Another bill emerges to let New Jersey politicians back into the state pension system – POLITICO Magazine

There’s a new effort underway in Trenton to reopen New Jersey’s pension system to politicians.

State Sen. Joe Cryan (D-Union) introduced legislation Monday that would allow politicians who held pensionable public jobs before they were elected to a public office to re-enroll in the system from which they‘ve been barred for almost 14 years.

The bill, introduced in the midst of the lame duck session, would partially reverse a pension reform law enacted during former Gov. Jon Corzine’s administration. Under that law, officials elected after July 1, 2007, were not enrolled in the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS), but shifted instead to a less-generous retirement plan similar to a 401(k).

Cryan’s legislation, NJ S4250, comes amid several earlier efforts to tinker with eligibility for New Jersey’s pension system — which has been deeply underfunded for decades — and health benefits. Some of the bills roll back reforms instituted because of the system’s decades-long underfunding. The current state budget makes the first full pension payment since 1996.

Last month, Middlesex County Democrats introduced legislation intended to allow Carteret Councilmember Raymond “Randy” Krum to collect a pension for the Turnpike Authority job he retired from this month while serving on the council.

In September, Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law a bill that allows county prosecutors back into the pension system while moving staff prosecutors hired after 2010 into the more generous pension system those hired before then enjoy. The Legislature has also fast-tracked a bill, NJ S4098 (20R), to allow Judge Glenn A. Grant to defer his pension so he can remain as administrative director of the courts beyond mandatory retirement age of 70.

The latest proposal is perhaps most similar to a law signed by Gov. Chris Christie in early 2018 that was designed to allow former Camden Mayor Dana Redd back into the first-tier of the pension system just as she was hired for a $275,000-a-year job on an obscure university governing board. Another bill aimed at boosting the pension for Assemblymember Ralph Caputo’s (D-Essex) failed after two attempts to get the Legislature to consider it.

Under Cryan’s bill, politicians who were enrolled in PERS for at least 10 years prior to their post-2007 elections would be allowed back into PERS, but only if they have at least 10 years of “continuous service in one or more elective offices in this state.”

It’s not clear how many politicians the bill would apply to, and Cryan — who is also executive director of the Middlesex County Utilities Authority — did not to go into specifics when reached by phone, though he said it would not affect his own pension.

“The point has been raised in terms of some members’ service, and this bill is intended to promote that discussion,” he said.

But the bill may affect Cryan’s longtime running mate, Assemblymember Annette Quijano (D-Union).

Quijano worked for years as an attorney in three Democratic gubernatorial administrations and prior to that held various Union County jobs before she was first named to the Assembly by Union County Democratic Committee members in 2008 to replace former Assemblymember Neil Cohen, who resigned after being caught with child porn.

Quijano, who according to the Assembly Democratic office has a severe case of bronchitis, did not return a phone call and text message seeking comment.

Assemblymember Ned Thomson (R-Monmouth), who served as a PERS trustee from 1995 to 2017, said the bill is obviously aimed at specific members and jokingly compared it to something addressing “a company that incorporated in Nevada on 1861 on a Wednesday.”

“Once you start chipping away at the dike, eventually the dike’s going to break,” Thomson said. “So when someone says to me, ‘It’s not going to cost so much,’ it’s death by a thousand cuts. The system is on its way but it’s nowhere near [fully funded].”

The Senate Democratic office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the bill’s prospects. A companion bill has not yet been introduced in the Assembly.