New Jersey’s 14th District – Senate candidate Pat Johnson announced she supports legislation to strip public pensions from corrupt public officials. Current law allows public officials to continue to collect their pensions, even if they are convicted of abusing their office.

“Linda Greenstein has failed time and again to secure COLA pension increases for retired public employees who need it most, yet she voted to make sure corrupt politicians who take bribes and go to jail would still collect their full state pensions. That’s just wrong.“ said Johnson.

Legislation to strip public officials convicted of crime was first introduced in 2008, following the conviction of former Assemblyman Neil Cohen. Cohen continues to collect a State funded pension, even after being convicted of using taxpayer resources to view and print child porn. The crime was serious enough to prompt the NJ Supreme Court to suspend his ability to practice law – but not serious enough to suspend his ability to collect a taxpayer funded pension.

The legislation, S-1557 had bipartisan support but when all Republican legislators tried to advance the bill unanimously in 2017, Democrats including Greenstein voted to kill each effort on three separate occasions.