» posted on Saturday, November 24th, 2001 at 4:27 pm by John
A STATEMENT ABOUT THE NJDOT
September 4, 2001.
1. The NJDOT for years has been known for its “tough” inspections twice yearly. Bus owners registered in New Jersey basically did not oppose strict enforcement as the goal usually was realized: safe equipment (motorcoaches) on the roads.
2. The NJDOT over the years has camped at various tourist destinations (in New Jersey) to inspect buses during a several-hour stay at the attraction. In recent years, there have been periodic reports of bus accidents, and therefore perception had it, to the casual observer, that inspection of buses would be a necessity to try to prevent these accidents. Actually, few, if any at all, of the accidents were blamed on the equipment; all, or nearly all, of them were due to DRIVER ERROR. (This writer IS NOT AWARE OF ANY BUS ACCIDENT blamed on equipment.) In recent years, the bus inspections have been conducted almost weekly near casinos in Atlantic City. Thousands of dollars in fines have been levied; thousands of passengers have been delayed in returning home, due to bus companies’ inability to “cover” a return trip; bus companies have spent untold thousands of dollars in repairs, fines and sub-chartering while the NJDOT picks nits. Two inspections a year should be sufficient for charter buses.
3. The State of New Jersey so far has ignored our request for fact-finding under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U. S. C. section 552. It would seem that the State of New Jersey does not feel obligated to obey laws other than its own. More than a dozen questions were posed in a letter by GSS Tours, Philadelphia, to Governor Whitman dated December 12, 2000. The NJDOT has told GSS Tours that information regarding such inspections is available from the USDOT. This appears to be a delaying tactic on the part of the NJDOT.
When is the Governor going to comply with the FOIA?
New Jersey does not wish to admit what it is doing.
4. A bus inspector told one bus driver/owner (not this writer) who protested an inspection near a casino in Atlantic City: “I can do whatever I wanna do!”
5. GSS Tours was red-tagged Friday night, August 17, 2001, for a chafed air line hose on the left front wheel. You should see the “chafing” that prompted the red tag! When a bus is red-tagged, it is declared “out of service”. If a bus company cannot get the problem repaired at once, it must contract for a replacement bus to come to Atlantic City to pick up the passengers at the end of their casino stay. This adds to the cost (to the bus company) of the inspection saga.
6. It is routine that bills for new legislation in a state be reviewed by the Attorney General’s office. However, the State is a closed shop. Once it has ruled that a bill meets the test of constitutionality, it ascribes to itself no obligation to re-test the law despite new rulings of the United States Supreme Court. In this case, the Indianapolis suit (CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS v. EDMOND) strongly suggests that New Jersey bus inspections serve no more useful purpose than the random stopping of motorists to look for those who may be on illegal drugs.
7. The New Jersey law provides that the Attorney General works solely for the Governor and the state legislature and “other instrumentalities of state government”. Therefore, a private citizen cannot challenge a New Jersey law except by going to court. The small business person must cough up his own funds to fight the state. The average bus owner is not Big Tobacco. Likewise, why should we accept a system in which the taxpayers fund the state legal system to the sometime detriment of the very people paying the bill and simultaneously serve the needs of elected officials who are fund-raising at the expense of the electorate?
Why must a mere citizen be compelled to hire a lawyer to fight what appears to be a valid challenge to a state law? Should not the Attorney General also serve the taxpayers where potentially invalid laws are allowing for bully tactics on the part of a state department? Should not a recent ruling of the U. S. Supreme Court strike validity into a citizen’s complaint, based on the new ruling?
8. The first response to the original GSS Tours statement to Governor Whitman was finally answered more than two months later, and in effect referred the chickens (read this the bus owner protestors) to the Department of Transportation (read this the foxes). Outrageous.
9. Condescension on the part of the State of New Jersey illustrates that the (likely illegal) NJDOT inspections will continue to flourish in a bureaucracy. When the writer tried to protest a random inspection in Atlantic City during the day June 7, 2001, Sue Kleinberg, Deputy Attorney General, though at her desk in her office, refused to get on the phone. This is probably another “canons of ethics” situation lawyers hide behind when it satisfies their present predicament.
10. GSS Tours is among the lesser-aggrieved bus companies involved in this. Interviews with bus owners in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York will illustrate the kind of legal/illegal scam the NJDOT is fostering.
11. The typical bus owner has so much to do to try to keep his/her buses running, he/she does not have the luxury of having the time to fight the bureaucracy. So the NJDOT can play gotcha all day all week all year.
filed under New Jersey DOT | 93 comments
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