LINKS
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This page has links to all of the documents and other websites containing information related to this matter. It is presented here as a convenience for those who wish to review the entire file. |
Correspondence and Documents relating to PERS
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| November 7, 1986 | Memo to Salem County Treasurer | This memo from the NJ Division of Pensions requests a list of all temporary JTPA employees, claiming they were ineligible under the new statute. Dutifully, my County responded without questioning the validity of the term temporary since everyone who would be on the list had more than 12 months continuous service and was considered "permanent for pension purposes." I was not asked for any input on this issue. |
| November 20, 1986 | Response from the Salem County Treasurer | Information provided, no questions asked. |
| October 14, 1998
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Letter to PERS | Request to PERS to explain why Salem County JTPA employees are denied enrollment while other JTPA staff members of other employers in New Jersey are allowed in system. |
| November 19, 1998 |
Letter from PERS. | Response to Oct 14th letter, requesting more information. |
| December 2, 1998 | Letter to PERS | Letter to PERS with requested information |
| December 21, 1998 | Letter from PERS |
Letter from PERS advising my Deputy Director that Salem County JTPA employees are eligible to enroll in PERS and to purchase past service if the service resulted in permanent employment with the same employer. |
| March 10, 1999 | Form letter from PERS on veteran status | This form letter simply advised me that they agreed I was a veteran. |
| May 16, 2000 | Letter regarding Layoff | Letter from the Clerk of the Board of Chosen Freeholders advising of lay-off. |
| May 17, 2000 |
General Layoff Notice Specific Layoff Notice |
This notice went to all my staff and each got
their own specific notice as well. This was my own special notice |
| June 1, 2000 |
Letter of Resignation to Freeholder Director Letter to Salem County Treasurer |
This was my letter to the Freeholder Director
advising him I would be retiring coincident with the date of layoff. My letter to the Treasurer advising of retirement and requesting assistance in filing for pension |
| June 2, 2000 | NJ Department of Personnel Layoff Notice | This letter confirms layoff and advises of appeal rights |
| June 5, 2000 | Letter from Salem County Treasurer | This letter acknowledges my 6/1/2000 letter and assures cooperation. |
| June 21, 2000 |
Application to Retire and Purchase Service Letter to Salem County Treasurer |
My application, based on my discussions with
Wendy Jamison at PERS. This letter requested the Treasurer to provide information requested by PERS. |
| July 7, 2000 | Letter from PERS | And now the confusion begins - note that they are showing my retirement effective March 1, 2007 despite all of the prior submissions from me requesting an effective date of July 1, 2000. |
| July 13, 2000 | Letter to PERS | My response to their July 7th letter. Note that I attempted to correct their error in the retirement date. |
| July 18, 2000 |
Notice from PERS on Request to Purchase County service Notice from PERS on Request to Purchase military time |
This notice was regarding my request to
purchase time I worked for the County This notice was regarding my request to purchase the almost 4 years of active duty time in the US Navy. |
| July 24, 2000 | Notice from PERS regarding verifying my employment | This notice states that my employer is unable to verify my employment from July 1, 1981 to March 31, 1993. This is strange since I worked for the same employer, without interruption, from December 23, 1974 to June 30, 2000. |
| July 29, 2000 |
Notice from PERS on eligibility to purchase Purchase Quote for Navy Time Purchase Quote for County Time 1/1/1979 to 7/30/1980 and 8/1/1980 to 6/30/1981 Purchase Quote for County Time 5/1/1985 to 9/30/1986 |
This notice tells me I can purchase some
service, but not all.
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| September 9, 2000 | Letter to PERS with DoP info | This was my letter in reply to PERS' July 24th request that I contact Dept of Personnel. Note that I am requesting they hold off on requiring me to purchase service in small chunks until they get my entire purchase amount in one lump sum. |
| October 3, 2000 | Letter from PERS | This letter tells me that despite their having already made a determination regarding 47 months of my time, they are now determining that none of the 219 months of my service from December 23, 1974 through April 7, 1993 is eligible. At this point I called the Supervisor, Peter Mullings, and reminded him of the December 21, 1998 letter from the Board of Trustees. He said he would look into it. |
| November 5, 2000 | Letter from PERS | This letter tells me that now they have determined I am eligible to purchase all of those 219 months. So now all that's left is the remaining 87 months of County service. |
| December 20, 2000 | Purchase Quote for my Navy time (again.) | This is another quote to purchase my Navy time. It's gone up a bit since the July 29th quote, but I can live with that. |
| February 7, 2001 | Certified Check | On February 7, 2000, I drove to Trenton to get a "firm" quote on the total amount due to purchase my 45 months of Navy time and my 306 months of County time. I finally got an amount and had a certified check drawn for the full amount. |
| February 9, 2001 | Letter to PERS with amended application. | After leaving Trenton on February 7th I spoke with Wendy Jamison (Board Secretary) on February 8th and she advised me to submit an amended application. Note that I am still requesting a July 1, 2000 retirement date. On February 9, 2000 I hand delivered the amended application and the check to the PERS Office in Trenton. After waiting 2 1/2 hours for them to complete the processing on my pension, they came down and told me I wasn't eligible for a pension. Hence, the check is Voided. |
| Letter from PERS on amended application. | This letter acknowledges receipt of my amended application. Note that they are now saying the Board has to approve and my payments cannot start until 30 days after Board approval. This despite the Board having already approved all of this in December 1998. | |
| February 16, 2001 | Letter from PERS | Now I am not eligible again. Note the statement that JTPA service "is ineligible for membership" which is an absolutely incorrect interpretation of the law by a clerical staff person who is charged with advising the Board. If this was correct, then many people who are in both active and retired status are illegally contributing or collecting pensions. |
| February 23, 2001 | Letter from PERS | This letter acknowledges receipt of my application and again incorrectly states that I am seeking to retire March 1, 2007. |
| March 2, 2001 | Letter from PERS | This letter advises that the papers I sent in response to their February 23 letter were incomplete (lacking signature or notary). Still stating March 1, 2007 as my retirement date. |
| March 7, 2001 | Letter from PERS | Letter advising me that my application to retire effective July 2000 is denied. |
| March 15, 2001 | Letter to PERS | Letter in response to their March 2nd letter submitting another amended application and again reiterating an effective date of July 1, 2000. I also requested a meeting with the Board of Trustees which was set for March 21, 2001. |
| March 23, 2001 | Letter from PERS | This letter advises of Board of Trustee action to postpone consideration of my request to purchase service until they receive more information. |
| April 3, 2001 | Letter Brief to PERS | This document is in response to the Board of Trustees' request at the March 21, 2001 meeting. This was in preparation for the April 18, 2001 meeting with the Board. The 31 attachments listed on page 11 have not been attached to this copy of the document in the interest of bandwidth. |
| April 20, 2001 | Letter from PERS | This is the initial "determination" letter from the April 18th meeting. Note that the reason they give is that I was employed under JTPA. They totally overlook the term "temporary" in the statute as well as the Court decisions of Vliet and Gladden which give the correct interpretation. |
| April 30, 2001 | Letter to PERS | This letter, from my attorney, advises the Board that we will be appealing their April 18th denial of a portion of my purchase. |
| May 1, 2001 | Purchase Quote for County time | This purchase quote again addresses some of my Salem County employment and allows for the purchase of 141 months from 12/23/1974 to 9/18/1986. This leaves 165 months of County service unaccounted for. |
| May 17, 2001 | Final Administrative Determination | This letter details the "reasons" why the Board denied my application and, once again, incorrectly interprets the statute, variously claiming that "temporary JTPA employees" are ineligible and then that all JTPA employees are excluded. Once again, the Board ignored the case law and statutes which determine this issue. |
| June 25, 2001 | Notice of Appeal | This is my notice to the Board of Trustees that we are appealing that portion of their decision denying my application to purchase time from 9/18/1986 through April 1, 1993. |
| July 19, 2001 | Filed Notice of Appeal | This is a copy of the filed Notice of Appeal showing the filing date and assigned docket number. |
| September 27, 2001 | State's Case Information Statement filed with the Court. | This is a large document (64 pages - 5 Megs)
and includes much of the documentation above. Of special interest, however,
is the letter from the Salem County Treasurer (on page 17) dated June 28,
2000 to Peter Mullings. This is the same Treasurer who, on June 5, 2000
wrote to me and assured that my matter would be a priority. This was the
first I was aware that she was taking the position that I was not eligible.
So much for "support." Also of interest is the October 27, 1993 letter on page 22 from Mary Ellen Rathbun to the Salem County Treasurer. This position once again misinterprets the statute and implies that all JTPA funded employees are precluded from participating. The State keeps referring to the "Governor's Reconsideration and Recommendation Statement" which did state that all JTPA employees were to be excluded but the Legislature then only excluded temporary employees without defining "temporary", and, the cases of Vliet and Gladden deal with that issue. This package also includes copies of the forms to put me into the system and take me out of the system several times during the course of my employment with the County. |
| October 22, 2001 | Appellant's Brief | This is the brief filed on my behalf attempting to state my case succinctly. It runs to 63 pages and is a very large file (17.5 Megs) |
| November 2, 2001 | Attorney General Request for an extension | The Attorney General's Office requested an extension for time to file their brief. We did not object. |
| December 21, 2001 | Attorney General's Brief | An interesting document. Especially noteworthy
is the way in which Deputy Attorney General Debra A. Allen manages to make
the leap (on page 18) from claiming "The amended statute unambiguously
states that: "A temporary employee [under the JTPA] shall not be
eligible..." to "NJSA 43:15A-7(h) establishes that all JTPA employees are
ineligible for membership in the PERS." The law does not say all,
it says temporary.
This error is continuously made by the State in all it's arguments regarding my pension and it clearly disregards the case law and statutes regarding temporary employment and eligibility for enrollment. No matter that the "Governor's Reconsideration and Recommendation Statement" requests exclusion of all and the legislature chose to exclude only temporary, the State, without fail, erroneously cites this statement as part of the statute, and, it is not part of the law as passed by the legislature. |
| January 14, 2002 | Appellant's Reply Brief | This is our response to the State's brief. |
| March 20, 2002 | Letter to PERS | This letter is in reponse to a notice I received from PERS advising that my PERS account was going to expire since I hadn't been contributing. I requested they put the matter on hold. |
| April 1, 2002 | Letter from PERS | This letter agrees to my request to put the expiration of my pension contributions to date on hold while we work out the problem. |
| June 24, 2002 | Appellate Court Decision - not approved for publication | The Appeals Court reversed the decision of the
Board of Trustees and remanded it for further proceedings. This Appeals
Court panel correctly interpreted the law regarding "temporary" and
enrollment in PERS and required PERS to explain why it's not applicable in
my case. Unfortunately, the Court did not retain jurisdiction to ensure that PERS did what it was told to do and, as you will see, they didn't. |
| August 13, 2002 | Letter to PERS | The Deputy Attorney General requested a postponement of our scheduled return to the Board on August 21, 2002 since apparently some of the folks in Trenton wanted a trial de novo (start from scratch in other words). As my attorney points out, this is not what the Appeals Court ordered. |
| August 23, 2002 | Letter from PERS | This letter states that the PERS Board reconsidered and reaffirmed their prior determination. They did no such thing. When we got to the hearing the Deputy Attorney General did not even have a copy of the Appeals Court decision and I had to give him mine to read. They took all of three minutes to "reconsider and reaffirm". They in no way complied with the order of the Court in that period of time. |
| August 21, 2002 | Letter to my attorney | This was written after several days of cooling off and pretty clearly explains my position and what I believe to be the state of the law regarding my enrollment in PERS. |
| September 11, 2002 |
Notice of Motion for Leave to Appeal Brief in Support of Motion |
We decided to try to make an interlocutory appeal before the Board of Trustees handed down its final determination. |
| September 19, 2002 | PERS Final Administrative Determination | The Board handed down its determination before we received a response to our motion to appeal. Here again they claim that all JTPA paid employees are excluded, without exception. |
| September 20, 2002 | Attorney General Certification in Opposition to our motion. | DAG Allen claims that the Board reconsidered and still found that the statute required all JTPA members to be removed from PERS (again, a misreading of the statute.) |
| September 27, 2002 | Letter to my attorney | The frustration is showing in this letter, written after receiving the Final Administrative Determination. It's self explanatory. |
| October 2, 2002 | Reply Brief of Appellant | This is our response to their Sept 20 opposition. |
| October 24, 2002 | Order Denying Leave to Appeal | And the Court says "No." |
| October 25, 2002 | New Notice of Appeal | Appealing again... |
| November 1, 2002 | Letter to Appellate Division | Sending copies of the administrative determinations which they couldn't locate. |
| November 11, 2002 | Corrected Notice of Appeal | Supplying stuff the Appellate Division needed. |
| December 17, 2002 | DAG Letter to Appellate Division | Provides information on the "record" for the appeal from the Deputy Attorney General |
| December 18, 2002 |
Amended Notice of Appeal Scheduling Order |
In response to a phone call from the Appellate
Division Sets up the deadlines for briefs and replies (which is totally ignored by the DAG - see below) |
| December 31, 2002 | Letter from my attorney | Cover letter for the DAG letter of 12/17 and Scheduling Order of 12/18 |
| January 10. 2003 | My outline of a draft brief to my attorney | This is my position on the matter as expressed to my attorney for consideration |
| January 28, 2003 |
Draft of brief from my attorney My reply on the draft brief |
This is a draft of the brief my attorney
prepared and sent to me for review My attempt to clarify some errors I found in the short time available |
| January 31, 2003 | Brief submitted | This is the final copy of the brief on this appeal submitted on time, January 31, 2003 |
| February 20, 2003 | Correct Brief | This corrected copy was filed because the Appellate Division said we used the wrong color covers and had too many characters per line in the original brief. |
| March 25, 2003 | Letter objecting to extension | Letter objecting to DAG's request for 30 days extension to file response. Note that their response was due no later than March 3, 2003 so they were already three weeks past their deadline and should have been precluded from any filing. |
| April 2, 2003 | My response to the request | My response to my attorney on the DAG's request for a 30 day extension. |
| April 28, 2003 |
PERS cover letter with their Brief Motion for another 30 days extension Certification of Debra A. Allen PERS Brief |
Motion to file out of time with Certification of the DAG why she needs yet 30
more days. |
| May 8, 2003 |
Letter to me from my attorney regarding the below documents Cover letter for Reply Brief Reply Brief Proof of Service of Brief Objection to Motion Certification for Objection to Motion Proof of Service of Objection |
A lot happened on May 8th. We filed our own reply to the DAG's Brief as well as an objection to their motion for an extension of time to file. |
| May 19. 2003 | Motion Granted | Despite all the above, the Court granted the
DAG's motion for an extension of time. |
| February 9, 2004 | 2nd Appellate Decision | A second appellate panel (not the same three judges who made the first decision of June 2002) made this decision and, reading through it, I wonder if they even bothered to read the first appellate panel's decision at all. Of course, this one was approved for publication (and, as of late 2010, has been cited 7 times in other New Jersey Appellate and Supreme Court decisions.) |
| February 24, 2004 | Substitution of Counsel | Because I truly believed the Court was still missing the point and wished to appeal this decision, I released my then attorney and substituted myself while I sought an attorney with more Supreme Court experience. I did retain other Counsel and the NJ Supreme Court denied certification of my appeal. |
| October 11, 2004 | Letter from me to the ACLU | Believing this action by the Board to still be in violation of the statutes and case law, I sought outside help. |
| November 2, 2004 | Response from the ACLU | They declined to get involved. |
| February 9, 2007 | Letter to PERS | Since PERS had told me that I didn't have sufficient time to qualify for "early retirement" when I retired in June 2000 and would have to wait until after I turned age 60, I wrote to PERS for an updated quote as I approached by 60th birthday. |
| April 26, 2007 | Email to Mary Williams Walsh of the New York Times | Ms. Walsh was digging into the pension abuse situation in New Jersey and I sent her this email hoping to get her help in resolving this matter for myself and others who were similarly situated. I got no response. |
| May 1, 2007 |
Follow up letter to Robert Constantini of the US Dept of Veterans Affairs Second letter to PERS for update |
I met Mr. Constantini at a seminar and provided
him with a letter outlining the situation as it applies to being a veteran
in NJ. This letter was a follow up to see if he had found someone within the
VA to help. Not having had any reply from PERS to my February 9, 2007 letter I sent a second request. |
| May 2, 2007 | Letter to Major General Glenn K. Rieth of the NJ Dept of Military and Veterans Affairs | Still seeking to resolve this matter and get some clarification on just how much New Jersey is willing to honor its commitment to its veterans, I sent this letter to the head of the NJDMVA. I never received any response. |
| May 3, 2007 | Letter from PERS in response to my second request | This letter explains that they must have a lot of correspondence and didn't get to my February 9th letter yet... |
| May 29, 2007 | Reply from Robert Constantini | Declined to help. (Note that the letter is incorrectly dated March 29, 2007) |
| June 20, 2007 | Letter from PERS | This letter simply repeats the erroneous information from before, stating that I could only have purchased 141 months and since I hadn't done so in the requisite time period, I was not eligible. |
| July 27, 2007 | Letter to PERS | I received a response to my May 1, 2007 letter on June 20, 2007 from PERS in which they were now stating I was ineligible for any pension since I did not make any purchase of service within the two years following my retirement in June 2000 (despite the April 1, 2002 letter which agreed to put the purchase on hold.) |
| July 30, 2007 | Letter to Halpern | Mr. Halpern was the attorney I retained to handle the appeal to the NJ Supreme Court. I had never received copies of the documents he had filed in the appeal and requested that he provide me with a copy of those documents as well as those filed by the State. Although he did advise me after receipt of this letter that he would dig them out and send them to me with a copying costs bill, I never received either. |
| August 22, 2007 | Letter from PERS | Letter advising me that I can appear on September 19, 2007 before the Board of Trustees |
| September 4, 2007 | Fax of letter to PERS | This was a follow up to a letter I mailed but I wanted to be sure they received it in a timely manner. |
| September 24, 2007 | Letter from PERS | Letter which supposedly explains the Board's decision to not grant me the purchase of service. |
| November 5, 2007 | Letter to PERS | My response to their September 24th "explanation" |
| November 16, 2007 | Letter from PERS | Their reply to my November 5th letter. |
| February 21, 2008 | Letter to PERS | An attempt to once again clarify the facts. |
CASE LAW, STATUTES and administrative code
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| Vliet v. Bd. Trustees Pub. Emp. Retire. Syst., 156 N.J. Super. 83 (1978) | ||
| Gladden v. Pub. Emp. Ret. Sys., 171 N.J. Super. 363, 371 (App. Div. 1979) | ||
| Lewis v. Board of Trustees (June 24, 2002 - Not Approved for Publication) | ||
| Lewis v. Board of Trustees, 366 N.J. Super. 411 (2004) | ||
| Governor Kean's recommendation to the Legislature on amending PERS statute | ||
| NJSA 43:15A-7 Public Employees' Retirement System, established; membership | ||
| N.J.A.C.17:2-2.3 Ineligible persons | ||