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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
