Obfuscating OPRA – Insider NJ

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg often talked about strengthening New Jersey’s open public records law.

Now Weinberg is retired and there is indeed talk of changing what’s known as OPRA.

That would be weakening it to keep more government info confidential.

None of this should be surprising.

Recall that governments on all levels in New Jersey used the advent of the COVID pandemic three years ago to avoid some OPRA requirements.

And since then, the state Legislature has taken steps to shield home addresses of lawmakers from certain documents, thereby hiding the residence of a state senator or assembly member from their constituents. There’s nothing like a public official seeking to go incognito.

The latest proposal comes from Democratic Assemblyman Joseph Danielson of LD-17 in Middlesex County, who told the New Jersey Monitor – a bit snarkily – that after years of meeting voters door-to-door, no one has ever mentioned access to public records.

Of course not. An average voter is not going to ask a legislator about researching documents on a development deal or what the local police chief makes annually.

That’s why we have newspapers, electronic media and news websites.

Danielsen has proposed a four-bill package to change the Open Public Records Act, which is a bit more than 20 years old. OPRA is different from the Open Public Meetings Act, or Sunshine Law, which dates back to 1975.

For years, municipal officials have complained about businesses that routinely file multiple OPRA requests for commercial purposes. Controlling that practice makes some sense, but by any objective measure, some of the other proposed changes do not.

One proposed change would keep confidential any government documents held by a third party and covered by a non-disclosure agreement. Such agreements can be used to shield payouts to employees who settle lawsuits.

There also is a provision that aims to reduce lawyers’ fees.

Keep in mind that lawyers only receive such fees when a government agency is found to withhold records improperly.

The problem is that curtailing fees can dissuade a person or group seeking records from finding representation in the first place.

There’s more – and this one is a doozy.

Buried in the four-bill package is a line that says record requests can be denied if a public employee is required “to conduct research or review government records” in order to fulfill a request. Just about any OPRA request requires some type of “research.”

Broadly speaking, there’s a lot in the bills and changes certainly will be made as we move along.

Beyond the details, however, lies a greater problem. And that is the mindset here – and it’s one that dates back to the pandemic.

The current thinking in state government is not to improve openness, but to weaken it. The almost 50-year-old Sunshine Law, for example, needs to be bolstered to include subcommittees of councils and school boards. This would prevent governing bodies from keeping debate on controversial topics secret by forming subcommittees.

Don’t hold your breath.

Weinberg reacted to the latest news about OPRA with the following tweet:

“This is outrageous. All ‘good government’ friends should be speaking up about this attempt to gut the public’s right to know what your government is doing.”

One suspects – or hopes – there are a number of “good government” friends out there.

But how many of them are in the state Legislature?

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