Bill would clear the road for Sunday motorcycle sales

OFF THE WIRE
NEW JERSEY:
http://www.app.com/article/20100630/NEWS/6300344/Bill-would-clear-the-road-for-Sunday-motorcycle-sales Bill would clear the road for Sunday motorcycle sales By MICHAEL L. DIAMOND • STAFF WRITER • June 30, 2010

On Sundays, you can gamble away your life savings, or plunk down hard-earned cash on the bar at the local strip club and drink all your miseries away — but you cannot buy a motor vehicle in New Jersey.

That will start to change soon: Lawmakers have introduced legislation to allow dealers to sell motorcycles on Sundays.

"To me, it's crazy," said Barbara Borowiec, owner of Barb's Harley Davidson in Mount Ephraim, Camden County, and the bill's chief proponent. "You can buy cigarettes, alcohol, gamble, buy anything you want, but you can't buy a motorcycle? It's crazy. It's ridiculous."

The bill (S-1923), sponsored by state Sen. Donald Norcross, D-Camden, is designed to give motorcycle dealerships and the state a boost as they try to climb out of a devastating recession, all while calling into question a quirk of state law.

The bill was approved Monday in the state Senate by a vote of 38-2, but few believe it sets the stage for shopping sprees at car dealers, most of whom remain content to stay closed on Sundays.

"I have never heard from a car dealer who has said to me, "I think we should be open on Sunday,' " said James Appleton, president of the New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers, an industry trade group.

An identical bill (A-2990) has been introduced in the Assembly by Reed Gusciora and Wayne DeAngelo, both D-Mercer, but it has not come up for a vote there yet.

New Jersey long has been home to "blue laws" that prohibit shopping and working on Sundays so that its residents could spend more time in church or with their families.

By 1985, however, all of the state's counties except for Bergen opted out of the shopping restrictions, giving residents a chance to open their wallets, said John Holub, president of the New Jersey Retail Merchants Association. Holub's trade group recently lost a bid to allow Bergen County stores to stay open on Sundays.

Legislators, however, have treated motor-vehicle sales more harshly, writing into the state's criminal code penalties for selling motorcycles, cars and trucks on Sundays: a charge of disorderly conduct with a fine of up to $100 and a jail time of up to 10 days for the first offense; a fine of up to $500 and jail time of up to 30 days for the second offense; and a fine of up to $750 and jail time of up to six months for the third offense

Borowiec has owned her dealership for 23 years, the last eight of which she has opened on Sundays so that she can host riding excursions and sell clothing, goggles, helmets, parts and other accessories.

When it comes to buying bikes? She said the law gave riders incentive to go to Delaware. New Jersey residents who buy vehicles in other states still have to pay New Jersey sales tax, but Borowiec said she and the state were losing revenue on accessories sold in those transactions.

She appealed to Norcross, whose office is across the street from her dealership.

"This was a no-brainer from the first time I heard about it," Norcross said in an interview. "This is one of those things that you scratch your head and say, "You've got to be kidding.' "

Dealer opposes bill Not all motorcycle dealers support the bill. Evelyn Stumpf, an owner of Stumpy's Yamaha in Neptune, said the slow economy forced her last year to scale back the company's hours from six days a week to five.

But even if the economy was strong, she has a hunch that motorcycle sales on Sundays would be slow.

"People on weekends, pretty much they want to be out there playing, having fun," Stumpf said. "We've been here for 46 years. We kind of appreciate having Sunday off. It's pretty hectic as it is."

For retailers such as Borowiec, though, the rules governing who can sell what on a Sunday don't make sense, particularly when consumers can shop around the clock on the Internet.

"People come in on Sundays and have no idea they can't (buy motorcycles,)" Borowiec said. "They're shocked and surprised they can't. Unlike the car business, the motorcycle buyer comes in on the weekends to buy, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and it's an inconvenience (that) they can't."

While the prospect of attracting customers on a weekend day sounds alluring, auto dealers haven't clamored for similar treatment.

Appleton, of the automotive retailers trade group, said it is a matter of economics. Unlike car dealers, many motorcycle dealers wouldn't need to add to their labor costs because they already are open Sundays to sell accessories, he said.

Also, car dealers lose few sales by being closed on Sundays, Appleton said. Consumers have been known to stroll the lot on a Sunday without the sales pressure. But they typically don't buy cars on impulse; they can wait until Monday.

"If we were missing deals on Sunday, and New York was selling all their cars on Sunday, we would have been open a long time ago. That's my feeling," said Paul DeFelice, owner of Circle Chevrolet and Hyundai in Shrewsbury.