New Jersey public workers could see cuts to their health care and pensions, motorists could travel on more toll roads and towns could be forced to consolidate if lawmakers embrace recommendations being considered by a high-powered group formed by the state's most powerful legislator.

Those are just a handful of the nearly 60 suggestions in a draft document obtained by NJ Advance Media that could be released in the coming months by a panel of tax experts and lawmakers state Senate President Stephen Sweeney convened earlier this year to examine New Jersey's state and local tax structure.

The Economic and Fiscal Policy Working Group, which held its discussions in private, grew out of Republican-led federal tax reform that hit high-cost states like New Jersey particularly hard.

The panel was also tasked to look at everything from how the state funds its schools to bolstering New Jersey's underfunded pension system.

A spokesman for Sweeney, D-Gloucester, downplayed the suggestions detailed in the four-page document, saying the group has yet to make its final recommendations and that some items may be removed once the group concludes its findings.

But many of the items, if implemented, could affect everyday life for many New Jerseyans.

Among the recommendations would be to move public workers to 401K-style retirement benefits instead of a pension, raise the retirement age of some state employees from 65 to 67, cap pensionable salary for nearly all government workers and further reduce health care benefits public workers.

Another suggestion is for the state to require municipalities with less than 5,000 people to merge with an adjacent town. If implemented, that would force nearly 200 of the state's 565 municipalities to merge, according to 2010 U.S. Census population data.

Also, it recommends to consolidate collective bargaining from the local level to the state for any state-funded benefit, which could affect, among others, New Jersey's teachers.

To boost the state's ailing pension system, the panel suggests more "interstate tolls near the state line" where permitted by the federal government and charge motorists to travel on high-occupancy toll lanes, or "HOT lanes," on the NJ Turnpike and other highways.

HOT lanes would need to be installed and any revenue earned from them -- and new toll booths -- would go to fund the pension system.

A Sweeney spokesman, Richard McGrath, downplayed the specifics of the draft document.

"The commission, which is comprised of a broad and diverse group of accomplished members, is still in the midst of its work," McGrath said in a statement.

"We expect them to develop a wide range of ideas and recommendations to address the state's economic and fiscal challenges," he said. "We want to hear their ideas, but the committee is still working and has not reached the stage of actually making recommendations and we certainly haven't made any decisions on which suggestions will be used for potential policy proposals."

Sweeney, meanwhile, has talked about the panel for months and said he looks forward to the release of the findings.

"I'm putting a lot of stock into it, because, from sitting in the meetings, I think there's a lot of obvious things that can be done to correct problems," Sweeney said Monday at the Statehouse when asked about the panel.

"But they're big things and they're difficult things," he said. "But they're worthwhile to explore and move forward on."

More than a dozen experts and lawmakers weighed in on the recommendations. Missing from the group was any representative from Gov. Phil Murphy's administration. Sweeney is at odds with Murphy, a fellow Democrat, over ongoing budget negotiations.

Hetty Rosenstein, director of Communications Workers of America, the largest union for state employees, slammed some of the pension and health care recommendations. She likened it to a repeat of the 2011 overhaul for public workers under then-Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, and Sweeney.

State workers will be asked to share more of the burden while the state fails to live up to its end, Rosenstein said.

"It amounts to a handful of concessions from people who have made enormous concessions over the last 10 years -- people who have made the most concessions in the last 10 years," she said.

"This is not real," Rosenstein said. "Steve Sweeney has been coming up with this same tired stuff. At the end of the day, you've got to put the money (into the pension). If you put the money in, the fact is that this is a very modest pension."

Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or Facebook.