[ad_1]
WALL TOWNSHIP — A Superior Court judge has ruled that the Wall Township Board of Education’s improperly withheld digital information sought by a school district resident under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act [OPRA]
In his Oct. 11 ruling, Judge Henry P. Butehorn ordered the Wall BOE custodian of records, Brian Smyth, to release the contents of a Google drive which were sought in OPRA requests by Wall resident Betsy Cross.
Ms. Cross, a frequent critic of the Wall school board and the school district’s administration, filed a March 24 OPRA request seeking “the entire contents” of a Google drive folder which she said included an email to School Superintendent Tracy Handerhan from Adam Nasr, in his capacity as vice president of the board, on Dec. 1, 2022.
ADVERTISEMENT
After her request was denied, Ms. Cross filed suit against the Wall Township BOE, Mr. Smyth, Mr. Nasr and Superintendent of Schools Tracy Handerhan in May, 2023.
Mr. Smyth, who had recieved a total 128 OPRA requests from Ms. Cross in 2022-23 alone, said he denied her request was because “[she] did not make a request for a specific document or documents… There was no way to determine the folder’s exact contents on Dec. 1, 2022, when Ms. Cross submitted her request on March 24, 2023.”
Hon. Butehorn determined Ms. Cross’ request was “not overly broad.”
ADVERTISEMENT
“If the court were to reach a different conclusion, a person would not be able to gain access to the government documents therein,” the judge wrote. “Government officials would then be able to hide documents from the public by maintaining them in a folder on their server and simply passing the folder between themselves by email. That outcome would go against the purpose of OPRA ‘to maximize public knowledge about public affairs in order to ensure an informed citizenry and to minimize the evils inherent in a secluded process,’ said Judge Butehorn in his opinion.
Reacting to the ruling, Ms. Cross told The Coast Star, “You can’t hide public documents, no matter what way you try and do it … you can’t. They [Wall BOE] keep trying to come up with ways to not give out public information, and this was their latest attempt,” said Ms. Cross in conversation with the Coast Star.
Mr. Smyth was not immediately available for comment.
For more on this story, read the next edition of The Coast Star—on newsstands Thursday or online in our e-Edition.
Check out our other Wall Township stories, updated daily. And remember to pick up a copy of The Coast Star—on newsstands Thursday or online in our e-Edition.
Subscribe today! If you’re not already an annual subscriber to The Coast Star, get your subscription today! For just $38 per year, you will receive local mail delivery weekly, with pages and pages of local news and online access to our e-edition on Starnewsgroup.com.
[ad_2]
Source_link
