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 ...
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 ...
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.
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 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 ...
According to N.J.S.A. 47:1A-6, a records requestor who prevails in any proceeding shall be entitled to an award of reasonable attorneys' fees. We have written about OPRA's fee-shifting provision before, noting that without the fee-shift most requestors would not have the funds to challenge denials of access. As a result, the state would be far less transparent.
On August 14, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued an important published opinion relating to OPRA's mandatory fee-shifting provision.
The case, titled Golden v. New Jersey Institute for ...
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:
Many people want to know how they can monitor an agency's spending and determine how much an agency is paying a certain vendor (such as a law firm, plumber, construction company, or insurance company) or even who the agency's vendors are. A "Vendor Activity Report" (or "Vendor History Report") is a very helpful tool for learning this information.
A Vendor Activity/History Report details all payments made to every individual or company that was entered into the agency's accounting software in order to receive a payment. If a bill is paid, then there is a corresponding "vendor" entry in ...
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 6th.
“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.
What do you do if you receive a denial from an agency or if the agency unlawfully redacts information from government records?
The best course of action is to immediately speak to an attorney, who can work with you to gain access to the records. This frequently requires a lawsuit filed in Superior Court. Again, the most important thing to ...
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 ...
This week, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a split decision (4-3) in Paff v. Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office and once again ruled that dash camera videos that pertain to criminal investigations are not subject to the Open Public Records Act (OPRA).
While the decision is a serious disappointment to transparency advocates, it does not actually change the status quo. Last year, in North Jersey Media Group Inc. v. Township of Lyndhurst, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the dash cam video of a police-involved deadly shooting was not subject to OPRA because there was no Attorney ...
Last week, the Appellate Division issued a published decision that is very important to transparency. While the court's analysis of its standard of review over GRC decisions will excite appellate attorneys, it is the more substantive portion of the court's decision that grabbed our attention.
The case is Conley v. N.J. Dep’t of Corrections, ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. Jan. 12, 2018), and it involves an OPRA request that was filed by Kevin Conley, an inmate at the New Jersey State Prison.
Mr. Conley's OPRA request sought “monthly remedy statistical reports” that were required ...
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 ...
