NJ Jewish News on-line | Agencies could use some of governor's self-criticism

The Academy Award for most powerful and moving public service video goes to none other than our own governor, Jon Corzine.

If you haven't seen it, you really should. And if you have children, they should see it, too. Steven Landfield

It's an ad you really won't soon forget. It starts with the really simple statement: "I'm New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine. And I should be dead." No kidding there.

The video, which you can view on-line or on television, has Corzine continuing on in a very straightforward and personal style, telling how he broke 15 bones in 18 places, lost half the blood in his body, and spent days in intensive care in a hospital in Camden.

Corzine goes on to say, "It took a remarkable team of doctors and a series of miracles to save my life, when all I needed was a seat belt."

At the end of the ad, the camera pans out showing the governor hobbling away with difficulty on his crutches. As Corzine notes, he has to live with the consequences of his mistake.

As everybody in New Jersey knows by now, Corzine wasn't wearing a seat belt when his state-trooper-driven SUV crashed on the Garden State Parkway last month — going 91 mph.

(Although unstated in the video, the story should also prove as a warning to SUV drivers. Lots of steel and big tires don't make a safe vehicle when the driver or his passengers are unsafe.)

Of course, the governor himself still has a few more lessons to learn about driving safety, as his car returning from the hospital in Camden back to his official residence in Princeton was clocked at around 71 mph — well above the speed limit. However, I'm betting that this time he was wearing his seat belt.

This public service effort is being supplemented by a heightened "Click It or Ticket" campaign by local police departments around the state. Drivers are being pulled over and issued summonses for failure to belt up.

As The Star-Ledger noted last week, seat belt use nationally is at a record level of about 82 percent and even higher in New Jersey. Compare that to the 1970s, when only about 11 percent of us buckled up. That's a change for the better.

Shifting the subject a bit, I cannot help but take another shot at my favorite public transportation agency: New Jersey Transit.

With train and bus fares about to rise 9.6 percent this Friday, it was revealed last week that cash-strapped NJ Transit spends about $400,000 in salaries alone to produce publications. This includes a newsletter called "En Route" for its employees. The newsletter is little more than a cheerleading bulletin, sometimes detailing the freebies employees can help themselves to at state expense.

The salaries include a manager and an editor each making around $87,000 and two writers making about $50,000 each. The NJ Transit photographer (yes, they have a full-time photographer) earns more than $58,000. A Gannett reporter uncovered the fact that the photographer, Michael Rosenberg, has a private business selling NJ Transit railroad photos — most likely taken on state time.

Officials defended the publication as part of their "fundamental obligation to communicate to employees about their services to their customers and the communities that they serve…"

I don't know about you, but I have always resented it when public utilities spend my money to publicize how great their employees are and how the companies themselves are such great corporate citizens.

The electric companies are probably the worst, with their support of public charities and their scholarships, etc. Then they turn around and tell us they need to raise their rates. But it's okay. After all, they are great public citizens.

How about simply providing electricity or train service and allowing customers to make their own charitable donations and individually allow us to make our own decisions? Maybe our electric rates would fall and our train ticket prices would be lower?

Why NJ Transit, which is already in such financial difficulty that it needs nearly 10 percent more out of our pockets, would spend such money escapes me.

As they say themselves, they are the "way to go." Nice going, NJ Transit.