CJ Griffin Featured in New Jersey Monitor Article for Representing Transparency Group in Challenging Government Records Council

CJ Griffin, partner and director of the Justice Gary S. Stein Public Interest Center at Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C., was quoted in a New Jersey Monitor article titled, “Transparency Watchdog Fights New Rule that Keeps Disputes Over Public Records a Secret.” The article discusses how one of New Jersey’s leading transparency watchdogs is challenging the Government Records Council in court. Libertarians for Transparent Government wants a judge to strike down the “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable” regulation that allows the council to conceal the complaints people file when state or local public officials deny their requests for information under the state’s Open Public Records Act.

“Now this new secrecy regulation will make it harder to track complaints as they move through the GRC and thus it will insulate the GRC from future criticism,” said CJ Griffin, the attorney representing the Libertarians for Transparent Government. The council even was secretive about its new secrecy, failing to mention it in a November announcement about its new rule changes, Griffin added.

“OPRA was designed to increase public participation in government, but the GRC’s regulation keeps the public in the dark about what public records disputes their governments are fighting,” Griffin said. “It is unconscionable that the very agency tasked with ensuring that public agencies across the state are transparent has chosen secrecy for itself.”

If that bill passes, then there would be “no transparency” about pending public records cases, Griffin said.

To read the full article, click here.