On Monday, the General Assembly approved A-6024. This bill, along with its Senate companion S-4297 would create an additional category of service retirement for Police Fire Retirement System (PFRS) employees. Under the bill, a PFRS employee who is enrolled before or after the bill’s effective date may retire, regardless of age, upon attaining 20 or more years of service credit and would receive a retirement allowance equal to 50% of the member’s final compensation.
The December 12 statement from the Assembly Appropriations Committee on the Assembly companion bill, A-6024 included a fiscal impact analysis, which was prepared by the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services (OLS). The OLS analysis stated that the bill "...will have a significant, indeterminate fiscal impact, likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars, on both the State and local portions of the PFRS pension funds and the unfunded liability costs that would be charged to the State and local government entities to fund the unfunded liability created by the bill.” The public safety unions pushing this legislation and whose members benefit from this change have countered with their own analysis, challenging the OLS conclusions.
The League has stated its opposition to the bill, which now may be considered by the Senate Budget and Appropriations committee in early January. The League will review all data and analysis related to the bill and report back to you, but in the meanwhile, we ask that you bring these concerns to your State Senator in a timely fashion. There is a blog post at League’s Town Crier blog with more information.
Contact: Lori Buckelew, Senior Legislative Analyst, lbuckelew@njlm.org, 609-695-3481 x112.