A PLEA FOR OVERTURN OF NJDOT LAW

March 6, 2001To the Attorney General of New Jersey:

I wrote a letter to Governor Whitman about this in December (2000).

From all I can see, she was so upset, she fled to Washington.

You should be upset, too.

You have a law on the books of New Jersey (or maybe a hundred of them), which likely is unconstitutional.  I cited my non-legal reasons in my statement to Governor Whitman.

Actually, I am pleased that you have SOMEBODY in Trenton who deserves a raise.  He or she sent my statement to the Administrative Office of the Courts, State of New Jersey, and a nice chap by the name of Lawrence E. Walton, Chief, Municipal Court Services Division, sent us a two-page reply.  (EDITOR’S NOTE:  This reply, although it hardly addressed the actual problem, is re-printed elsewhere in this GSS TOURS NEWS section.)

Usually, you don’t even get a response when you write to a legislator or Congressman.  Or a City Council member.  Or governmental department.  Not even that.

I got a two-pager.  Fewer than two months later.  I am impressed.

But your questionable law is still on the books.

So, let’s get down to business.

The law calling for NJDOT bus inspections is an ass.

An ass.

As most lawyers know from their studies, the phrase “the law is a ass” is from Charles Dickens’ “OLIVER TWIST”.  Isn’t “The Law is a Ass” ungrammatical and vulgar?

You will find it in Chapter 51 of “OLIVER TWIST”.  Mr. Bumble, an ungrammatical and vulgar character, is told that he is legally responsible for the wrongs of his wife (because the law presumes a husband can control her actions).  Good ole Mr. Bumble’s ungrammatical and vulgar response was:  “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass, a idiot.  If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor.”

Your NJDOT law authorizing random inspections of charter and other motorcoaches is . . . a bachelor.

You need to eliminate the law for several reasons.  At the moment, I can think of two (please see my December statement to Govenor Whitman for “just a few” more)>  (EDITOR’S NOTE:  The statement to former Governor Whitman is carried elsewhere on this NEWS website.)

I don’t believe your law could withstand a Constitutional test (the U. S. Supreme Court November 28, 2000), went quite a distance to suggest this in ruling on a similar situation).  And secondly, your ass of a law attacks the motorcoach, not the operator.

Most people, I think, who own and operate motorcoaches want assurance that the drivers are safe and sane.

Yet you are spending “big time” going after the equipment.

On its face, I am sure the legislators are collectively patting themselves on the back for their wisdom.  They’re getting all the bad buses off the highways.

They are nutty as a fruitcake.

The NJDOT law just PUNISHES small business owners (bus owners/operators) with a major and ill-advised stretch.

Let me start from the beginning.

Public officials (the NJDOT included, and the legislators) don’t know how to regulate the motorcoach industry.  Sad to say, they THINK they do.  They engage in entirely too much back-patting.

When we got our first bus in 1986, we sought intra-state authority to operate.  We had to pay an application fee of $125.00 and then convince an Administrative Law Judge of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission that we deserved to operate our bus from one part of Pennsylvania to another.  As it was, we could not run a charter trip from our office in northeast Philadelphia to a Phillies game at Veterans Stadium in (South) Philadelphia.  The law, of course, was an ass.  We didn’t have the “authority” to pick up in one part of the city and transport passengers to another (nor operate ANY trip from Pennsylvania to Pennsylvania).  Of course, it was some lawyer’s “solution” to “protecting the rights” of prior bus operators, whose business might be hurt by the new competition.

I wrote a few times to the PUC and always, they responded on the phone.

“It’s the goddam legislature,” said the PUC.  “You have to go to them.  We don’t write the laws; we do the regulating.”

I don’t want to bore you with all the saga.  We never got the authority.

Fortunately, several years ago, somebody actually got an ear with the U. S. Supreme Court and the law was changed nationally, and Pennsylvania, tail between its legs, agreed to go along.  It had to.

But Pennsylvania is a case-and-a-half.  Last month, Michael A. Smerconish, WPHT (Philadelphia) talk radio guy (and, by the way, a lawyer!!!), said that at present six the recent legislators, Harrisburg division, ARE NOW DOING “TIME”.  They are legislating TOO MUCH.  They are $eeking too much from their electorate.  Stop passing all these laws.  In my statement to Governor Whitman, I complained that the laws generate fees for attorneys.  But that’s not all of it.

What’s Trenton got to say to six legislators (in PA) in the pokey?

Our office is hardly a half-hour’s drive from yours.

In fact, however, it is a world away.

The problem here is the NJDOT law.

Small business owners cannot possibly contest with its ignominy.

What recourse does GSS Tours have in fighting this unjust law?

The letter from Lawrence E. Walton says the obvious.  I can’t fault him for it, but the world is divided into two camps:  problem causers ….. and ….. problem solvers.  Most legislators and many lawyers are problem causers.  While you and I know that, your and I know we won’t “solve” this today, or even next week.

What does Mr. Walton conclude?  We can APPEAL the decision of the Atlantic City Municipal Court.  And, we can “contact an attorney”.

As they say nowadays, DUH.

So, let’s concentrate on the law authorizing the NJDOT to pull these sudden, random bus inspections.  I pretty much explain the caper we suffered December 1 (2000) in the enclosed statement sent to Governor Whitman.

I also mention the cesspool “GOVERNMENT” is mired in.  So many laws.  So many legislators making MORE laws.  So many regulations.  Such feeble enforcements of the so many laws.  Money for lawyers.  Fees.  Fees.  More fees.

Of course, it is total bullshit.  But it doesn’t do anything except keep piling on.  That’s what government seems set up to do.  Pile it on.  On people, including small business owners.  (And big business people, too.)  Once the law is enacted, it is gold forever.

With all due respect to you and your office, I call upon the Office of the Attorney General of the Great Garden State of the Northeastern United States to call cop on the bull that is disguised as the NJDOT bus inspection statute.  It serves only to punish completely unfairly, and allow for legislative back-patting.  All it does is kill people like me.

Who have nice buses.

I would like to show you our buses.  But I don’t have time.  Hell, I don’t even have time to write to you.  But I’m doing it anyway.

Like most small business owners, I have enough to do without trying to combat the skullduggeries of state legislatures and regulatory bodies.

While your law is unfair, I believe it cannot stand to be tested against the recent ruling of the U. S. Supreme Court.  Nearly everything in that ruling says you should go home.  Kill the law.  The NJDOT not only flies in the face of that ruling, it purports to operate, theoretically, for the public good, and only people like me are informed enough on the overall situation to tell you that the law is a smokescreen in combatting the problem of bus accidents on our highways.

Surely, there have been bus accidents.  Usually, they make for good TV news.  A bus overturned.  Passengers with blood on their faces.

What do your penetrating surveys say as to what percentage of these accidents were caused by improper bus equipment?

What surveys?  As a bus association member, I can tell you that NO BUS SURVEYS of the magnitude required have been conducted.  If you have them, I have enclosed a request for such information.

You know as well as I:  it was the driver, not his bus.

As that risky scheme Al Gore once bellowed to Bill Clinton, GET WITH THE PROGRAM!

In this case, read it:  GET WITH THE ISSUE!

If you wish to legislate bus accidents, recognize that few, if any, were caused by “defective brakes” and all that jazz.  Almost always (if not always) … (and I would like to see any Attorney General produce the facts on this), the accident was driver error.

I am trying here NOT to repeat the comments in the statement to Governor Whitman.

PLEASE, PLEASE, however, take a look at CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS et al. v. EDMOND et al.

I know most Attorneys General are fed up with complaints from non-lawyers.  But I can read.  That ruling strongly suggests that the NJDOT law authorizing random bus searches should be headed straight for the funny farm.

There is supposed to be a meeting of a New Jersey bus association this month (March, 2001), taking up this subject.  A NJDOT representative is supposed to speak.  (EDITOR’S NOTE:  This did not happen.)

To me, that’s missing the point.

The NJDOT should be LISTENING to bus owners and operators, not speaking TO them.

We don’t need to be TALKED TO and LEGISLATED AGAINST and REGULATED by this slimy, crummy law.  It is contemptible.  And the scions of New Jersey are those who should be held in the contempt.  And the law should be erased.

And other bus owners and I should get our money back.

In the case of GSS Tours, the “money” is the improper bus inspection at Liberty State Park as well as last December (2000) in Atlantic City.  And I’d like to see that judge in Cape May County take more time to listen to the testimony before him regarding the time, in 1999, when a 13-year-old threw a rock at the windshield of our bus in Wildwood.

New Jersey, you owe us about $6,000.00.  Plus aggravation time.

Even more importantly, however, you owe us justice.  You owe us regulation that is productive (not what the NJDOT flays on bus owners as at present).

GOVERNMENT caused the problem.  GOVERNMENT must overturn and resolve the problem.

And small business owners, at the mercy of legalized ambulance chasers, should not be compelled to “contact an attorney”.

.

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST

(enclosed with statement to the Attorney General)

The purpose of this statement is to request pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U. S. C. section 552.  If this information is not available from the Office of the Attorney General, then the law I am protesting relating to NJDOT random searches never should have been introduced as a legislative bill.

At the very least, assuming I do not know how the New Jersey state government is run, I ask that you forward this request to the appropriate agency or otherwise advise me of the other agency or agencies which should have this information, if the legislature proceeded in good faith, if ill-advised and misinformed.

My questions are included in my letter to Governor Christine Todd Whitman dated 12/11/2000,

As is my right as a United States citizen, if any part or all of the materials are withheld under an FOIA exemption, please provide a list of the information withheld and mark any deleted sections.  Please list the specific exemptions that form the basis for any decision from a document or the complete withholding of a document.

I ask that you furnishthe information without any charge or at a reduced charge as the information will be used to call for overturning a law that never should have seen the light of day.  In any case, please provide me with an itemized statement of the applicable fee or fees.

If search and copying fees are estimated to exceed $100.00, please contact me before proceeding, as I may have a satellite method of obtaining this data from you.  To further narrow my request, I would like the opportunity to review the documents retrieved or your document index in order to select the records to be copied.  Please identify the location of the documents and/or the document index so I may review them.  If an index is available, please provide the fee, if any, for such index.  If you can provide an index at no charge, please forward it to me at the address of GSS Tours.  Further, if any part (or even all) of the appropriate information is available on the Internet, please provide the site addresses where the information is located.

As provided for by Section 552(a)(6)(A)(i) of the Freedom of Information Act, please provide your reply within 20 business days.

I hasten to admonish GOVERNMENT that this is a GOVERNMENT-caused issue, and GOVERNMENT must bear the burdens, including cost, of seeing this issue to its proper adjudication.

.

Above statement and FOIA request sent to Trenton March 6, 2001.

GSS Tours is still waiting for the information, as of November 26, 2001.