N.J.A.C. 4A:6-3 Supplemental Compensation on Retirement
Every section of N.J.A.C. 4A:6-3, Supplemental Compensation on Retirement: 5 rules with full text, amendment history and citing decisions.
- 4A:6-3.1Eligibility: State service
Supplemental compensation on retirement, or SCOR, is a State service payment, and eligibility turns on status and on how the employment ends. Career service employees qualify, as do senior executive service employees with underlying permanent career status. Senior executive employees without that status, and unclassified employees, qualify only where everyone in the title receives sick leave in the same number and manner as State career employees under N.J.A.C. 4A:6-1.3, used and verified the same way under N.J.A.C. 4A:6-1.4 and 1.5. Certain university employees doing comparable work are covered too. The payment attaches to separation by retirement from a State-administered pension system, so deferred retirement and any separation that is not a retirement fall outside it. Removal for cause after a hearing opportunity, retirement in lieu of removal, and retirement in circumstances warranting removal all disqualify, unless removal rested on medical disability or the Commission finds sufficient mitigating circumstances. Accidental and ordinary disability retirements are eligible.
- 4A:6-3.2Break in service: State service
Resign, retire or be removed, and the SCOR clock restarts: sick leave is computed only from the date of return to employment. Layoff is treated differently. An employee who returns after a layoff is credited with sick leave accrued both before the separation and after the return. Two rules cover people who have already been paid once. Anybody who retired and received the maximum SCOR payment set at N.J.A.C. 4A:6-3.3 cannot receive any further supplemental compensation. Somebody who received less than the maximum may, on re-entering State employment and retiring again, receive no more than the difference between what was already paid and that maximum.
- 4A:6-3.3Computation of payment: State service
Fifteen thousand dollars is the ceiling on SCOR for any employee, whatever the sick leave balance says. Below it, the payment is one half the employee's daily rate of pay for each day of earned and unused accumulated sick leave at the effective date of retirement. That daily rate is built from average annual compensation over the last full year of active employment before retirement, with overtime pay, other supplemental pay and periods of leave of absence without pay excluded from the calculation. Two adjustments handle unusual final years. An employee changing from 12 month to 10 month employment during the last year has the average annual compensation weighted accordingly. Ten month employees who received sick leave without proration have their unused accumulated sick leave cut by one-sixth before the calculation runs.
- 4A:6-3.4SCOR procedures: State service
Form DPF-279, filed within one year of the effective date of retirement, and only after the official notice of retirement approval has come from the pension board or authority. The appointing authority cannot process the application until it holds the employer's copy of that notice, and if it does not have one it must tell the employee so within 45 days of receiving the application. Once both are in hand it has 45 days to send the Commission a personnel action request certifying the days of unused sick leave and the amount payable, a copy of the retirement approval, and the completed form. The Chairperson checks the request against the eligibility criteria at N.J.A.C. 4A:6-3.1, and a disapproval comes with written reasons and notice of the right to appeal to the Commission. Payment runs through normal payroll, is withheld if the retirement is cancelled, goes to the estate if the employee dies after retiring, and affects no other pension benefit.
- 4A:6-3.5SCOR: Intergovernmental transfers
Sick leave can travel with an intergovernmental transfer made under N.J.A.C. 4A:4-7.1A. Where it does, the receiving jurisdiction includes it in computing any SCOR it pays, and the receiving jurisdiction's own policy governs that payment, which in State service means the computation rules at N.J.A.C. 4A:6-3.3. An employee who later goes back to the sending jurisdiction has sick leave counted from both before and after the return. One category is carved out completely. The sending jurisdiction pays no SCOR to any law enforcement officer approved for an intergovernmental transfer, including sheriff's officers and county correction officers, and has to certify to both the receiving jurisdiction and the Commission that none was paid.