LEGISLATIVE REPORT
State PBA preparing
for legislative push
With the NJ State Legislature poised to ap-
prove Governor Murphy’s conditional veto of
Senate Bill 5, the State PBA has much to do in
Trenton during the months ahead. The tradi-
tional flurry of bill movement that comes with
the negotiation and passage of the state budget
at the end of June is a near certainty this year.
We expect the Senate and Assembly to ap-
ROB NIXON prove the changes recommended by Governor
Murphy to Senate Bill 5, which makes PFRS
independently run. Both houses must vote to
add those changes to the bill. Once that happens, and the gov-
ernor officially signs the bill into law, the hard work of creating
new pension board management will begin. That process will
be analyzed in a future issue of NJ Cops Magazine. But for now,
we are working to finish the process in the legislature in June.
The issue of sick-leave caps has once again arisen in the leg-
islature. While bills adopting some form of cap on sick-leave
payments into retirement have been introduced repeated-
ly during the past several years, the recent movement out of
10
NEW JERSEY COPS
■ JUNE 2018
committee of a bill on the issue has caused a great deal of con-
fusion and concern amongst the law enforcement officers and
the public employee community.
Assembly Bill 1851 was released by the Assembly Labor
Committee despite the opposition of the State PBA and nearly
every other public employee labor union in New Jersey. The
bill caps payments for unused sick leave for all state and local
government and school employees at $7,500 after the effective
date or expiration of a contract. The bill would require the fol-
lowing:
• All sick time earned prior to the effective date will be
paid out as cash as under current law. This means that
any amount above a value of $7,500 that members have
on the books will retain its cash value and will be pay-
able as such when they retire. In short, no one loses any
time that they have in excess of $7,500 before the law
becomes effective.
• If an officer has more than $7,500 earned: Any sick time
earned after the effective date will have no cash value,
but officers can still retire and be paid in full for what
they have earned above that number before the effec-
tive date or expiration of a contract.
• If an officer has less than $7,500 earned: Any sick time
earned after the effective date will have a value set by
the employer of up to $7,500. However, the value of time
earned after the effective date of up to $7,500 can only
be used by the officer upon retirement to pay for the
officer’s employer-paid healthcare premiums or costs.
This can only be used for up to five years, paid in equal
annual installments immediately following the officer’s
retirement, or death for survivors.
• If an officer isn’t provided employer-paid health bene-
fits, then the value of time earned after the effective date
up to $7,500 will be deposited in a “Health Reimburse-
ment Arrangement” account to reimburse healthcare
costs into retirement for up to five years.
If you are confused, or if this conflicts with language in your
contract, then don’t feel alone. There are a number of confus-
ing provisions in the proposal. We have firmly expressed that
this not only violates the spirit of what remains of collective
bargaining in New Jersey, but that nearly all PBA contracts al-
ready cap sick-leave payouts. As such, the bill isn’t necessary,
especially when considering that every officer hired after 2010
is already capped at $15,000 by state law.
The bill is on hold, and we will continue to oppose it, espe-
cially as the passage of the state budget has put so many differ-
ent and unrelated issues on the table in Trenton. d