I am here today to speak at this hearing, a hearing that should not have had to be necessary, lest bills S2930 and A4045.

The Open Public Records Act came to life some twenty years ago as a means to provide the public with access to government records, maintained by public agencies in our state. I will not delve into explaining the rules and mechanism, or the long list of exclusions from the law.

I would like to talk about what the proposed Senate and House bills will do, should they pass.

We elect senators and assembly members to represent us, not to rule us. The government must operate transparently, and for that reason, the public needs access to records.

If these bills were to pass, they would severely impact the public’s ability to access any records. Many provisions in the bill represent an outright obstacle in obtaining records. The changes to fee-shifting would destroy any chance of lawyers taking such cases for fear that they may not get paid, even if they win. This would leave ordinary citizens – middle-class and working-class families – with no remedy against well-funded and powerful government agencies.

The removal of call logs and meta data would make looking for information impossible.

Increasing the number of requirements to file an OPRA request will make it more likely to be rejected.

Giving custodians the ability to arbitrarily decide what constitute “harassing requests”, would make OPRA meaningless, and stigmatize individuals who make multiple requests when contexts are secretive.

The bills would also contradict a Supreme Court ruling, by denying requests to obtain complaints and summonses information from police departments, the only records related to crimes a requestor can obtain from police, thus forcing the public to obtain those records from the judiciary, which is not subject to OPRA.

While the bills were introduced to address “commercial requests”, none of the provisions mentioned relate to commercial requests.

I would like to bring to your attention how local journalists and media, thanks to OPRA (not Winfrey!), were able to expose the long term assisted living facilities scandals during the pandemic.

Finally, I would urge you all to recollect the oath you took, to serve us and protect the laws of the land, and not work towards repealing laws created to help the citizens exercise their rights and duties.

Please vote NO on bills S2930 and A4045.

Thank you.