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?
The best course of ...
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 ...
Update: Governor Murphy signed this bill into law on March 20, 2020. Many public agencies are already conducting electronic meetings.
The New Jersey Legislature is currently considering numerous bills in response to the current COVID-19 pandemic. One bill is A3850, which passed in the Assembly on March 16, 2020, and will likely also pass in the Senate very soon. A3850 amends a public body’s obligations under the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA) during a state of emergency. Because this is Sunshine Week and transparency is very important during a crisis, we decided to devote a blog to ...
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.
Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C. partner CJ Griffin received a successful result in a decision from the New Jersey Appellate Division in Digital First Media d/b/a The Trentonian v. Ewing Township, Griffin argued the matter on May 22, 2019 and on November 21, 2019. The decision was issued on February 19, 2020.
In March 2018, Griffin filed an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) lawsuit on behalf of the Trentonian newspaper, seeking to compel the production of Use of Force Reports (UFRs) relating to the alleged use of force by Ewing police officers against a sixteen-year-old suspect. Ewing ...
A summary of CJ Griffin and Pashman Stein Walder Hayden's 2019 OPRA successes
Each month, we receive dozens of inquiries from people who are upset that their OPRA requests were denied. The most frequent basis for denial is that the request is invalid as written. Although there are records custodians who will happily work with the requestor to fulfill a less-than-perfect request, other custodians will quickly deny any request that does not strictly comply with OPRA’s requirements. A valid OPRA request is thus the critical first step to obtaining public records and it is important to draft a request that follows some basic guidelines.
Guideline 1: Do not ask ...
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 ...
