PENSION BENEFITS REPORT
Restrictions on employment
after you retire
Since the numerous school shootings that
have occurred around the country recent-
ly, there has been renewed interest in hiring
retired officers as Class III special officers to
provide security for our schools. I want to in-
form all of our readers that there are certain
restrictions that are placed on our members
when they look to transition into retirement
and into a job for another New Jersey govern-
mental agency.
To be a Class III special law enforcement
officer, the retired officer must have a bona fide severance of
employment, be under age 65, and have served as a duly-qual-
ified, fully-trained, full-time officer in a municipality or coun-
ty or as a member of the State Police. Retired officers also must
have been in good standing when they separated from that
prior service. Retired officers employed as Class III special law
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NEW JERSEY COPS
■ APRIL 2018
enforcement officers are not eligible for health benefits and
may not be enrolled in any state-administered retirement sys-
tem.
If you are looking for a job after retirement, you must have
a break in service from your law enforcement position before
starting your new position with another New Jersey govern-
mental agency: 30 days from the date you retired or the date
when your retirement has been approved, whichever is later.
For example, if you retired on July 1, 2018 and your retire-
ment application was approved on June 15, 2018 and you
wanted to take a position as a Class III special officer, you
must have a 30-day break in service from July 1, because the
retirement date was later than the approval date. If the situa-
tion is flipped, and you had a retirement date of July 1, 2018
but the application for retirement was not approved until July
17, then you would need to wait 30 days from July 17 because
it is the later date.
If you wish to take a job with your same employer, then you
must have a 180-day severance of service and cannot take
a job in any capacity with your same employer or make any
prearrangement. These jobs include volunteer positions, con-
sulting positions, and basically any other position with your
former employer. If you wish to take a job with another em-
ployer in a position where you would supervise PFRS titles,
then you must have a 180-day severance of service as well.
The 180-day separation requirement is from the date when
you retired or the date which your retirement was approved,
whichever is later.
We face these restrictions because our pensions are rec-
ognized by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a qualified
retirement plan under the tax code. In order for the Division
of Pensions to maintain this status, they had to adopt and
enforce the IRS rules, or some retirees would be subject to a
10-percent early retirement tax, and the entire pension system
would lose its status.
A member who disregards the break-in-service require-
ment will face a penalty and be responsible for paying back
his or her retirement allowance. For example, if you retire and
take a position with another New Jersey governmental agency,
it might be five years before you receive a letter from the Divi-
sion of Pensions citing that you violated the bona fide break-
in-service requirement. If the Division of Pensions determines
you did in fact violate the separation provision, you would be
required to pay back five years of your retirement benefits —
meaning your pension salary during the time you were deter-
mined to have been in violation.
To learn more about this topic, read Fact Sheet 86 on the Di-
vision of Pensions website. If you wish to discuss this further,
please feel free to contact me at the NJSPBA office. d