N.J.A.C. 4A:1-1 Purpose, Scope, and Definitions
Every section of N.J.A.C. 4A:1-1, Purpose, Scope, and Definitions: 5 rules with full text, amendment history and citing decisions.
- 4A:1-1.1Purpose
Every rule in Title 4A is written to serve one stated purpose: a personnel system balancing what management needs against the protections employees hold, so that public services are delivered effectively, consistent with Title 11A. That sentence is the whole section. It directs nobody to do anything. Its weight comes from elsewhere in the title, because the Commission may relax a rule for good cause to effectuate those purposes, and the rules themselves are described as the means by which the statutory purposes are carried out. When a later rule is genuinely ambiguous, this is the purpose an argument about it points back to.
- 4A:1-1.2Scope, applicability, and invalidation
Only career service employees are covered, unless a particular rule says otherwise. That line does more work than anything else in the section, because a rule that is silent about who it reaches does not reach past the career service. The rest sets the outer boundary of the title. Appointing authorities and employees subject to Title 11A must comply. If a rule or part of a rule is declared invalid for any reason, the remaining rules are unaffected rather than falling with it. And the Commission may relax a rule for good cause in a particular situation, on notice to affected parties, which is the provision a great many of the decisions cited throughout this title turn on.
- 4A:1-1.3Definitions
Forty terms, fixed once and carried through the whole title. When an argument turns on whether service counted as continuous, or whether somebody held permanent status, the meaning is settled here rather than in the rule being argued about. Watch for one thing. A few of these terms are defined a second time elsewhere for a narrower purpose, and the two definitions do not match. Base salary is the clearest case: this section defines it for Title 4A generally, and 4A:3-5.2 defines it again for overtime compensation in State service. The definition that governs is the one belonging to the subchapter being read.
- 4A:1-1.4Petition for promulgating, amending, or repealing rules
Any interested person may ask the Commission to write a rule, amend one, or repeal one. The right belongs to an individual employee acting alone just as much as to a union or an appointing authority. The petition goes to the Chairperson and has to give the reasons for the request. Asking for a new rule means setting out the substance of what is wanted, the text proposed, and the statutory authority under which it could be done. Asking for an amendment means showing which existing text comes out and which new text goes in. The Chairperson then either denies the petition or approves it for processing, in writing. Notice of the petition and of that decision is filed with the Office of Administrative Law.
- 4A:1-1.5Rulemaking procedures
A rule change has to be made public before it becomes binding, and this section sets out how. Once the Commission approves a proposal for publication, it files the notice with the Office of Administrative Law for public notice and comment. It then has to put the proposal in front of people four separate ways: mailed or emailed to interested persons and to anyone who made a timely request for it, distributed to the Commission subscription mailing list, distributed to news media keeping a press office in the State House Complex, and published on the Commission website no later than the date the notice appears in the New Jersey Register. That website publication is what satisfies the additional publicity requirement imposed separately by the Office of Administrative Law.