Take on Bergen County's Blue Laws

I grew up in Bergen County NJ and although a bit boring, it was a fine place to grow up. The neighborhoods were generally safe, the schools good and the proximity to NYC amazing. The only complaint you'd hear are the taxes were high, the traffic was bad and the Blue Laws sucked.

I moved back to Bergen County about a year ago after having lived in NYC for fifteen years and it finally dawned on my how ridiculously income isn't these Blue Laws were. See in the entire county there is no shopping allowed on a Sunday. You can get groceries but stores like Target, Macy*s, Bed Bath & Beyond etc are closed by county law. It never phased me as a kid because it was all I know but when I saw the beauty of freedom, not being able to buy a longer when your toilet is clogged because it happens to fall on a Sunday seemed insane

People will say that Sunday are a day of rest and this is often defended as a protection for small shopkeepers but it is completely ridiculous. But how about protection for me, I have to spend my entire Saturday running errands because you can't get a screw from Home Depot, a new bed from Sleepy's or a pair of socks from the Gap on a Sunday. I've hear all the arguments and most of them revolve around a few things, all of which are ludicrous in the big picture

1 protecting small store keepers

The issue here is that because I cannot buy a pencil on a Sunday in Bergen County, I drove up to Rockland County and shop So my tax money is not only spent in a different county, it is spent in a different state. And it's typically not just the few odds and ends I buy, if I am going to bother going up there I go up and do a big $250 Target run and probably get a coffee at the local Starbucks and a slice of pizza at the local Ray's. So not only are the business owners of retail items hurt, so are the local restaurants.
Add to that the fact that this is also lost tax revenue which in a day and time when state budgets are having an impossible time trying to get balanced sensibly losing even a dollar seems insane. Ask yourself, why would we want our tax dollars ending up in the coffers of another state?? These are dollars that could improve our schools, fix our roads and improve our infrastructures and parks

2- traffic and pollution
Yeah I get that town's want a day of rest but because nearly everybody in Bergen Country MUST shop on Saturday, it makes that days traffic impossible and the pollution awful because cars are stuck on highways for miles on end. Do people think that pollution on a Saturday doesn't affect their lives, does it just disappear because the clock strikes 12?? If they opened Sunday's up it would likely mean that the traffic on Saturday would subside tremendously. It might not be a 50-50 break but even dropping the traffic by 25% would mean less traffic jams, and thus less cars crawling through winding roads

3- government is protecting it's people
Bergen county is progressive in every definition of the word, except when it comes to these archaic examples of government overreach. If a store keeper needs a day off, close another day. You protect your people by giving them their freedom, not limiting it by Big Government overreach

4- there are six other days in the week
Yes, and most people work long days on five of those. This means that every pair underwear, lightbulb and dog collar must be bought on Saturday which means that God-forbid there is an event planned on that same day, you are screwed. Nobody forces you to open your shop on a Monday, so nobody should force you to close it on a Sunday. Seems barber shops have done just fine with this concept


Time for Joan Voss and the rest of the county legislators to step up and make a difference here. Keep NJ's tax money, retail revenue and additional peripheral revenue in the state and start giving people back their freedom.