Gas Station Self-Serve Bill Fuels Debate

673
A bill that would allow customers to pump gas into their vehicles, breaking a 66-year state tradition, will be introduced in the Assembly in early June. Photo: Samantha Caramela
A bill that would allow customers to pump gas into their vehicles, breaking a 66-year state tradition, will be introduced in the Assembly in early June. Photo: Samantha Caramela

JERSEY GIRLS MAY well one day pump gas, if state Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon can get enough lawmakers to see it his way.
Despite that motto proclaiming Jersey Girls Don’t Pump Gas that is seen on tee shirts on the Jersey Shore every summer, O’Scanlon, a Republican representing the 13th Legislative District, plans on introducing in the Assembly in early June his version of a bill that would lift the 66-year-old legal prohibition to self-service gas stations in this state.
The Assembly may wind up taking the lead on this debate, however. State Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat representing the 3rd District, said he had no plans to post the measure that had been introduced on May 14.
O’Scanlon said he drafted the bill “after a number of people have spoken to me how they’re frustrated they can’t pump their own gas,” forced to wait in long lines while there are available pumps not being used.
Currently New Jersey and Oregon are the only two states that prohibit the practice and Oregon is in the process of very likely repealing it as well. In New Jersey it’s a criminal offense to allow customers to handle the gas pumps that can result in fines of about $200 – usually against the station owner rather than the customer, according to O’Scanlon.
Many customers find themselves driving into a service station where one or more lanes have been closed to them, he said. “The reason for that is,” O’Scanlon said, “an attendant didn’t show up, they can’t find dependable people to work. There’s just not enough people to service all the customers.”
Robert Scott, associate professor of economics at Monmouth University, strenuously disagrees.
“I think the social costs far outweigh any small negligible financial gain for getting rid of it,” countered Scott.
In 2007 he published his paper “Fill’er Up: A Study of Statewide Self-Service Gasoline Stations Ban.”
Scott argues there are numerous reasons to maintain the prohibition, believing lifting it could lead to the elimination of possibly thousands of entry-level jobs.
Those jobs allow young people, the disabled and recently arrived immigrants a chance for a leg up in life. “There is a financial benefit to the state and a financial and psychological benefit for the people,” he said.
Savings to the station owners would be negligible if not non-existent given profit “margins on sales are so small,” Scott observed. “Gas stations make far more selling a cup of coffee than they do selling a tank of gas.”
O’Scanlon maintains the opposite position and says in the final equation, “it’s the convenience issue and the cost issue,” he said, believing this would keep the price of gas relatively low in a state where it’s traditionally been among the lowest in the country, given the competitive nature of the fuel marketplace. And if there continues to be a call for full service, “Gas stations would be absolutely insane if there is a call for full service and eliminate something that there is such a call for,” he added.
In addition to those arguments, “It’s unnecessary government regulations, it’s bad policy,” he maintained.
As far as the safety issue is concerned, O’Scanlon said he was “offended by people who argue that New Jerseyans are mentally incapable of pumping their own gas without setting themselves on fire.”
The ban against pumping your own gas dates back to 1949 with the Legislation’s passage of the Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act, done in response to consumer safety concerns.
Scott counters that New Jersey station owners traditionally pay a lower insurance rate than those in states that allow self-service.
One of the most pressing arguments against doing away with the ban relates to a provision in the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, that does require providing accommodations to the disabled (though there are exceptions in that federal law). About 20 percent of the nation’s population, “have disabilities to the level to make daily tasks difficult,” he noted.
For a healthy man like himself, Scott said it wouldn’t a problem. “What about the 80 year-old with arthritis who may have difficulty doing that?” he questioned.
On a personal note, Scott (who isn’t originally from the Garden State and has pumped his own gas), there is another less tangible – and maybe less defendable – argument: “It does make New Jersey unique and that’s kind of nice,” he believed. “It’s kind of a funky policy, it’s kind of fun, a sort of throwback to the 1950s.”
Should it ever become law, it won’t impact Tony Crisalli who owns and operates Holmdel Village Exxon, believing this is about what larger service stations may want. “If you’re asking me, my customers would rather have full service,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me, I would provide full service anyway.”
O’Scanlon’s bill contains a provision for a three-year period where station owners can offer self-service but also must have full service.
“We have expressed complete openness to folks who have concerns,” and he said he is open to modifications to the bill.
– By John Burton