5 U.S.C. § 8461 — Authority of the Office of Personnel Management

(a) The Office pays all benefits owed under subchapters II, IV, V, and VI of this chapter, out of the Fund. (b) The Office runs every part of this chapter that is not specifically assigned to the Board, the Executive Director, the Secretary of Labor, or another officer or agency. (c) The Office decides all claims filed under the parts of this chapter it administers. (d) The Office decides questions about disability and dependency. Except as (e) allows, the Office's decisions on these questions are final and cannot be reviewed. The Office can order medical or other exams whenever needed to check disability or dependency facts, and can suspend or deny an annuity if someone refuses an exam. (e) An administrative action affecting someone's rights under this chapter can normally be appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board, under the Board's own procedures. But if the Office found someone disabled based partly or entirely on a mental condition, in a case where an agency applied for that person's disability retirement under section 8451, different procedures (from section 7701) apply instead, and the Board's decision can be reviewed in court under section 7703. (f) The Office sets the fees paid to non-government doctors who perform exams under subchapter V. Those fees and their reasonable travel expenses are paid from the money appropriated to administer this chapter. (g) The Office may write regulations to carry out the parts of this chapter it administers. (h) Every government agency must give the Director whatever information the Director needs to run this chapter. The Director, working with the agencies providing that information, must set up safeguards ensuring the information is used only for that authorized purpose. (i) When figuring "actuarial equivalence" under this chapter, the Office must use the same economic assumptions it most recently used to set the System's normal-cost percentage. (j) Despite anything else in this chapter, the Director of Central Intelligence may — to the extent the Director thinks appropriate, and consistent with how the Office runs this chapter — handle CIA employees' benefits directly: deciding entitlement, keeping records, computing benefits, collecting deposits from CIA employees and their families, authorizing payments from the Fund, and performing other functions (except under subchapters III and VII) for CIA employees. The Office must give the CIA Director whatever information and, on a reimbursed basis, services the Director needs for this. (k) The CIA Director, working with the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board's Executive Director, may keep separate Thrift Savings Plan records for CIA employees, have their contributions accounted for in aggregate by the Executive Director, make the needed disbursements and earnings allocations to their individual accounts, and perform other Thrift Savings Plan functions for them — except investing the money itself. The Executive Director cannot exercise this authority over CIA employees to the extent the CIA Director is already exercising it, and must give the CIA Director whatever information and reimbursed services are needed. (l) When applying subsection (h)(1) and sections 8439(b) and 8474(c)(4) to CIA employee information, it must be done in a way that protects intelligence sources, methods, and activities. (m) The CIA Director, working with the Office and the Thrift Board's Executive Director, must write regulations carrying out subsections (j), (k), and (l). Those regulations must let the Office inspect and audit disbursements from the Fund under this chapter. The CIA Director must send the regulations to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees before they take effect. (n) An employee who has not already made this election, and who moves — without a service break of more than a year — into a nonappropriated fund job at the Defense Department or Coast Guard, may irrevocably elect within 30 days to stay covered by this chapter during that new job. Separately, an employee already in one of those nonappropriated fund retirement systems who moves out of that kind of job (without a break of more than a year), is not eligible under section 8347(q), and has not already made this election, may irrevocably elect within 30 days to keep their old nonappropriated-fund retirement system covering their new job, instead of switching to this chapter.