Dr. Foregger’s Response to the First of Our Questions to the 2024 BOE Candidates
OPRA is an essential tool for government transparency. The intent of the law is stated as:
“Government records shall be readily accessible for inspection, copying, or examination by the citizens of this State, with certain exceptions, for the protection of the public interest, and any limitations on the right of access … as amended and supplemented, shall be construed in favor of the public’s right of access.”
Before the recent amendments, OPRA was a reasonable law that we as citizens of New Jersey could be proud of. I am disappointed in the amendments that seriously weaken it. Many groups that want government transparency opposed the recent changes. See for example.
Here are my suggestions for how to address the law’s new provisions.
1. An essential feature of the law was the mandatory feeshifting provision: if you win on a denial of access complaint, your attorney fees are paid by the losing government agency. It was put into the law to ensure that all citizens could get into court to challenge an improper denial regardless of income or assets. Mandatory fee shifting was always a good idea and provided an essential element for ensuring compliance to the law. It may be that an individual Board could adopt a policy saying that it would not oppose a request for fee-shifting, thus following the old law on mandatory fee-shifting.
2. A Board should always be aware of what cases the attorney is defending and why, as well as what the associated costs to defend them are. The Board should certainly be asked if it wants to initiate a lawsuit over a records request. I cannot imagine a situation where I would initiate such a suit as it seems contrary to the intent of the Open Public Records Act. I have not seen any situations in our District where such a suit would be necessary.
3. Service charges have always been part of OPRA. It maybe that some requestors do not know how to write a narrow and precise request. I think the custodian of records should work with a requester before imposing a service fee. It may also be that certain training or AI tools are needed to help out with fulfilling such requests or doing redactions. Service charges should not be used as a tactic to withhold records.
4. I think email addresses for Board members as well as staff members are on the website for our District, so identifying an address for an individual I expect would not be a problem. As for a time frame that is “reasonable” I would expect you could just put down what you want; depending on what turns up, you might have to cut back a little or specify additional parameters for the search. One help to requestors is John Paff’s court case that allowed him to first get email headers and then narrow his search based on the headers.
5. It is absurd to withhold immediate access to contracts and such. For example, a Superintendent’s contract is at least 3 years and sometimes 5. All of the items mentioned are vital for understanding what actions a government agency has taken. Modern technology for storage is very cheap and it is easy to create SQL databases so that with a simple user interface citizens can access the information for themselves, thereby reducing the burden on the OPRA custodian.
6. Governments are finding that putting more information online is a way to build trust in government and to cut down on OPRA requests. I would hope that our custodian would adhere to the prior rules no matter the age of the record. As for extending the deadline that should be only with the consent of the requestor. Many of these suggestions would have to be made part of a Board’s OPRA policy to have any effect.
Disclaimer: The above statements are made in my capacity as a private citizen, and not in my capacity as a board member. These statements are also not representative of the board or its individual members, and solely represent my own personal opinions,
