Pension and Benefit Crisis

Ugly Truths And Hard Facts About New Jersey’s Pension Crisis, Part 2

It’s time for New Jersey’s teachers to wake up to the ugly truths and hard facts about their pensions:

1. They are vastly inferior to the pensions that the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) leadership provides for themselves – all paid for by teachers’ dues.
2. The NJEA is not telling teachers the truth about their pension fund: the Teachers’ Pension and Annuity Fund (TPAF) is in such deep trouble that teachers’ and even retirees’ retirements may be at risk.
3. TPAF is unfair to new and younger teachers, the majority of whom will lose money participating in TPAF and end up subsidizing the minority of teachers who make teaching a life-long career.

Ugly Truths And Hard Facts About New Jersey’s Pension Crisis, Part 1

A case study of what happens when a special interest like NJEA becomes too powerful.

New Jersey’s past is coming back to haunt the present at a very bad time.

Due to COVID-related shortfalls, Governor Murphy is proposing to borrow $4 billion and raise taxes by $1 billion in order to plug large budget gaps.  Yet the governor is also proposing to spend an equal amount – $4.9 billion of his $40.1 billion budget – to fund the state’s public-sector pensions.  That is 12 percent of the total budget going to shore up New Jersey’s worst-in-the-nation public pension system.