Daily Journal Calls for Pension Reform

The Daily Journal’s editorial today is right on the money!

In Codey’s dual positions as governor and Senate president, he has the legislative power and bully pulpit to totally eliminate dual-office holding with no exemptions or grandfather clauses.

Legislators need to do more to bring sanity to the state pension system.

They need to bar state employees from tacking government jobs together to increase their pensions, and eliminate boosting of pensions by adding high-paying jobs near the end of their government careers. They need to eliminate the practice of people using part-time jobs to accrue time in the pension system, such as former Gov. James McGreevey is doing with his job teaching ethics and leadership at Kean University.

Requiring pension system participants to be full-time workers and recalculating retirement benefits so they’re based on one job only and the highest salaries over a five-year period would go a long way toward eliminating these abuses.

But we can already hear the mountain of excuses lawmakers will have on why these pension reform steps can’t be taken now. There are no legitimate excuses, however, on delaying a bill that would eliminate dual-office holding once and for all.

It’s way past time such a reform measure became law. If lawmakers delay it any further, voters will remember in November.

Bravo!

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