After MVC 'Fiasco', Morristown Man Takes Matters Into Own Hands

RANDOLPH, NJ – Matt Fisher arrived home from the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission Tuesday afternoon tired and frustrated, having experienced first-hand the chaos that ensued when the Randolph MVC facility reopened to long lines and snarled traffic.

Like many other parents, Fisher had accompanied an expectant teenager to the MVC hoping to leave with a new driver’s license that would officially finish the process of making them legal. But after Fisher’s 17-year-old daughter, Alexandra, left the center empty-handed as MVC employees were unable to keep up with the heavy traffic, Fisher was determined that when he returned, things would be different.

The Morristown resident arrived back on site at 2:30 a.m. Wednesday to discover a line that had started to form at midnight. After the facility processed just more than 200 people on Tuesday when facilities were overwhelmed by motorists who had waited nearly four months to conduct their MVC business, Fisher devised a numbering system for Wednesday that he hoped would keep the process of getting out of hand as it had the day before.

On Wednesday, Gov. Phil Murphy addressed Tuesday's chaos and announced that moving forward, MVC facilities statewide will be open six days a week and said employees at the sites will be exempt from furloughs to address the backlog of people attempting to gain service from the vehicle commission.

“It is not entirely unlike the experience at the beginning of the pandemic with the tsunami of folks unemployed seeking unemployment benefits and insurance,” Murphy said. “We have a backlog that has now been months in the making and we’ll do everything we can to make this a better situation but it won’t be overnight.”

After MVC employees at the Randolph facility on Tuesday handed out blue cards to determine who had registered used the agency’s text appointment system, many became disgruntled, Fisher said, when they realized they “had no chance in hell of being served.”

MVC officials were forced to acknowledge that reopening plans had gone awry, which in turn, forced them to re-evaluate how they would conduct business moving forward. As of Wednesday, visitors to the MVC website were told to delay coming to facilities across the state for at least a week.

“It was extremely frustrating yesterday because there was no system in place,” Fisher told Patch in a phone interview on Wednesday. “Everybody felt the same way because everyone was basically lied to be frank because you were told one thing, witnessed another… and it all got thrown out the window.

“It became an effective free-for-all.”

Determined to drive change, Fisher on Wednesday handed out slips of paper to people who had arrived in the middle of the night in an attempt to avoid the mistakes of the day before. Fisher organized what ended up being 300 residents who were in an orderly, socially-distanced line when the facility opened at 8 a.m. – only to be told by MVC employees and supervisor Michele Totoro that the numbering system was in no way official.

Fisher, who was 80th when the center opened Wednesday, persisted. A day after videos went viral of fights breaking out and lawmakers chided the MVC for not being prepared, Fisher and a couple of others who returned Wednesday took matters into their own hands and convinced security officers, local police and MVC employees that everything was indeed under control.

“We basically built the line over the course of the night,” Fisher said, adding “because of (the MVC’s) lack of organization, we had to self-organize.”

Even after being told by an MVC employee that his numbering system would not have any bearing of how people were served, Fisher watched later as employees handed out numbers that essentially matched the one he had devised. By the time he and his daughter left at around 10:15 a.m. – license in hand – the facility had already processed more than 100 people, nearly half of the volume that was done over eight hours on Tuesday.

Wednesday’s operation was, according to witnesses, much more smoothly that Monday’s debacle when traffic on Canfield Ave. was closed in both directions and when many who believed they would be served were sent home without getting in the door. Fisher characterized the difference as “night and day”. As he left the facility, Fisher was applauded by those who had been organized by his numbering system and to cheers.

“Matt Fisher for Governor,” one person called out, according to witness, who added that Fisher was thanked by law enforcement officers for his efforts to keep the peace at a site where so much chaos ensued Tuesday.

“Look, it worked,” Fisher said of his plan. “Everybody felt good, everybody feels like they knew their position, they didn’t feel tense, they felt respected in their space, everybody felt much more relaxed. There was no drama.

“It’s a shame (the MVC) didn’t think of better ways to handle the volume that they knew was coming (Tuesday). It’s embarrassing that we had to do it ourselves, but you do what you have to do.”