{"id":65007,"date":"2025-08-07T11:47:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T11:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/65007\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T11:47:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T11:47:17","slug":"wahoo-area-retiree-gets-full-pension-restored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/65007\/","title":{"rendered":"Wahoo-area retiree gets full pension restored"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) &#8211; In June, First Alert 6 reported on an error mistakenly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wowt.com\/2025\/06\/26\/glitch-system-costs-senior-citizen-thousands\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wowt.com\/2025\/06\/26\/glitch-system-costs-senior-citizen-thousands\/\">deducting money from a government pension<\/a> &#8211; now there are results.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Donna Novotny suffers from a communication disorder called Aphasia. In June, her husband Don spent hours on hold with a federal agency trying to get an error corrected with her pension.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe longest I\u2019ve been on hold is eight hours,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Now, he\u2019s glad that he didn\u2019t take the lack of communication lying down and contacted First Alert 6 for help.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cAfter you contacted people, we got action,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">A deduction mistake cost Donna Novotny a large portion of her pension and the retired small-town postmaster said federal officials failed to deliver on promises to fix the error and refund the money.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cBecause I\u2019m supposed to be getting what I\u2019m supposed to get,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The U.S. Office of Personnel Management had been automatically deducting $840 a month from Donna\u2019s pension for private health insurance she couldn\u2019t use because the postal service switched her to Medicare.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">But not before $5,700 had been incorrectly deducted from her pension.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201dWe fought for six months and got no answers from anybody, and in four days they corrected it all and started the refund,&#8221; Don said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">First Alert 6 contacted Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon\u2019s office and his constituent staff sent proof to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management that the mistaken deductions from the federal pension should be stopped and money refunded.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cGovernment absolutely did the right thing this time. It did take a little bit of time, but we\u2019re glad we got some resolution,\u201d said Danielle Jensen, Bacon\u2019s communications director.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201dWe work with constituents to make sure they give us the proper paperwork&#8230; email trails they have so we can submit it to the proper agency,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Though Donna may sometimes lose her train of thought, she said regaining her full pension eases financial stress on the couple in their retirement years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201dAll our monthly stuff is working out great, thank you,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Bacon has a website that provides a link for constituents to use for getting help in dealing with a federal agency at <a href=\"https:\/\/bacon.house.gov\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/bacon.house.gov\">bacon.house.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 WOWT. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) &#8211; In June, First Alert 6 reported on an error mistakenly deducting money from a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,1340,47929,26195,47926,2421,7231,6270,47924,7617,147,530,47928,31893,47927,47925],"class_list":["post-65007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-congress","tag-danielle-jensen","tag-don-bacon","tag-donna-novotny","tag-federal-government","tag-house","tag-investigation","tag-mcknight","tag-pension","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-personnel-management","tag-postal-service","tag-postmaster","tag-wahoo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}