New Jersey’s eight-year-old law requiring public employees to live in the state is a failed experiment and it needs to be eliminated, according to the top Republican in the state Senate.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr., R-Union, said he is pushing to lift all restrictions on where state employees — from public school teachers to state agency workers to local municipal employees -- can live.

“I don’t think the state should be building walls to keep people in,” Kean said Friday.

The state law, called the “New Jersey First Act," was signed in 2011 by Gov. Chris Christie. It requires that nearly all state, county, local and school district employees hired after 2011 live in New Jersey or move here within a year of being hired.

At the time, the law had broad support in the state Legislature. If you are being paid by New Jersey taxpayers, you should pay state and local taxes and be a state resident, Christie and other supporters said.

“This will help to support our workforce, while at the same time keeping our tax dollars in the state. This is not only sound public policy, but it makes good economic sense,” then-state Sen. Donald Norcross (D-Camden), one of the bill’s sponsors, said at the time.

However, an NJ Advance Media analysis of state records published Thursday found at least 2,310 public employees have bypassed the law and gotten a pass to live out of state because they successfully applied for exemptions.

The state Employee Residency Review Committee, a small board that meets in Trenton, has approved exemptions for the majority of public employees who have come before them asking to move out of New Jersey for health or financial reasons or because the worker had a letter from a boss saying they were “critical” in their workplace.

In most cases, the public workers asked to live in Pennsylvania or New York.

In 2012, the first full year the law was in effect, the committee voted to grant about 71 percent of applicants’ requests for exemptions, NJ Advance Media’s analysis found. So far this year, the committee has voted to approve 90 percent of requests.

Kean said the review committee’s hearings, where public workers often burst into tears revealing the details of their personal lives to ask to move out of state, are a sign it’s time to take the law off the books.

Requiring people to publicly explain the complex details of their divorces, financial difficulties, family problems and health diagnoses in a public meeting before a bureaucratic committee in order to plead for permission to move across a river is an “antiquated, almost barbaric” way to treat modern workers, Kean said.

He said he is also worried the law is keeping good candidates for applying for teaching positions, state agency jobs and other public employee positions because the state would dictate where they must live.

“A lot of people just don’t apply,” Kean said.

Kean’s bill (S508) calling for the elimination of the residency law was introduced last year, but has not moved forward in the state Senate. A companion bill, A3580, is also pending in the assembly.

Similar proposals to kill the “New Jersey First Act” have failed in the past.

Kean’s proposed legislation says the requirement for public employees to live in New Jersey should only apply to the governor, state lawmakers, the heads of state agencies and judges. Every other public employee would be free to live where they want.

There have been other successful challenges to the “New Jersey First” law. Last year, the residency rule was blamed as part of the reason NJ Transit had trouble hiring enough engineers to keep its trains running.

In September, the state Employee Residency Review Committee voted with the support of lawmakers to approve a blanket exemption for all NJ Transit employees in “mission essential” jobs, including train engineers, bus drivers, conductors and rail maintenance workers.

The law has also been cited in a lawsuit against Rutgers University challenging whether four appointed members of the Rutgers Board of Governors should lose their unpaid positions because they live outside of New Jersey. The case, which is still pending, has raised questions about whether the residency law should apply to volunteers, including those appointed to state boards, in addition to paid public employees.

Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer. Find her at KellyHeyboerReporter on Facebook. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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