An investigative report by a New Jersey watchdog publication found the state has a whopping 2,296 people drawing six-figure pensions, more than double the number of people from just five years ago. Some New Jerseyans were able to earn pensions while still in their 40s, while others are drawing close to $200,000 or are getting pensions while still working for the government.
The database of six-figure pensions, created using New Jersey treasury data, was published by Mark Lagerkvist of NJ Spotlight. Lagerkvist found that former educators were the biggest winners of New Jersey’s pension largesse, with eight of the top ten largest pensions (and 22 of the top 30) going to retired principals or superintendents. Currently, the largest pension of all goes to former Essex County College president A. Z. Yamba, whose 42 years of public employment and $276,951 final salary allow him to collect $195,000 a year starting in 2010.
While teachers dominate the top of the list, about half of the six-figure pensioners are former police or firemen, many of whom qualified for retirement after 25 years on the job. One man, former Union City deputy police chief Joseph Blaettler, has been collecting a pension of $134,773 since 2009, when he was just 46 years old. If he lives into his late 70s, he’ll earn over $4 million in pension payments, far more than he ever earned as an actual police officer. (RELATED: Flint’s Lead Crisis Has A Big Overlooked Cause: Pensions)
Blaettler was contacted by NJ Spotlight and was unapologetic about receiving such remarkable taxpayer largesse.
“Politicians created this system, and I simply accepted what they gave me along the way,” he said. “If taxpayers want to get angry with someone, they need to ask their state and local politicians how they allowed the system to get to the point it is at.”
New Jersey’s retirement system also allows some former employees to double-dip — collecting a pension while still continuing to work for the state. For instance, about three-fourths of New Jersey’s county sheriffs are also retired police officers, collecting six-figure salaries along with a public pension. Three of those sheriffs have pensions exceeding $100,000, and one of them even gets a higher pension than his current salary.
The surge in six-figure pensions is relatively recent. Only 992 people were earning pensions that high in 2010.
By themselves, these 2,296 pensions are costing New Jersey over $250 million a year. But they’re also only the tip of the iceberg. New Jersey has hundreds of thousands of retirees, and a commission assembled by Gov. Chris Christie found the pension system to be underfunded by about $83 billion. If the system isn’t reformed, the commission warned, it could bring fiscal calamity to the state. Christie has fought hard to adjust the state’s pension trajectory, but has been impeded by a state court decision as well as by stiff opposition from public sector unions.
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