New Jersey Public Safety Officers Law Blog : New Jersey Public Safety Employee Lawyer & Attorney : Pellettieri, Rabstein & Altman Law Firm : Workers Compensation, Discipline Representation for Police & Firefighters : New Jersey

As reported by nj.com, the state’s highest ranking government officials will not be getting a raise any time soon. Republican legislative leaders and Governor Chris Christie’s office announced they would withhold appointments to a seven-member commission that meets every four years to set salaries for a broad range of officials from the governor on down. The move by the governor, Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr., and Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce deprives the panel, known as the Public Officers Salary Review Commission, of the quorum it needs to function.

A spokesman for the governor, Michael Drewniak, said the officials, including the governor, lawmakers, cabinet officials, state Superior Court judges, state Supreme Court justices, and several other positions, will have to wait at least four more years for a raise. Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver withdrew their appointments to the panel as well. Winnie Comfort, a spokeswoman for the state judiciary, said Chief Justice Stuart Rabner made an appointment to the panel, but there was no need to withdraw it.

New Jersey lawmakers earn $49,000 a year with the exception of the Senate President and Assembly Speaker who make $65,333. Lawmakers last received a raise in 2002, when their salaries rose from $35,000 to $49,000, according to the librarian of the Office of Legislative Services, Peter Mazzei. Cabinet officials, who earn $141,000, also got their last raise in 2002. Judicial salaries, which range from $165,000 for Superior Court trial judges to $192,795 for the Supreme Court Chief Justice, last went up in 2009.  

The lack of a salary increase means high-level state employees will not be able to offset an increase in the cost of benefits, which takes effect October 14. The increase, recently approved by the Legislature and signed into law by Christie, has the highest-paid workers contributing as much as 30 percent of their health benefit premiums.

In July, state Superior Court Judge Paul DePascale filed a lawsuit against the controversial overhaul of pension and health benefits, contending it unconstitutionally “diminishes” judges’ salaries. A group of state employees who filed a separate lawsuit against the new law hopes to combine the two legal actions.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

As reported by nj.com, a group of state employees challenging the constitutionality of New Jersey’s new law covering pension and health benefits wants to combine their lawsuit to the one brought by a Superior Court judge. The employees said the lawsuit filed by Judge Paul DePacale was similar to the one filed on their behalf and that the two should be consolidated in challenging the pension and health benefits law that went into effect June 28.

However, lawyers for DePascale and those identified as Defendants insist the cases are not closely enough related to warrant consolidation and are asking Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg to keep them separate. Feinberg, the assignment judge in Mercer County, is expected to issue a ruling on the request on October 5.

DePascale, the first to file suit over the state’s new pension and health benefits package, contends the changes are unconstitutional because they run counter to the state Constitution, which prohibits the salaries of Supreme Court justices and Superior Court judges from being “diminished” while in office. The new law, enacted June 28 but which will largely take effect October 14, phases in the pension contributions of judges from 3 percent to 7 percent of their annual salaries over seven years.

Judges current contribute 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health care benefits. The new law requires them to pay 35 percent of the premium cost. DePascale has said that would more than double his contribution toward health benefits to $5,230.86.

For the employees, the contributions are structured differently than those of judges. Contributions are on a sliding scale based on salary. In a seven count complaint, the employees contend the new law violates the State Constitution by denying their right to organize and present grievances through their unions. In addition, they contend the legislation unfairly creates classes of employees by requiring them to contribute different amounts for the same health benefits. They also claim the law creates an unconstitutional tax on their base salaries.

DePascale’s lawyer says the cases are only “tangentially” related and opposes the consolidation. In court papers, DePascale asserts the state Constitution addresses the salaries of judges and justices, but not other judicial employees. Attorneys for the Senate and Assembly said consolidation would be unfair because DePascale has not identified them as defendants in his lawsuit. Finally, attorneys for the State, the Treasury Department, and the State Treasurer said the cases should not be consolidated because they are seeking to dismiss DePascale’s suit, but have not taken that action against the others.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

As reported by nj.com, leaked audio from Governor Chris Christie’s closed-door speech to conservative donors in Colorado gives new details on the heated final days in the battle to cut public employee benefits. In particular, Christie said Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver personally asked him for Republican support to stay in power if dissident Democrats tried to oust her to stop the cuts. The Christie delivered, asking surprised members of his own party to cross the aisle and back Oliver if there was a coup attempt.

A coup never materialized, and public employee benefits were cut in June, one of the signature accomplishments of Christie’s administration so far. But, the episode raised questions about whether Oliver will have enough support to stay on as speaker after two-year term ends in January.

A transcript of the audio was posted online by a reporter from the magazine Mother Jones. The recording was made during an event hosted by the Koch brothers, two wealthy conservatives, on June 26, three days after the Assembly approved benefit cuts and two days before Christie signed the bill. The governor did not disclose that he left the state to attend the event.

Christie confirmed the account during an unrelated press conference in Atlantic City yesterday. Oliver, however, said in no uncertain terms that the conversation with Christie never happened. “Governor Christie is making an assertion that I called him and asked him for his help in retaining my speakership? Governor Christie is more mentally deranged than some of us though. Never happened,” she said.

Christie said Oliver told him: “I want to post the bill but I think when I go on the floor, my own party’s going to take a run at me to remove me as speaker. So I can’t post the bill.” Then she added, according to Christie: “I think the only way I survive is if the 33 Republicans in the chamber will agree to vote for me for speaker. Can you work it out?”

The governor then went to talk to Republican Assembly members, who were in a closed-door caucus meeting. Christie said he told them: “Probably for the only time in my governorship I’m going to actually ask you to vote for a Democrat…So if they take a run at her on the floor, I need all of you to vote for her for speaker.”

Christie said Republicans were surprised, but the governor insisted keeping Oliver in power was necessary to get the bill passed. “Are you with me or aren’t you?” Christie recalled asking. “All 33 of them raised their hands and said they were with me.”

Christie said he went back to his office and called Oliver. “You just got 33 new votes,” he said he told her. Oliver responded, “Well, you just got yourself a bill.” The bill passed the Assembly on June 23.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

As reported by nj.com, two dozen Middlesex County police departments will share $120,000 in funds confiscated from criminals to develop community policing programs, Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan said. The grants will be used to create programs that enhance public awareness and combat such crimes as bias intimidation, bullying and vandalism.

The prosecutor said 22 municipal police departments, the Rutgers University Police Department, and the Middlesex County Sheriff’s Department will each receive a $5,000 “Law Enforcement Response to Community Concerns Grant.” Kaplan, with approval from the Office of the Attorney General, is allocating $120,000 from funds that were seized from criminal defendants who had obtained proceeds through illegal activities such as selling drugs.

The municipal departments are: Carteret, Dunellen, East Brunswick, Edison, Helmetta, Highland Park, Metuchen, Middlesex Borough, Milltown, Monroe, New Brunswick, North Brunswick, Old Bridge, Perth Amboy, Piscataway, Plainsboro, Sayreville, South Brunswick, South Plainfield, South River, Spotswood, and Woodbridge.

The program is sponsored by the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office and the Middlesex County Board of Chosen Freeholders. “These grants can help protect and improve the quality of life for all the citizens of Middlesex County,” Kaplan said. “This has always been a goal of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.”

In order to qualify for a grant, each police department was required to develop a plan that seeks to deal with a quality-of-life issue, such as curbing graffiti, criminal mischief, bullying, or bias-related crime. “Our goal is for our residents to have safe communities to live in, to work in and to play in,” Freeholder Ronald G. Rios, chair of the county’s Law and Public Safety Committee.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

As reported by nj.com, dozens of unions and public workers filed suit against the newly enacted pension and health benefit overhaul in federal court yesterday. The 58-page, 17-count suit charges the state violated the state and federal constitutions by suspending cost of living adjustments for at least 30 years, failing to make full payments into the pension system for the last decade, and handing administration of the systems to committees. The suit, whose plaintiffs include the NJEA, the CWA, and all the major public safety unions, charges that the law is a “violation of substantive and procedural due process rights.”  

“This lawsuit is about basic fairness and justice. Governor Christie and the Legislature passed a law which illegally takes away benefits that school employees and other have already earned through their service to the people of New Jersey,” said NJEA President Barbara Keshishian. “Perhaps most troubling is that this legislation amounts to a classic ‘bait and switch’ for current retirees. These are people who worked their entire careers believing in the promise that their pension benefits would be honored. They’ve already retired, and are living on a fixed income. Now they’re being told that the state is reneging on its promise.”

The law, pushed through the Legislature with the help of Democratic legislative leaders and signed by Governor Chris Christie on June 28, seeks to cut costs because the pension and health benefit systems are underfunded by a combined $120 billion. Unions fiercely protested against the bill, saying it prevented them from collectively bargaining their medical benefits, which will be set by a panel of union members and state managers.

All public workers-including police officers, firefighters, and teachers-will pay more for their pensions and health benefits. It would suspend cost-of-living increases to pensions for retirees and raise the retirement age for new workers.

Employees have “non-forfeitable rights” to cost-of-living adjustments, says the suit, which includes eight retirees as plaintiffs. “While employed and when they retired, these Class Plaintiffs fully expected and relied upon the promise that they would receive the promised required COLAs every year,” it reads.

It also says the state’s underfunding of the pension system violates workers’ contractual rights, and that forcing workers with fewer than 20 years of service to pay more for health benefits “violates the promises made to, and the contractual property rights of, active public employees with less than 20 years of credited service.”

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link