NJ Bills Would Gut Access To Public Records, Advocates Say

NEW JERSEY — A package of proposed laws in New Jersey are raising red flags from advocates who want to preserve the state’s Open Public Records Act, also known as OPRA.

Last week, Assemblyman Joe Danielsen – a Democrat who represents the state’s 17th District – introduced a series of bills that would make changes to the existing OPRA law, which guarantees the public’s right to certain government records and creates an appeal process for denials.

Danielsen – the lone sponsor of A5613, A5614, A5615 and A5616 – said the bills would see several amendments before they have a hearing in the Assembly Oversight, Reform and Federal Relations Committee, which he chairs.

According to a report in the New Jersey Monitor, Danielsen said the bills will prevent the waste of taxpayer funds and safeguard the privacy of personal information, such as phone numbers. He also said the legislation will send more funds to help speed up delays at the Government Records Council (GRC), the state agency tasked with overseeing disputed OPRA requests.

“I’ve knocked on tens of thousands of doors over the last 25 years – never once did anyone have a concern with public records access,” Danielsen said. “That’s not in the top 100 of their concerns, but what is in their concerns is the tens of millions of dollars that are being wasted on abuse of the system.”

However, some advocates and watchdogs have been bashing the bills, claiming that they will gut the existing OPRA law and make it significantly harder for the public to know what their elected representatives are doing in their names.

One of the bills, A5616, would allow custodians of government records to deny requests under a range of circumstances. If the person or group making the request wants to challenge the decision, they cannot take their case to Superior Court and must put it before the GRC instead – where the average complaint takes 21 months to process, according to a recent state report.

Under the bill, OPRA requestors could appeal a decision made by the council, but appellate courts would be forced to defer to the panel.

Read the New Jersey League of Municipalities’ take on A5616 here.

John Paff, a well-known OPRA activist who runs the Transparency NJ website – said the bills are “essentially an eclipse on sunshine.”

“I’m not saying there are not problems with OPRA, and maybe some things have to be changed, but separating the requestor from legal help, forcing them into a system that has been shown countless times to be inadequate — that being the GRC — seems to be going in exactly the opposite direction of the way we should be going,” Paff told the New Jersey Monitor.

CJ Griffin, an attorney in New Jersey, told TAPinto Newark that she and other lawyers wouldn’t be able to take public records suits on a contingency basis if the bills pass.

“Most people can’t afford to pay an attorney for an hour of time, let alone for the amount of time it takes to do a lawsuit,” she said.

Griffin added that journalists should be especially wary of the bills, TAPinto Newark reported.

“The general public should be alarmed by this, but the press should be extra alarmed because it’s just going to [mean] essentially an agency can say we don’t want the reporter to have this information, so we are going to deny it – and then we know that their publication is not going to pay an attorney thousands of dollars to sue,” Griffin said.

A report in the Asbury Park Press pointed out that the media outlet has used the state’s OPRA law to put together several recent watchdog journalism pieces, including articles on “widespread mismanagement” of a local housing program, “secret” raises for the Monmouth County commissioners and discrimination lawsuits against a local police department.

The League of Women Voters of New Jersey said the bills would “gut” OPRA and “hamper the public's ability to know what our government is up to.”

“These bills are bad for democracy,” the group charged, sharing a list of effects they would have if they become law:

• “Allow towns to sue to get ‘protective orders’ against individuals who request documents”
• “Severely limit the ability to appeal when document requests are denied”
• “Exempt documents relating to public contracts from disclosure”
• “Allow governments to permanently bar any document from disclosure by entering into non-disclosure agreements, along with many other provisions”
• “Instead of having an impartial judge hear your case, appeals would go before the underfunded and chronically delayed Government Records Council (GRC). Currently, the council's members are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate. A provision in this anti-transparency package would allow the governor, Senate president and speaker to hand-pick individual GRC members without requiring the advice and consent of the Senate.”

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