NJ Cops June2018 | Page 10

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