This market resolves based on whether federal employees who accept the January 2025 deferred resignation offer receive their full promised compensation and benefits through their resignation date (September 30, 2025 or earlier if they choose).
Resolves YES if all accepting employees receive their full promised compensation and benefits through their resignation date.
Resolves NO if there is any legislation, executive order, or other action that reduces or eliminates the promised compensation/benefits for those who accepted the offer.
This question should act as a guide to a federal worker making a decision today, so the relevant question for resolution is whether someone who accepts will end up thinking "I got stiffed".
Sources:
Update 2025-01-29 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): - Resolves YES even if a handful of resigning employees are fired before September 30.
Resolves NO if there is a successful effort to deny a substantial number of employees their full compensation and benefits.
Update 2025-01-29 (PST): - Resolves NO if employees are left waiting a long time for their compensation and benefits, leading to dissatisfaction with the offer. (AI summary of creator comment)
1,000
3.00Commentary from a federal HR professional who thinks there's no Anti-Deficiency Act problem...this somewhat shifted my view
Administrative law professor:
David Super
Well, one question is whether they’ll actually do it. They’re certainly promising it. But they’ve also suggested that they may not be bound by contracts.
So it’s very possible that people will submit their resignation on this basis, that OPM [Office of Personnel Management] will sign them to contracts committing that, and then will simply not comply, and will argue that they can’t legally comply because of the cap on administrative leave.
At that point the people who were foolish enough to take this invitation may sue to try to enforce their deals. And my guess is the courts will say, we can’t enforce the deal that no one had any authority to make.
https://www.vox.com/politics/398618/elon-musk-doge-illegal-lawbreaking-analysis
I asked ChatGPT o1 about this, I found the answer useful https://chatgpt.com/share/679d1628-c9f4-800c-8f57-ea665bf733b7
It's not even clear there's a legal commitment being made, here. The 'buyout' takes the form for administrative leave for months, which is illegal - there's a 10 day annual maximum. I think this is vastly overpriced but I've hit my limit of how much I'm willing to stake on that.
@JiSK pursuant to 5 cfr 630.1404(a), the cap on administrative leave relates only to the purpose of conducting an investigation. “The 10-workday limit does not apply to administrative leave for other purposes”.
@AriScott I looked into it and you seem to be right. Frustrating that so many people, including administrative law professors, have been repeating it.
@Aevylmar As before, the guide to resolution is based on what a federal employee considering the offer would want to know. By September 30, employees will surely know whether they got what they were supposed to get? If they don't get it, or they get it but they're under a cloud of maybe having to return it, that's a NO.
@PaulCrowley I don't actually think we can be that confident about that! I put a lot of weight on "there are arguments in courts about what full benefits mean" or otherwise ambiguous resolution criteria, probably a ten or fifteen percentage point possibility, though I'd want to investigate more to be confident about that, and I would not be surprised if such a thing ends up stuck in the courts for a year or more.
@Aevylmar I think if they end up waiting a long time they will be pretty pissed off about taking the deal and that warrants a NO resolution.
The deal is awfully similar to the one Elon made to twitter employees. Who apparently then sued after not getting their severance. Eventually they lost the lawsuit.
Also there is no money right now to pay those 8 months of obligations. Since congress has passed a continuing resolution with funding only until March 14th 2025. Where exactly is the rest of it going to come from?
On top of that, the law limits administrative leave to 10 days per calendar year? It just doesn’t make sense. It’s likely that they weasel out of not paying or just fire the people who already agreed to resign due to some loophole or technicality.
@DanielGlasscock Yeah, this market seems crazy high to me. There's ALREADY a lawsuit and unrelated legal doubts about whether he can do this. And the precedent with Elon's severance offers apparently not being paid.
@DanielGlasscock Yeah, expecting to get paid by the "doesn't pay his bills" millionaire, when it's not even a legal offer as stated, is kind of insane.
@Quroe If a handful of resigning employees are fired before Sept 30, it will resolve YES, but if in my judgement there's a successful effort to deny a lot of employees their full compensation it resolves NO. The purpose of this market is to guide those deciding whether to accept the offer, so the resolution will reflect that.