(The following story by Pat Kelley appeared on the Independent Press website on January 5.)
AREA, N.J. — The Lackawanna Coalition, a local rail advocacy group, has been stopped by NJ Transit from distributing its Railgram newsletter at NJ Transit train stations.
“This is a First Amendment issue. It’s a strong First Amendment issue,” said the Lackawanna Coalition’s chairman, David Peter Alan, last week.
Mr. Alan said he was at the Madison train station on Dec. 12 to drop off a stack of the newsletters when he was told by the ticket agent that he had received an order that the Railgram could no longer be distributed from NJ Transit rail stations.
Mr. Alan said when he questioned the agent about the order the man called the Transit Police. According to Mr. Alan, the police asked him for ID and wanted to know why he was interfering with the ticket agent. They then told him to leave the station on the next train, he said.
According to NJ Transit officials, however, Mr. Alan has not been banned from dropping off copies of Railgram at the stations. He just needs to apply for a permit to do so.
“You can’t leave material behind,” said NJ Transit spokesperson Dan Stessel. According to Mr. Stessel, Mr. Alan needs to apply for a permit to distribute the newsletters despite the fact that the coalition has been dropping them off at the stations for more than 20 years.
Mr. Alan said the coalition has been distributing the newsletter off and on since the early 1980s, at which time it was left on the train seats. When Mr. Alan became chairman of the coalition in 2000 he resurrected the Railgram and routinely left copies in the “Take One” boxes at all the open stations along the Morris & Essex line including Madison, Chatham, Summit, Millburn and Short Hills. Mr. Alan is now under the impression that he has been banned from leaving the newsletters at the stations.
After filing an OPRA request with NJ Transit to find out what was behind the apparent ban, Mr. Alan received a copy of an email from NJ Transit Customer Advocate Sandra Check to her boss Penny Bassett-Hackett, senior director of corporate communications, questioning whether the Lackawanna Coalition should be allowed to distribute newsletters at the stations after they printed information critical of NJ Transit.
A second e-mail dated the next day, Nov. 20, was written by a NJ Transit employee to Ms. Check advising that the newsletters had been found at the Millburn and Short Hills stations and the ticket agents were advised to “get rid of them.” The e-mail went on to say that the rest of the ticket agents would also be advised to remove the newsletters.
“I think it’s highly ironic that a person whose title is Customer Advocate should engage in banning the publication of a genuine customer advocate,” Mr. Alan said.
Mr. Alan said he thinks the ban has something to do with a story in the Sept/Oct. issue of Railgram that was critical of NJ Transit for instituting service cuts on the Raritan Valley line without notice to the public. That story made reference to a complaint filed with the State Inspector General by Joe Versaggi of Bridgewater, who is director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers and the New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers.
Mr. Alan said the Lackawanna Coalition also had criticized NJ Transit for making similar service cuts on the Morris and Essex line and before running the letter about the Raritan Valley cuts he gave a copy of it to Ms. Bassett-Hackett and asked her to respond. She did not respond so he ran the letter as is. In fact, the last line in the article states, “NJ Transit was apprised of this story, but did not comment.”
“It was definitely content related,” Mr. Alan said of the ban.
A call to Ms. Hackett was returned by Mr. Stessel from her office who denied that the incident has anything to do with the newsletter’s content.
“He (Mr. Alan) has written many things over a long period of time that have been critical of NJ Transit,” Mr. Stessel said, adding that he doesn’t think there is a problem with the content of the newsletter. He said that distribution of leaflets on the NJ Transit system is governed by administrative code and under the regulations a person who wishes to hand out or leave leaflets on NJ Transit property must obtain a certificate of registration.
He could not explain why after years of distributing the leaflets without a permit Mr. Alan has now been stopped. He said that NJ Transit’s senior director of real estate would reach out to Mr. Alan to explain how to apply for a permit.
As of last Wednesday Mr. Alan had not heard from him.
Mr. Alan said he was at a NJ Transit board meeting two days before the incident at the Madison train station and no one told him there was a problem with distributing the newsletter.
He said transit officials kept the issue from him so he “would get an unpleasant surprise just as they kept the service cuts from the riders so they would get an unpleasant surprise.”
Mr. Alan said he researched the provisions of the NJ Administrative Code that Mr. Stessel cited and based on his interpretation, “the rules requiring a permit for distributing leaflets are designed to ensure proper pedestrian traffic flow at NJT facilities. This is not an issue with the Railgram, since we leave them unobtrusively in one place for customers to take, and have done so for several years. The removal of our newsletters was based specifically on management’s objection to a story we reported, even though NJT does not dispute the truth of what we said. We are deeply concerned that NJT’s action is a violation of our right to protected expression under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
The service cuts that Mr. Alan refers to on the Morris and Essex line were made on May 11 and cut the off-peak service in half with the train schedules being cut from half hourly to essentially hourly service. According to Mr. Alan, prior to the service cuts, the line had half hourly service since the 1920’s.
“It’s a very severe service cut. We criticized them for not holding hearings,” Mr. Alan said, referring to a state statute that stipulates that NJ Transit must hold public hearings before an abandonment or substantial curtailment of service.
Mr. Alan said his next step is to seek legal advice from an attorney who is knowledgeable on First Amendment issues.