PARAMUS — Bergen County's blue laws — the rules that keep most of the county's stores closed on Sundays — are being scrutinized for signs of weakness by groups that believe the time is right to repeal them.

Politicians have generally considered the blue laws to be invulnerable since 1993, when county residents voted, by a wide margin, to keep them in place. But recent attacks on the laws have caused opponents to question the need for them.

"These are 19th-century laws. Wake up. We're in the 21st century," said Rosemary Shashoua, a Westwood grandmother has started a grass-roots campaign to repeal the blue laws.

Any attempt to eliminate the laws, however, will have to overcome strong opposition from residents of Paramus, and other Bergen County residents who say the Sunday laws have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with their right to have one weekend day free of traffic.

"As long as I am mayor I will continue to protect them," Paramus Mayor Rich LaBarbiera told The Record of Woodland Park. "They are the integral thread to our quality of life in Paramus."

Bergen County is the last county in the state to retain blue laws, which prohibit sales of certain goods on Sundays, and keep all of the county's department stores and malls closed, with the exception of mall restaurants and movie theaters. Paramus has even more restrictive laws that prohibit all work in the borough on Sunday.

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In March 2010, Governor Christie said he planned to eliminate the Bergen blue laws to raise $65 million in additional tax revenue. He was persuaded by Bergen County lawmakers to drop that plan, but has indicated he might support legal action to allow Sunday shopping at the proposed American Dream mall in East Rutherford.

After superstorm Sandy left Bergen County residents with flooded homes and without power, Christie, at the request of County Executive Kathleen Donovan, signed an executive order suspending the blue laws. The order was upheld by a Bergen County Superior Court judge, over the protests of Paramus.

While that executive order only kept stores in Paramus and elsewhere in Bergen County open for one Sunday in November, it triggered Shashoua's effort to organize another blue laws referendum.

Unlike repeal campaigns in 1980 and 1993 that were backed financially by major retailers, and by The Record, the latest campaign hasn't attracted any such support. The campaign, called Modernize Bergen County, consists primarily of Shashoua, and Mitch Horn, a 32-year-old father from Hackensack.

Horn, who works in finance for Nestle, acknowledges that the campaign at this point may seem a bit like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, but he notes that his small group has a tool not available to the previous campaigns: social media.

The last referendum, Horn notes, "was before the rise of the Internet and the ability to communicate and network online." Think back to last spring, he said, "the Arab Spring, where just on a simple Facebook page people in Egypt were able to topple a government."

Horn said he understands the blue laws are a very emotional issue, especially in Paramus. "I would love it if there was a way we could change the story so that it's not really about the people of Paramus, but about the other 900,000 people who live in Bergen that don't have the same concerns as the residents of Paramus do," he said.

Horn created a Facebook page dedicated to eliminating the blue laws in August, after he had to drive to Hudson County for baby supplies on Sundays. "There were three weekends in a row where I found myself driving to Babies 'R' Us in Secaucus on a Sunday," he said.

Shashoua found his Facebook page and contacted Horn. Shashoua, 66, is a former resident of Long Island and California who moved to Bergen County with her husband about five years ago to be near her daughter. She is a veteran of previous citizens campaigns, including a successful fight to legalize mother-daughter apartments in the town of Islip on Long Island. She is a frequent letter-to-the-editor author on causes ranging from traffic signals to truck traffic on highways. One of her California campaigns was dubbed "Rosemary's baby" by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Shashoua has reached out to Bergen County politicians and retailers, but none of them has publicly endorsed the campaign. The group's first meeting, held at the Starbucks in downtown Westwood, drew only four people, but Shashoua is expecting more at a meeting scheduled for 9:30 a.m. today at the Starbucks on Essex Street in Hackensack.

While social media give the organizers a tool not available in past campaigns, it doesn't help them get over the biggest hurdle to getting a blue laws referendum on the ballot — the need to collect signatures from registered voters. Organizers said they have been told that they need anywhere from 2,500 to 10,000 signatures to get a public question on the ballot. The number could actually be as high as 55,000, according to the Bergen County Clerk's Office. Referendums need 10 percent of the voters registered as of the last general election — 551,745 were registered last November — to place a question on the ballot. Those signatures have to be collected in person.

John Holub, president of the New Jersey Retail Merchants Association, said he has not been in touch with the repeal campaign organizers, but he believes the disappearance of the blue laws is inevitable.

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"It's not a matter of if they'll repeal, it's just a matter of when," he said. "We are light-years away in public sentiment than we were 20 years ago."

Holub said there could be other options for removing the Bergen blue laws, such as state legislation to repeal them. The debate stirred up by Sandy, he believes, has caused a lot of people in Trenton and in Bergen County to question the laws. "I honestly do think this clearly is the beginning of a groundswell that will ultimately lead to the repeal," he said.

Paramus residents are the most vocal in support of the laws, saying they need one day a week when they can get out of their driveways, and travel through town without fighting off mall traffic. But retired state legislator Paul Contillo, who is credited for legislative amendments that made it harder to defeat the laws in past referendums, said there are a lot of retail workers in Bergen County who don't live in Paramus, but who like having Sundays off.

Bergen County lawmakers, he said, "hear from people in their own towns who work in Paramus," whenever the question of repealing the blue laws arises. And state officials, such as governors, consider Bergen County support crucial to winning elections.

Contillo, 83, has lived in Paramus since 1955. He saw the current laws established in the 1950s and has seen repeal referendums defeated twice. He thinks there is little chance of the laws being eliminated any time soon. The drift toward online shopping could eventually make the question moot, he said, "but for now there are so many good reasons to keep the blue laws."

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