NJ OPRA Blog

The New Jersey Attorney General has published a database of all of the major discipline reports that police departments have released this week in response to Law Enforcement Directive 2020-5. Although the AG is heralding the disclosures as “an important and necessary step to build greater public trust,” we are already identifying discrepancies. Here is another troublesome one from Lower Alloways Creek Police Department, in Salem County.

According to Lower Alloways Creek Police Department’s 2020 Annual Major Discipline Report, officer Jared Adkins “was terminated ...

In response to the Supreme Court’s decision upholding Law Enforcement Directive 2020-5, the Attorney General set a deadline of August 9, 2021 for agencies to make major discipline disclosures by posting on their websites “the identity of each officer subject to final discipline, a brief summary of their transgressions, and a statement of the sanction imposed” for all major discipline imposed after 6/15/2020. These disclosures are exposing how police departments will easily evade the very little transparency that AG Directive 2020-5 provides to the public.

As NJ Advance ...

It's Sunshine Week and this year it kicks off in New Jersey with oral arguments before our Supreme Court in an important Open Public Records Act (OPRA) case.

On March 15, 2021, the Supreme Court will hear Bozzi v. City of Jersey City, a case that asks whether a list of names and addresses of dog license holders are accessible under OPRA. The plaintiff seeks the list for commercial purposes--he intends to mail dog owners information about his invisible fences.  The case is listed as the second case of the day, which means arguments will begin sometime after 11:00 a.m. 

CJ Griffin of Pashman Stein ...

Today the New Jersey Supreme Court agreed to hear the plaintiff's appeal in Libertarians for Transparent Gov't v. Cumberland County, 465 N.J. Super. 11 (App. Div. 2020), a published decision that shut down public access to non-litigation settlement agreements that resolve a public employee's internal discipline.

CJ Griffin of Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C. filed the successful petition for certification. We will blog soon with more details about the case and the issues before the Supreme Court. In the meantime, readers can view John Paff's blog for more details about the matter ...

As our readers may recall, Governor Murphy recently signed "Daniel's Law" into law, which exempts the home addresses of current and former judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officers from access under OPRA. A bill pending in the New Jersey Legislature would expand those exemptions to include two additional categories of persons.

Among other things, Senate Bill 3209 exempts from OPRA "that portion of any document which discloses the home address, whether a primary or secondary residence, of any active, formerly active, or retired probation officer or member of the ...

Happy New Year! The year 2020 was a year unlike any other. As we look back at transparency issues that arose over the past year, we hope that this blog finds our readers healthy and well.

Pandemic Creates Transparency Hurdles

Transparency was front and center in New Jersey in 2020, although sometimes it was the lack of transparency that was the focus.

On March 9, 2020, Governor Murphy issued Executive Order No. 103 to declare a Public Health Emergency in New Jersey. Days later, the Legislature rushed to amend the Open Public Meetings Act (OPRA) so that public agencies would not have to comply ...

On December 21, 2020, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal announced changes to the statewide “Use of Force Policy,” the first revision to the policy in two decades. Among other things, the new policy prohibits the use of deadly force against citizens “except as an absolute last resort.” Because the Attorney General is New Jersey’s “chief law enforcement officer,” this policy is binding upon every law enforcement agency in the state.

The new policy has been widely applauded by both the law enforcement community and the civil rights community. In terms of ...

Update as of 10/23/2020:  As mentioned below, we filed OPRA requests on September 26, 2020 for videos that had not been released.  On October 6, 2020, the State said it did not have body cam or dash cam footage of the shooting of Luan Agolli. On October 7, 2020, the State identified the man who died in Totowa on June 27th as Sergio Rodgiguez. As of today, it has not released any videos and said such videos might be produced by October 28, 2020 (which will be 123 days from the incident).

______________________________

In New Jersey, the Attorney General’s Office is required to ...

On July 15, 2020, the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee held its first public hearing on police reform in New Jersey. The hearing was intended to be a discussion on policing issues in general and no particular legislative bill was before the committee, but police transparency was a frequent topic.

The hearing opened with live testimony from Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, who acknowledged that even after his recent decision to disclose the names of officers who receive major discipline, New Jersey still lags behind the rest of the nation when it comes to providing transparency ...

We recently blogged about Rivera v. Union County Prosecutor's Office, where the trial court granted access to the internal affairs reports of the former Police Director of the City of Elizabeth Police Department, who was the subject of an internal affairs investigation that concluded that he used "racist and misogynistic slurs" in the workplace. As an update, the Appellate Division reversed that decision and concluded that the records were not subject to OPRA on June 19, 2020.

Unfortunately, the Appellate Division did not simply deny access under OPRA. It also concluded that the ...

In 2017, CJ Griffin of Pashman Stein Walder Hayden filed an OPRA lawsuit against the New Jersey State Police on behalf of Libertarians for Transparent Government, seeking the identity of a state trooper who had been "required to separate from employment" for "engaging in racially offensive behavior." The trial court dismissed the lawsuit and the Appellate Division affirmed that dismissal, but the New Jersey Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The appeal is pending.

Today, the State released the name of the trooper.

Additionally, the Attorney General revised the Attorney General ...

Readers may recall from numerous news articles that in April 2019, the Union County Prosecutor's Office (UCPO) concluded that former City of Elizabeth Police Director James Cosgrove used "racist and misogynistic" language in the workplace. The Attorney General issued a press release confirming the internal affairs investigation's findings, calling on Cosgrove to resign, and making leadership changes at UCPO.

After UCPO denied an OPRA request for Cosgrove's internal affairs reports, CJ Griffin filed a lawsuit on behalf of Plaintiff Richard Rivera seeking access to the reports ...

Transparency plays a critical role in  building trust between the police and the community. When members of the public trust the police, they are more likely to follow their commands, cooperate with criminal investigations, and even advocate for more funding for police. When police resist transparency, community trust is seriously undermined. Secrecy also makes it harder to hold police departments accountable and assure that they are complying with the law and meeting the high standards that we set for them. This is why we have been involved in dozens of cases involving police ...

As we have recently written, agencies currently do not have to comply with OPRA's 7-day deadline due to COVID-19.  There is no such deadline relaxation for requestors to file OPRA lawsuits, however. Although there were prior orders by the Supreme Court that tolled such deadlines in March and April, those orders have now expired. Therefore, a person who receives a denial from a public agency must act very quickly. An OPRA suit must be filed within 45 calendar days from the date of the denial.

What should you do if an agency denies your request or otherwise violates OPRA?

As we previously wrote on this blog, the Legislature amended OPRA in mid-March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now and in the future, during a public health emergency, state of emergency, or state of local disaster emergency, a public agency no longer needs to respond to an OPRA request within seven business days.  Instead, an agency must only make "a reasonable effort, as the circumstances permit, to respond to a request for access to a government record within seven business days or as soon as possible thereafter." N.J.S.A. 47:1A-5(i)(2).

Journalists Expose Transparency ...

OPRA’s personnel records exemption, N.J.S.A. 47:1A-10, renders most personnel records generally exempt from access under OPRA. The exemption contains three exceptions, however.

Exception 1

The first exception provides that:

“an individual’s name, title, position, salary, payroll record, length of service, date of separation and the reason therefor, and the amount and type of any pension received shall be a government record.”

This provision obviously means that requests for an employee’s individual paystub or an agency’s weekly, monthly, or year-end payroll ...

Sunshine Week, which runs from March 15 to March 21, 2020, is an annual nationwide celebration of access to public information. There are many ways that you can get involved--from filing OPRA requests, to writing a letter to the editor, to attending a public meeting. On this blog, we will write several times this week about transparency topics and success we have had recently shedding light on New Jersey government!

To contact us about this blog post or discuss an OPRA denial, email cgriffin@pashmanstein.com or visit the "contact us" tab above.

The New Jersey Supreme Court has granted an OPRA requestor's Petition for Certification and agreed to hear an appeal in Libertarians for Transparent Government v. New Jersey State Police.

The question the Court certified is:

"Does section ten of the Open Public Records Act, N.J.S.A. 47:1A-10, require disclosure of the name of a state trooper listed in the Office of Professional Standard’s annual report to the Legislature as having been terminated for misconduct?"

For background, N.J.S.A. 47:1A-10 states that personnel records are generally exempt under OPRA, but provides ...

The New York Times published an great article yesterday, titled "How The Times Uses FOIA to Obtain Information The Public Has A Right To Know." The article explains why the Times firmly believes that challenging an agency's response to a public records request is important to transparency.

Key quote:

Although smaller newspapers usually do not have in-house counsel to litigate public records lawsuits, in New Jersey OPRA provides a fee-shifting mechanism to make it possible for to find competent counsel who will litigate denials on a contingency basis. Newspapers, journalists, and ...

Last week, Bergen County Assignment Judge Bonnie J. Mizdol issued an opinion finding that the Borough of North Arlington unlawfully imposed a special service charge upon a records requestor who sought records from the Borough's Facebook pages.

The OPRA request at issue in Wronko v. North Arlington sought the list of individuals who had been banned from the Borough's Facebook page, as well as a list of any words that had been censored and the list of page administrators. In response, the Borough insisted it needed to use an outside IT consultant to capture the screenshots necessary to ...

Last week, CJ Griffin filed an OPRA lawsuit on behalf of Richard Rivera against the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office (ECPO) relating to its refusal to disclose the name of a Newark police officer who shot at a fleeing vehicle during a pursuit in January 2019, killing the driver and injuring the passenger. The lawsuit also seeks access to footage from police body-worn cameras and dash cameras.

ECPO denied the request because it is “concerned” that the officer may refuse to testify before the grand jury if his or her name is publicly disclosed. Mr. Rivera’s lawsuit argues that this ...

Pashman Stein Walder Hayden partner CJ Griffin has published an article in the April 2019 issue of New Jersey Lawyer magazine, titled "The Legal Implications of Governmental Social Media Use." A full copy of the article can be viewed here:

In September 2018, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of long-time client Steven Wronko seeking the list of users that Carteret Mayor Daniel J. Reiman has banned from his Facebook page.

Carteret opposed the lawsuit, arguing that Mayor Reiman's Facebook page was simply a personal page and that he has constitutional right to ban members of the public and a privacy interest in keeping the ban list secret.

We responded and provided over 200 pages of screenshots from the Mayor's Facebook page which showed that Mayor Reiman used his Facebook page to declare weather emergencies and keep the public ...

Happy New Year! 2018 was a very busy year for the OPRA team at Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C.

Here's a look back on some of the highlights...

• Partner CJ Griffin argued before the New Jersey Supreme Court two times, representing amicus curiae in Brennan v. Bergen County Prosecutor's Office and Paff v. Ocean County Prosecutor's Office.
• The Appellate Division issued a published opinion in Scheeler v. Atlantic County Joint Municipal Insurance Fund, granting our client's appeal and ruling that one does not need to be a New Jersey citizen in order to access records under OPRA.
• In a published ...

CJ Griffin, a member of Pashman Stein Walder Hayden's Media Law Group, was interviewed by Marketplace regarding a prior OPRA lawsuit she brought against the City of Newark seeking its Amazon HQ2 bid.

The public radio program, “What's in Those Amazon HQ2 Bids? It's Not Entirely Clear” by Renata Sago and Leila Goldstein, aired on Tuesday, November 6^th.

“There’s hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, of tax dollars, at stake," said CJ Griffin, a partner at Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, who argued the case. "That’s taxpayer money. When you give tax breaks, that impacts ...

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about OPRA is that there is a very, very short statute of limitations period. This means that if you receive a denial, you need to act very quickly or you may lose your rights to gain access to the record you seek.

NJ Advance Media has written about the recent lawsuit we filed on behalf of Libertarians for Transparent Government seeking a settlement/separation agreement between Cumberland County and a corrections officer who allegedly had inappropriate relationships with inmates. The lawsuit also asks the Court to find that Cumberland County violated OPRA when it told Plaintiff that the corrections officer was "terminated for disciplinary reasons," when the Pension Board's meeting minutes state that he was allowed to "retire in good standing."

PSWH partner CJ Griffin is quoted in the ...

Every year, transparency warrior Senator Loretta Weinberg introduces a bill which would modernize and improve OPRA. This year’s bill is S107. Given that Democrats now control the Senate, Assembly, and Governor’s Office, we are hopeful that the bill has a chance of passing.

While the bill overwhelmingly improves OPRA, through a series of blogs we will highlight how some small provisions of the bill that seem non-controversial can actually cause some major problems for requestors.

First topic? Copying costs.

Currently, agencies cannot charge a copying charge to send ...

CJ Griffin of Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C. Submitted Amicus Curiae
Brief on Behalf of Non-profit Organization
in Brennan v. Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office

Hackensack, NJ (May 23, 2018) – The Supreme Court of New Jersey has issued its opinion in Brennan v. Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, in which Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C. partner CJ Griffin submitted an amicus curiae brief on behalf of Libertarians for Transparent Government, a non-profit organization. The Court’s decision today provides important guidance to lower courts on how to apply the Open ...

We previously blogged about an OPRA lawsuit we filed on behalf of an activist seeking access to Newark's Amazon HQ2 proposal. We are happy to announce that Newark has now released its proposal to our client.

Newark's proposal is titled, "Yes, Newark." As evidenced by the privilege log it attached to the proposal, Newark redacted approximately 6 pages from its 200+ page proposal. These pages contained the financial incentives that Newark is offering to Amazon. All other information has been disclosed. We consider this a significant transparency victory.

"I strongly believe in open ...

Update: We have written extensively about this topic since this blog was published in 2015  and have filed successful suits for Facebook records. For updated content, click here, here, and here.

As the number of public agencies with a social media presence grows, questions arise regarding whether the content of the social media sites is a “government record” subject to OPRA.  We believe that it is.

OPRA defines government records very broadly and includes “information stored or maintained electronically.”  This should cover posts made on a public agency’s official ...