On 08/2022 a resident made an OPRA request for legal bills between 5/20/21 and 5/20/22 on 08/2022 and the District provided overly-redacted bills that blocked out key information.

 A lawsuit with the Superior Court to obtain this information was filed on 10/22/22. 

Instead of providing this information, the District made the decision to engage in a lawsuit that spanned 18 months. The same attorneys who prepared and redacted the bills (billable hours) for the original OPRA request were the same attorneys defending the District in the months-long litigation. 

This information is readily available to the Business Administrator and OPRA Custodian. However, what ended up happening was the District’s refused to provide these bills – a decision that landed in a ~34,000 settlement that the District approved last night. If you assume that the District’s attorney was paid a similar amount for defending the District’s “right” to withhold information– you are looking at (minimally) a $68,000 price tag on just this one issue. 

Why? 

Legal bills related to the former superintendent’s nepotism case are part of this time frame. The bills appear to directly contradict the timeline she reported, under oath, regarding when she consulted with attorneys. 

The decision to settle and provide responsive documents outlining this contradiction occurred a few weeks after Dr. Varley left the District. The District minimally paid $68,000 to prevent this information from going public until she left.

In a quick review of the bills, using the first month of this bill list snapshot, the District spent $2,442 solely on an Attorney review of OPRA requests. 

Why are the attorneys reviewing OPRA requests? 

This Soap OPRA (see what I did there?) is just one facet in what has been a very costly decision on the part of the former Superintendent and the Board of Education (at that time) to proceed with defending an allegation that was ultimately admitted to.

It is also one part of an overall strategy to deny and redact OPRA requests regardless of how much it costs the District.  I wrote to the District with my concerns about the strategy last year in connection to another settlement.

In this email I wrote:

Considering all this, it appears the District is purposely delaying OPRA requests and is willing to use
District dollars to pay not only its attorneys but also the plaintiff’s counsel to extend a response to the
very last minute.

It leads me to wonder whether these delays are purposeful and connected to statutes of limitations on
potential violations in ongoing ethics cases, to which information from these requests would provide
clarity.

If true, and it certainly appears to be accurate based on the timelines involved with several open ethics
cases, this means that dollars that should be going to our classrooms are being spent in extraordinary
ways to protect the seats of high-level administrators and elected representatives.

For a more full picture, this most recent case  is one of FOUR OPRA cases in the last 2 years, which have all ended in a settlement in favor of the plaintiffs. ALL four of these cases are regarding over-redaction of public documents by the attorneys.

Is this why Ms. Stanley and Ms. Bradford feel we don’t have enough money to reduce the cost of transportation services for families needing subscription busing?

I want to take this opportunity to thank Attorney Walter Luers who has represented many of the residents in their efforts to obtain critical documents from the district.

Here is a full copy of the legal bills the District paid (minimally) $68,000, to delay what ultimately was provided to the resident. 

Articles on the BHPSNJ Legal and Ethics Troubles

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