District 9 legislators are pushing for more South Jersey representation on the Turnpike Authority's board of commissioners, elected officials said during a Tuesday constituent meeting in Galloway Township.

“We’re not getting due consideration in this region,” said Sen. Christopher Connors, who was joined by Assemblyman Brian Rumpf and Assemblywoman DiAnne Gove at the "Meet the Legislators" night at Galloway's municipal complex.

Members of Galloway Township Council and the township’s residents remain unhappy with the possibility of closing the entrance to Jimmie Leeds Road off the Garden State Parkway there, and have been particularly angry about the assertion by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which operates the roadway, that it “doesn’t deal with individual municipalities, only the counties.”

The Jimmie Leeds Road entrance would be closed in connection with a project that would bring state police barracks and two new full interchanges to Galloway. Jim McElwee, who ran for council as a Democrat last November, raised the issue along with a 50 percent raise in toll prices and the removal of trees along the Parkway with no plan to replace, per state mandate.

Connors said residents in Ocean County and the other southern counties traversed by the Parkway need better representation on the 7-member Turnpike Authority board precisely because of local issues like the proposed Galloway Township entrace closure. He said he and Sen. Jeff Van Drew are co-sponsoring legislation that would require the Turnpike Authority to include representation from southern New Jersey on the board.

Currently, three members of the board are from Monmouth County, while the rest all hail from Bergen, Middlesex and Mercer counties, with one vacancy.

“No one from Atlantic, Ocean and Cape May counties are represented,” Connors said. “The statute needs to be changed. We need at least one person from South Jersey who can advocate for our interests down here. A vacancy recently came up; they could just appoint someone from down here and tell us the bill is not needed because now we are represented.”

Connors also believes two of the authority’s two monthly meetings should be held in Southern New Jersey on a rotating basis.

“That way, folks down here have the opportunity to express their points of view on individual projects and on operations as a whole,” Connors said.

As far as the toll increases are concerned, Connors said he was one of only six Republicans to vote for a Democratically sponsored bill to eliminate automatic toll increases, such as the one on Jan. 1 that raised tolls by 50 percent.

“We want our fair share of expenditures,” Connors said. “Ocean County pays the second highest amount in toll revenues, and we don’t have another North-South route outside of Route 9.”

The legislators have a meeting coming up shortly with the Turnpike Authority, at which time these issues will be discussed, Connors said. According to Rumpf, that meeting will be in the next month.

“I want to be a part of that meeting,” Galloway Township Mayor Don Purdy said. “We’ve told them our concerns … and the official letter we received said the Turnpike Authority doesn’t deal with townships. That’s not acceptable. The highway does run through our town.”

The legislators said the mayor will be included when the meeting is scheduled.