been continuously enrolled for the five years immediately before retirement or since first eligible, and have not converted to a private policy.

At retirement you elect what happens to Basic coverage:

• 75% reduction. Coverage falls by 2% a month until 25% of the original amount remains. Premiums stop at 65. This is the default most people take, and for most people it is right.
• 50% reduction. Coverage falls by 1% a month until half remains. There is an extra premium before 65.
• No reduction. Coverage stays at the full amount and the extra premium continues after 65, permanently.

Option B is the one worth pricing carefully rather than defaulting. Its premiums rise steeply with age, and a retiree who elects no reduction on several multiples of Option B can find the cost overtaking the value of the cover. If life insurance is doing real work in the plan, it is worth comparing the FEGLI cost against what the same cover would cost elsewhere, which is what the life insurance needs calculator is for.

The Thrift Savings Plan in retirement

The Thrift Savings Plan pays four ways in retirement: partial distributions of at least $1,000, a total distribution, installments monthly, quarterly or annually, or the purchase of a life annuity. The annuity purchase is irrevocable, which is reason enough to model it before signing rather than after.

• The age 55 rule, and why a rollover can destroy it. Withdrawals are free of the 10% additional tax if you separate from service during or after the year you reach 55. It is the year you turn 55 and the fact of separation that matter, not the age on the day you withdraw. The exception belongs to the Thrift Savings Plan and does not survive a rollover to an individual retirement account. Someone who retires at 56 and rolls the balance out has just put the money behind a 59 and a half wall.
• Air traffic controllers and other public safety employees get the same relief on separation in or after the year they reach 50, or once they have 25 years of service.
• A Roth balance needs two tests, not one. A qualified distribution requires five years since 1 January of the year of your first Roth contribution, and that you have reached 59 and a half, are permanently disabled, or have died. Meeting one without the other is not enough.
• Required minimum distributions begin at 73, rising to 75 from 2033. Roth balances in the plan are no longer subject to them during your lifetime.
• From 2026, catch-up contributions must be Roth for anyone whose prior year FICA wages exceeded $150,000. At Long Island locality pay that captures most of GS-14 and all of GS-15, so it is not a niche rule here.

Unused sick leave counts, but only for the computation

Unused sick leave increases your total creditable service for the annuity computation only. Since 2014 it counts in full. It cannot make you eligible to retire, and it cannot move your retirement date, but it does raise the annuity, and as noted above it can carry you across the 20-year line for the 1.1% multiplier.

The practical consequence is that a large sick leave balance is worth money and a large annual leave balance is worth cash. They are not the same asset and they should not be spent the same way in a final year.

Rules and figures on this page are from the Office of Personnel Management, the Thrift Savings Plan, the Social Security Administration and the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, checked 15 September 2026. LI Retirement is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of the Office of Personnel Management, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Thrift Savings Plan or Brookhaven National Laboratory. Those names are used only to identify the rules being described.