Court Opinion

ID: 9713340
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:13:46.120946+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:18.197249
License: Public Domain

Schkeibek, J.,
concurring. I concur in Justice Pashman’s opinion. However, I do have some reservations concerning the rationale of Jacobs v. New Jersey State Highway Authority, 54 N. J. 393 (1969). There the Highway Authority voluntarily joined the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS), N. J. S. A. 43:15A-1 et seq., so that the Authority’s employees were brought within the pension plan provisions of PERS. Under the PERS act, mandatory retirement was set at age 70. However, the Authority by regulation fixed mandatory retirement at age 65.
This Court, finding no language in the act creating the Authority which authorized it to prescribe a retirement age, reasoned that the Legislature had been moving toward a uniform scheme in PERS for pensioning public employees in state and local government service. To permit the Authority to prescribe different qualifications would contravene that scheme. It also pointed out that a major element of the pension system was the general specification of the voluntary and mandatory age requirements in the PERS act, N. J. S. A. 43:15A-47(a) and (b). 54 N. J. at 404. It buttressed this position because of the financial impact on the pension fund since contribution to the fund had been predicated upon actuarial assumptions utilizing a mandatory retirement age ,of 70 .Id.
It does not necessarily follow, as the Jacobs opinion may be said to imply, that simply because a change in a term or condition of employment may have a substantial impact on the pension fund that such a change may not be made *589without violating N. J. 8. A. 34:13A-8.1 which provides that no provisions of the New Jersey Employer-Employee Relations Act shall “annul or modify any pension statute or statutes of this State.” The proper focus of issues of this type should be directed to what constitutes a pension, rather than the impact on the fund.
Schreiber, J., concurring in the result.
For affirmance — Chief Justice Hughes and Justices Mountain, Sullivan, Pashman, Clifford, Schreiber and Handler — 7.
For reversal — None.