Monday, April 28, 2008

Part time government professionals

Last year the legislature enacted reforms to the state pension system which the governor signed into law on May 9, 2007.

Among those reforms was the change in status of contract professionals; municipal, county and board of education lawyers, engineers and the like.(See Section 20 of the law, linked above.) Previous to this law, contract professionals were eligible to participate in the pension system. Now they are not. They are no longer employees.

While the effective date of this provision was January 1, 2008, some government entities are just realizing that they have not been in compliance and their professionals are amending their contracts mid-term to comply with the law.

As these contracts are being amended some professionals are seeking to have their fees raised by over 7.50% to cover the lost pension contributions.

Mayors, councils and committees, Freeholders, board and authority members throughout the state should be on the lookout for these amended contracts. They should turn down the increased fees to cover the lost pensions contributions.

Part time government employees should not be getting pensions and neither should professionals. These savings enacted by the state should not be reversed on the municipal or county levels.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just try getting these perks in the private sector....in your dreams. Government employees are no better than the rest of us and benefits for part time employees are non existent in the private sector. So what makes government employees different? I know because I spent over seven years employed part time for what was the largest corporation on the globe at the time. No benefits and decent wages was the renumeration for time WORKED period. It's about time there was parity when it comes to compensation and benefits. Government pensions are ridiculously high and should be adjusted to comparitables in the private sector. Keep this up and there will be no one in N.J. left to pay the taxes to pay these pensions!!!