Guest Opinion: Dumping Toll Collectors? Not So FastCompeting goals, tough questions, and no easy answers
New Jersey Turnpike toll collectors are as Jersey as it gets. There is a great scene from the 1984 movie "The Pope of Greenwich Village," where two dysfunctional New York cousins, Paulie (Eric Roberts) and Charlie (Mickey Rourke), are driving down the Turnpike on their way to Monmouth Racetrack to place a bet on a "sure thing."
As they are on the Turnpike, Paulie gives the toll collector a tip, confident that he is about to win big. When Charlie asks him why he did that, Paulie says something about how miserable his job must be, standing in that tiny tollbooth all day. “I just made his day, Charlie.” Well, fact is, tollbooth collectors currently make about $30 an hour, particularly those who are "more experienced" at their job.
But as tough as that job may be to sit or stand in such a tiny space for so many hours, there are over 850 Turnpike employees that wish they could turn back the clock to 1984. Why is that? Because there is a very serious proposal on the table to "privatize" toll collection on the Turnpike, which would in turn save tens of millions of dollars for the state of New Jersey.
A task force reported to Governor Chris Christie recently that a realistic estimate of annual savings by privatizing toll collection on the Turnpike would be between $35 million and $42.5 million a year. The catch is that in the request for proposals for a private company taking over toll collection calls for toll collectors to make $12 per hour -- not $30 an hour. All this in an effort to ultimately move to some sort of automated collection of tolls where no actual employees are involved in taking money from us.
You know what is interesting here? This is a classic example of two legitimate but competing goals that run into each other and only one goal can survive. Think about it. Everyone says they want government to spend less money, to find ways to be more efficient, and to cut the number of government employees. You know, that whole thing about smaller government is best. All together that sounds fine, and people agree to it in theory.
But there is another competing goal, particularly in such difficult economic times, which is to keep as many people employed as possible -- including Turnpike toll collectors. Toll collectors buy things like cars, houses, refrigerators, toys for their kids -- you know, stuff you pay