Lawmaker proposes banning legislators from using phones during sessions

Assembly Minority Whip Brian Bergen is proposing to impose New Jersey’s new bell-to-bell cellphone restrictions on the legislators who approved them.

Bergen’s “Practice What We Preach Act” would prohibit members of the Legislature from possessing or making non-legislative use of an internet-enabled device while the Senate or Assembly is in session, during quorum calls, voting sessions and committee meetings.

The bill would require secure lockers outside every legislative chamber and committee room. Security personnel would lock lawmakers’ devices before proceedings begin and return them after the presiding officer adjourns the meeting.

The proposal would also borrow the penalties imposed on students under New Jersey’s school cellphone law.

Under Bergen’s bill, violation would be a disorderly persons offense.  Legislators who break the rules would be required to remain in their seats for an hour after adjournment to “quietly reflect on the pending business of the State.”  Repeat offenders would be required to report to the Statehouse daily but would lose the privilege of speaking on the floor.

“I sit in that room. I have watched members shop, scroll, post and play games while we spend billions of dollars of other people’s money,” said Bergen (R-Denville).  “A kid on a phone in algebra misses a formula. A legislator on a phone during a vote misses a budget.”

Bergen said he was among a small number of legislators who voted against the school cellphone ban, which took effect at the beginning of the academic year and applies to roughly 1.3 million public school students.

He also criticized a 1989 New Jersey law that makes it a disorderly persons offense for a student to carry a beeper on school property.

“We are still criminalizing beepers,” Bergen said. “That is the record of the body writing technology policy for your children.”

Bergen said lawmakers who consider his proposal “insulting, paternalistic and heavy-handed” should reconsider the restrictions they imposed on students.

“There are two honest positions,” he said. “Vote for this bill, or repeal the one you passed.”