NJ Advocates Keep Pressing Murphy To Veto OPRA Bill

NEW JERSEY — A controversial overhaul of New Jersey’s public records law is still sitting on the desk of Gov. Phil Murphy, with some advocates demanding that the governor veto it – and others urging him to sign it.

The proposed law, S-2930/A-4045, passed a vote in both chambers of the state Legislature earlier this month. It would make changes to the New Jersey Open Public Records Act (OPRA), which guarantees the public’s right to certain government records, and creates an appeal process for denials. Learn more about OPRA here.

Some critics of the current process allege that it needs to be revamped, with multiple New Jersey towns citing expensive labor bills related to the requests.

Supporters of OPRA acknowledge that it could use an update – particularly the clauses that allow corporate businesses and data brokers to request records that are used for private profit. But the law is a crucial safeguard for democracy, they add, arguing that gutting it would be devastating to the public's “right to know” what their government is doing in their names.

The proposed law has seen several revisions as it moves toward the finish line. In the meanwhile, advocates continue to push Murphy to veto the bill.

The ACLU of New Jersey have argued that the overhaul would “decimate” the public's ability to access government records and hold elected officials accountable for their actions.

According to the ACLU-NJ, some problems with the bill include:

FEE SHIFTING – “When an OPRA request is denied, the requestor has the right to engage an attorney to file a lawsuit. Under the current law, if the requestor wins, the agency that wrongfully denied access to public records pays the requestor’s attorney fees. If they lose the case, the attorney does not get paid. S2930/A4045 removes this mandatory fee-shifting provision, meaning attorneys would have to take these cases with the understanding they may not get paid even if they win. This will make it extremely difficult for requestor to find attorneys willing to take their case and many unlawful denials will go unchallenged.”

EMAIL AND CALL LOGS – “S2930/A4045 weakens access to email and call logs. Email and call logs are incredibly useful records that provide insight into daily government correspondence and policy-making. Including these records in OPRA responses is an automated process that does not create additional work for clerks.”

BURDENSOME FORMS – “S2930/A4045 increases the amount of specific information requestors must include to receive requested records and requires requestors to use mandated forms for each request. These provisions make the process unnecessarily burdensome and make it much easier for government bodies to deny requests for minor technical reasons.”

Other advocates are accusing lawmakers of ignoring the objections of the groups that actually use the OPRA law to shine light on the government’s inner workings.

Leaders from several labor unions and civil rights organizations met with Murphy last week to voice their concerns about the bill – and urge him to veto it.

“Access to public records is essential for holding elected officials accountable and ensuring government serves the people, not special interests,” said Nicole Rodriguez, president of New Jersey Policy Perspective.

“Researchers, reporters, and watchdogs alike rely on OPRA to expose corruption and drive policy change, and this bill would severely undermine those efforts,” Rodriguez said. “Ironically, to understand what truly needs reform, we would have to rely on the same OPRA requests that this bill seeks to obstruct.”

Dena Mottola Jaborska, executive director of New Jersey Citizen Action, said the bill garnered some Republican support – but couldn’t have passed without the backing of Democratic leadership in Trenton.

“New Jersey voters recognize that threats to democracy are not confined to a single party,” Jaborska said.

“Like Gov. Murphy said, he didn’t run for governor to ‘update’ OPRA—and we didn’t elect him to do so either,” said Patrick Nowlan, executive director of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, which represents more than 6,000 educators and researchers at Rutgers University.

“The Murphy agenda has always been about transparency and progress,” Nowlan added. “We encourage him to follow through on our conversation last week and his public comments with a veto of this legislation.”

• See Related: Public Record Access Is About To Take A Nosedive In NJ, Advocates Say

There has also been support for the bill, including from the New Jersey State League of Municipalities, which is urging Murphy to sign the OPRA overhaul into law.

“Please let the governor know you support and welcome open transparent government, but do not support commercial entities exploiting OPRA for financial gain at the expense of taxpayers, your residents losing their privacy because they applied for a license/signed up for a municipal program or spending taxpayer dollars on a cottage industry created only because of OPRA,” the group recently wrote.

According to the league, some positive provisions of the bill include:

• “It modernizes the law to account for the technology and business practices that have emerged in the past 22 years”
• “It will give judges and the Government Records Council the discretion to award prevailing attorney’s fees instead of granting it automatically”
• “It will reaffirm the original intent of OPRA to provide copies of records in the municipality’s possession and not create records or perform research”

“There have been a lot of misconceptions and misinformation about this legislation since its introduction,” the league continued, adding that S-2930” does not hinder a resident or journalist from using OPRA from getting access to public records.”

• See Related: 4 ‘Freedom Of Speech’ Fights In NJ To Keep On Your Radar

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