The panel, which will have 30 days to issue an interim report, will wrap up its study in about two months, the governor has said. Christie, 51, began calling for more changes to the retirement plan after he skipped $2.4 billion in contributions to close a budget hole as income taxes dropped this year.

The group includes Thomas J. Healey, a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury, and Raymond Chambers, a philanthropist and United Nations special envoy and chairman of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. Also named were Tom Byrne, founder of Byrne Asset Management in Princeton and vice chairman of the state’s pension board, and Ethan Kra, who runs an actuarial service specializing in financing strategies and employee benefits.

“This commission’s work cannot be about politics; it must be about the cold, hard facts, which is why I have not appointed politicians to this group,” Christie, a Republican, said in a statement. “It’s time to think out of the box and be prepared to abandon the sacred cows that have long been off limits in reforming our entitlement programs to make them permanently affordable and sustainable.”