A panel of state appellate court judges will allow Jill Mayer to keep her $127,000 annual state pension while earning $211,00-per-year as a Superior Court Judge.
The State Senate confirmed Mayer, a former Camden County Prosecutor and deputy attorney general, to her judgeship in January 2022, but she has delayed taking the oath of office for 33 months while she mounted a legal battle to double dip.
The state Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) turned Mayer down three times, telling her she couldn’t collect a government pension and a judicial salary simultaneously because state law prohibited drawing a pension and a salary from a “pre-arranged agreement for reemployment” before retirement.
“After a careful review, we determine the Board mistakenly applied the regulation to these specific circumstances. The regulation prohibits a “prearranged agreement,” not ‘pre-planning’ that occurs prior to a retirement date. The nature of the judicial selection process precludes any ability to make an “arrangement” for the position as an individual seeking a judgeship has no control over the process,” the appellate court decision stated. “There also was no ‘agreement’ that Mayer would be offered the judgeship until, at the earliest, the date the Senate confirmed the nomination, which did not occur until after her retirement date.”
Instead, the appellate judges – which moved unusually fast, rendering a decision in just five weeks – said that “arguably, the Senate confirmation could be described as an offer of employment and there will be no ‘agreement’ until Mayer takes the oath of office. Certainly, there was a ‘mutual understanding’ after confirmation.”
Since Mayer has not yet been sworn in and the 180 days have passed she left her old state job, the judges found that she was clear to take her pension while collecting her salary.
In the meantime, the 55-year-old Mayer had 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.
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 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.