A Pensioner's Lament

CHAPTER 1
A Rude Awakening

There are two chief sources of the law: statutes and precedents. The former... come from the legislature, which consists of the elected representatives of the people. The latter come from the courts. Precedents are the products of earlier decisions. To the latter we should add the decision of an increasing number of administrative bodies and the precedents established thereby.¹

— An Introduction to the Law

What was it that woke me so rudely and why had I slumbered so? The simple, plain, clear and so very unambiguous answers that I sought are those that I now publicly share with you.

I had taught in both public and private institutions at the secondary and post-secondary levels in Maine, Michigan, New York State and Pennsylvania as well as New Jersey. Having ceased to contribute to a private retirement system (TIAA-CREF) ² in 1982 and having become an inactive member of New Jersey’s TPAF pension system in 1992 after leaving public school teaching, I continued to teach as adjunct at William Paterson University for several years. In 1997 I knew that my retirement monies at TIAA-CREF had continued to increase by virtue of the interest-bearing nature of any of that system’s several funds. Shouldn’t I now, I thought, inquire about the small New Jersey teacher pension that I had earned? Surely it was secure and would be that much more valuable after remaining untapped during a two-year period during which, after reaching the age 60, I had become eligible for monthly retirements benefits. Like the Enron employees who would discover their management’s ruse in their regard, I was about to experience an unwelcome share of unmitigated fraud.

So in 1997 I called TPAF’s office in Trenton to set up a meeting time with a counselor to initiate the retirement application process. For I had decided at the age of 63 to make my retirement official and thereby begin to receive monthly allowances — allowances that no doubt would reflect the fact that I had delayed my official retirement exactly 27 months. No one, however, had informed me that the TPAF retirement protocol was what it was. I, however, — again, like the bulk of Enron’s employees – had been kept in the dark regarding important aspects of my pension monies. You see, my public school teaching in New Jersey had occurred in seven different districts, none of which had in any way prepared me to deal with the retirement process. I expected that, as with the TIAA-CREF, leaving my vested monies in the TPAF fund would be wiser than the alternative.

My counselor at the TPAF became my unwitting awakener. She matter-of-factly revealed that I would not be awarded any greater monthly pension benefits on the basis of the 27-month delay and that I could in fact kiss goodbye to the 27 monthly benefits that would have been mine had I applied for retirement when I turned 60. My only recourse, said she, was to appeal to the Board of Trustees to request relief in the form of retroactive benefits — worth $15,000. That, said I to the counselor, is what I immediately propose to do. For my gut told me that such a deal was not a fair deal regardless of the dealer or the rationale that supposedly supported the practice. Had not my untapped and vested monies been earning interest while waiting for me to trigger either increased pension benefits or a retrieval of actuarially-computed but postponed (i. e., retroactive) benefits?

I had slumbered like the Rip van Winkle whose authorial residence across the Hudson I had enjoyed visiting years before. Why had I been kept in the dark? For indeed I had not been alerted to what the TPAF would adamantly and repeatedly refuse to do to accommodate a self-styled uninformed and out-of-the-loop new retiree. After completing without delay the forms that spell a teacher’s official retirement, I proceeded immediately to initiate what I sensed would be a routine request for the benefits that I had left untapped and which had surely been safeguarded for me in some fund account. For isn’t that what fiduciaries — the TPAF trustees — have sworn to do? The following became the first of several letters that during several months I would send to one or another of TPAF’s bureaucrats at the outset of the saga that would gradually evolve and energize my determination to disclose and broadcast New Jersey’s plain and unambiguous pension-related misfeasance.