The following message was issued from Nelsie Birch, Chief Financial Officer for Albemarle County, on Friday, October 28, 2022:

I am writing to share that an audit of payments to the Virginia Retirement System (VRS) has revealed that an internal system error has resulted in a need to reconcile some employee VRS accounts due to an underpayment or overpayment of the required member contribution (5% of your regular pay). This will result in the need to deduct additional contributions from employees who had an insufficient amount of contributions deducted from their pay and to refund member contributions that were in excess of the required 5%. About half of our employees are impacted by this, and the predominant amount to be deducted or refunded is under $10.

If your VRS account required an adjustment of +/- $10, your October 28 paycheck (biweekly pay employees) will reflect that adjustment. If your VRS account has an adjustment of more than $10, you will receive a direct communication with further information about your adjustment schedule. If you do not see this adjustment in your 10/28 paycheck OR if you do not receive an email about an adjustment schedule, you were not affected by this system error.

We sincerely apologize for the impact of this reconciliation. It is standard practice for the Payroll Department to audit payroll deductions that occur to ensure accuracy. With any transition between systems (such as we experienced in January, when we transitioned to ADP for our payroll processing), configurations developed prior to launch can result in unexpected errors once operational. Since the completion of this audit, our team has addressed the system error that caused the incorrect contribution deductions and we do not anticipate any further impacts to employee pay.

Sincerely,

Nelsie L. Birch
Chief Financial Officer
Albemarle County
nbirch@albemarle.org
434-296-5855 x3500