Another police chief retirement, another huge end-of-career payout.
When Bayonne Chief Robert Geisler stepped down in October after more than 30 years on the force, he left a job in which he’d risen through the ranks to become the highest paid chief in New Jersey law enforcement.
Geisler’s long career and $338,254 salary put him in line for a pension in which he’ll receive nearly $236,000 a year for the rest of his life.
But Geisler, 54, also left with a parting gift: Thousands of hours of unused paid leave that he was able to cash in, providing him a severance worth $541,533 as he walked out the door, according to city records.
Those hefty payouts are often derided by critics as “boat checks” that allow well-placed retirees to sail off into the sunset at the expense of taxpayers. They’ve proven both controversial and hard to control, despite reforms state lawmakers enacted more than 15 years ago to bring them to heel.
It’s “not the first time it’s happened in state laws where the Legislature has an idea, but the follow through execution is not well addressed,” said Marc Pfeiffer, an expert in municipal governance who teaches at Rutgers University.
Pfeiffer said payments like Geisler’s demonstrate flaws in those old reforms, which have faced their own tough realities at the local level, where contractual obligations and strong public sector unions have blunted their effect.
“The answer is it’s more than just a good government issue, it’s a political issue,” Pfeiffer said.