Drop That Nozzle: New Jersey Remains a Full-Service Island
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Last week, prominent legislators in New Jersey filed legislation to do the same — arguing that it might even help the nagging matter of finding money to fix the state’s crumbling roads and bridges, and noting that the gas station owners who pushed for the ban in 1949 now want to reverse it. They also appealed to those with short fuses, suggesting that New Jerseyans would not have to wait as long for gas if they could pump their own.
They got no further than a sport utility vehicle inching toward the Shore for Memorial Day weekend.
The State Senate president and his counterpart in the State Assembly, who are both Democrats, declared that they would never bring either bill to a vote. Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican who proposed self-service stations in 2009, refused even to comment on the proposal. No shrinking violet, the governor has said that he had stopped talking about pump-your-own, because he learned “I get my head handed to me.”
The opposition baffles proponents.
“Nobody can make a sound argument why we should not allow this,” said State Assemblyman Declan J. O’Scanlon Jr., a Republican who is proposing one bill to allow self-service gas. “The only way to win that argument is if you can make a legitimate argument that New Jerseyans are more flammable than other people.”
“They are a little more volatile,” he added. “We consume a lot more greasy boardwalk food and funnel cakes, so maybe we are.”
But to arguments that self-service gas would discriminate against the elderly and people who cannot reach the pumps, Mr. O’Scanlon countered: “Do they have no senior citizens in 48 other states? No short people?”
Lawmakers keeping the ban in place recognize what a 2012 poll showed: The majority of New Jersey voters — 63 percent — do not want to give up full service.
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Originally Posted by angelatc
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