TRENTON-Legislation sponsored by Senator Mike Doherty (R-23) ensuring that kids have the right to offer snow shoveling services before storms without municipal approval was signed into law by Governor Chris Christie.

“It’s incredible that some towns wanted kids to register as businesses or buy expensive solicitation permits before offering to shovel their neighbors’ driveways and sidewalks,” said Doherty. “This new law sends the message that kids looking to make a few bucks on a snow day shouldn’t be subjected to government red tape or fined for shoveling snow.”

The bill, S-2741 of the 2014/2015 legislative session, was drafted in response to reports of a pair of high school seniors who were stopped in January of 2015 by Bound Brook police and told they could not go door to door without a permit to hand out flyers in an attempt to solicit snow shoveling business for a snowstorm the next morning.

Doherty’s newly enacted law states that “no ordinance regulating solicitation for services shall be applicable to solicitations, whether written or oral, for snow shoveling services made within 24 hours of a snowstorm that has been predicted by a commonly recognized commercial or governmental weather reporting entity.”

“The enactment of this law is a win against big government bureaucracy that wants to regulate every little thing we do,” added Doherty. “With the potential for a big winter storm this weekend, the timing of this law couldn’t be better for New Jersey’s young entrepreneurs.”

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