The New Jersey Appellate Court this week heard Jill Mayer’s bid to keep her state pension while earning a full-time salary as a Superior Court Judge.
In the meantime, Mayer continues to hold a judgeship hostage; the State Senate confirmed her in January 2022, but 33 months later, she has still not taken the oath of office. Instead, Mayer is looking for a way to take her $127,000 annual pension from nearly 27 years in the attorney general’s office while also receiving a $211,000-per-year judicial salary.
The state Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) has already turned Mayer down three times, telling her she can’t collect a government pension and a judicial salary simultaneously. She has hired an influential lawyer, William Tambussi, to appeal that decision.
Mayer knew about the pension issue even before her Senate confirmation process but chose to proceed anyway. When the governor’s office and Senate leadership pushed her nomination through the Senate, they were unaware they were confirming someone who had no immediate intention of becoming a judge.
In the meantime, the 55-year-old Mayer has been camping out at a politically powerful South Jersey law firm, Parker McCay, while squatting on a judgeship the state judiciary no longer considers to be vacant. Today, the Parker McCay website has Mayer on their homepage under the heading of “spotlight.”
The New Jersey Globe has confirmed that there is no apparent requirement for how long Mayer can take before she takes her seat on the Superior Court, and the clock on her initial seven-year term begins with her oath of office.
That means Mayer could work at Parker McCay for years and then suddenly show up at the Camden County courthouse to get sworn in — unless the courts determine that she has somehow abandoned her position.
What appears clear is that Mayer knew she had a pension issue before she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 6, 2022, but didn’t disclose that to the committee.
In 2021, the state Division of Pensions told Mayer that she would be unable to receive her state pension if she accepted a position as a Superior Court Judge. She appeared before the PERS board on December 7, 2021, to appeal the decision, but was unsuccessful.
Mayer filed for retirement in December 2021. With a salary bump to $197,000 during more than two years as acting Camden County Prosecutor, Mayer qualified for an annual pension of roughly $10,600 per month.
Murphy filed his intent to nominate Mayer to replace retired Judge George Leone on December 13, 2021. She was fast-tracked in the Senate, with her nomination received on January 4, 2022, a Judiciary Committee vote on January 6, and a confirmation by the full Senate on January 10.
The delay in Mayer’s ascendancy to the bench comes at a time when the New Jersey courts are continue to experience a significant shortage of judges and a backlog of cases.
“Mayer submitted questionnaires and interviewed for a position as a Superior Court Judge because there was a possibility that she could become a judge someday. There was never a pre-arranged agreement to make her a Judge,” Tambussi said in his brief. “There has been complete compliance with the governing regulatory requirements.”
Her former employer, the attorney general’s office, is fighting Mayer’s pension bid and disputes her representation that there was a “pre-arranged agreement.”
“Mayer is mistaken. The requirement of a complete break from State service as a condition of retirement implies that the retirement applicant must separate from State service with the intention of ending their career as a State employee. Mayer had no such intention on December 1, 2021, during the following 180 days, or at any time thereafter,” said Deputy Attorney General Robert E. Kelly in his brief. “Even now, Mayer seeks to resume her State employment by accepting an offer she actively (and successfully) pursued leading up to, and immediately after, her retirement date.”
Kelly said Mayer “did not sever the employment relationship with the State when she began actively arranging for her intended next State job prior to retiring, and immediately upon retiring, from DCJ.”
“Her acceptance of the job she was pursuing before and after she retired, an offer for which was finalized well within the 180-day period established to ensure that a retirement is bona fide, therefore would render that retirement invalid,” Kelly said.
Officials at the attorney general’s office told the New Jersey Globe in 2023 that she knew she was headed to the bench at the time of her retirement.
Appellate Court Judges Heidi Currier, Joseph Marczyk, and James Paganelli heard Mayer’s appeal on September 18. It’s not clear how long they will take to issue an opinion.
Mayer did not immediately respond to a message left on her cell phone.