Human Resources

SIUE may not be required to repay the SURS annuity in rare cases as listed below.

• If the retired employee is rehired as a status Civil Service employee. Extra help Civil Service positons are not status positions.
• If the employee is paid from federal, foundation, trust, or corporate funds, or state grants in which the principle investigator is named. In these cases, the portion of the rehired employee’s salary paid by grant funds is excluded when verifying if the employee has been paid at or above the 40% limit. For example, if the employee is going to be paid $30,000 and 50% of that salary will be paid from grant funds, only $15,000 is considered when verifying if the employee has been paid at or above the 40% limit. The portion paid by grant funds does not count against the 40% annual earnings limit. However, for the rehired retiree, the grant paid portion is included when calculating the personal limitation.
• If SIUE needed to rehire a retiree in order to continue “critical operations in the event of an employee’s unforeseen illness, accident, death, or catastrophic incident or disaster”, SIUE would not have to pay SURS the retirement annuity. In this case, the rehired retiree could not work any longer than a year for this exemption to be valid. SIUE would also have to provide proof of the critical operation need to the university in order to support this emergent hire.

Departments should confirm these exceptions with the Office of Human Resources to be sure the exceptions apply.