It's Sunshine Week!
This week is Sunshine Week, a week dedicated to promoting openness in government! In honor of Sunshine Week, we're sharing the following resources which will help you shine a light on the government.
OPRA Presentation:
CJ Griffin will give an OPRA training in Nutley (Essex County) on March 12. Come meet CJ and learn about how you can use the Open Public Records Act to hold your government accountable.
New Jersey Resources:
New Jersey Transparency Center/YourMoney.NJ.Gov: This website is operated by the State of New Jersey and provides volume of data about State agencies and authorities. Want to know how much a certain state employee earns? You can look it up here, along it budgets, purchasing records, pension records, and more.
OPRAMachine.com: You can use this website to file directly to State, County, and local government agencies. The request will be posted on OPRA Machine, as well the agency's response to your request. It is a great resource for tracking your requests and to help others see the data without having to file their own requests. If you want to file records requests in other states or with the federal government, you might want to check out a similar resource, MuckRock.
NJ Open Government Blog: This blog is operated by John Paff, a well-known transparency and open government advocate in New Jersey. Mr. Paff frequently blogs about recent OPRA lawsuits and judicial opinions. You might also find his other blog, NJ Civil Settlements, helpful. There, he posts about settlement agreements that government agencies have entered into, often resulting in a significant expenditure of tax dollars.
The Force Report: Want to know how many times the police officers in your town used physical force against another person and whether there were any racial disparities in the use of force? This database by NJ.com provides several years of data and is easy to navigate.
Protecting the Shield: Reporters from the Asbury Park Press spent two years working on this brilliant investigative series "to expose the deadly price the public pays when known bad cops remain on the streets."
New Jersey Death Index: We helped Reclaim the Records gain access to New Jersey's death index and they created this amazing free searchable database!
Our firm is proud of the results it has achieved for clients, some of which are noted here. Of course, each legal matter is unique on many levels, and past successes are not a guarantee of results in any other pending or future matters.
