NJ Gov. Murphy signs bill critics say guts access to public records
says guts the state’s two-decade-old Open Public Records Act — making it more difficult for the press and general public to track government action, spending and official actions.
The bill makes it more difficult to request government emails, exempts access to many kinds metadata for public documents from release, and lets a government entity sue an individual it thinks is making too many requests to restrict their ability to file more. That scenario, whom Irvington Township sued in 2022 and accused of harassing public officials because she made “voluminous” public records requests — 75 over three years — about township business.
The “fee-shifting” rule has been key for individuals and small publications that can’t otherwise afford to take OPRA cases to court, because many of the state’s transparency lawyers“The mandatory fee-shifting when a government agency is found to have wrongly denied access was the main mechanism that jump-started being able to file these requests and actually get a response,” said Charlie Kratovil, a New Brunswick-based community activist and founder oftold Gothamist in an interview last month.
A group of advocates met with the governor recently, calling on him to veto the bill. He signed it while on a tight deadline to get his wish list in next year’s budget passed by the Legislature. The deadline to pass a budget and avoid a government shutdown is is midnight June 30.
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