As our readers may recall, Governor Murphy recently signed "Daniel's Law" into law, which exempts the home addresses of current and former judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officers from access under OPRA. A bill pending in the New Jersey Legislature would expand those exemptions to include two additional categories of persons.
Among other things, Senate Bill 3209 exempts from OPRA "that portion of any document which discloses the home address, whether a primary or secondary residence, of any active, formerly active, or retired probation officer or member of the ...
Happy New Year! The year 2020 was a year unlike any other. As we look back at transparency issues that arose over the past year, we hope that this blog finds our readers healthy and well.
Pandemic Creates Transparency Hurdles
Transparency was front and center in New Jersey in 2020, although sometimes it was the lack of transparency that was the focus.
On March 9, 2020, Governor Murphy issued Executive Order No. 103 to declare a Public Health Emergency in New Jersey. Days later, the Legislature rushed to amend the Open Public Meetings Act (OPRA) so that public agencies would not have to comply ...
On Nov. 20, 2020, Governor Murphy signed A-1649 into law. Among other things, the bill amends OPRA to render certain home addresses exempt from public access.
Specifically, the new law immediately exempts from access "that portion of any document which discloses the home address, whether a primary or secondary residence, of any active, formerly active, or retired judicial officer or prosecutor." A "judicial officer" is defined as an "active, formerly active, or retired federal, state, county, or municipal judge, including a judge of the Tax Court and any other court of limited ...
On July 15, 2020, the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee held its first public hearing on police reform in New Jersey. The hearing was intended to be a discussion on policing issues in general and no particular legislative bill was before the committee, but police transparency was a frequent topic.
The hearing opened with live testimony from Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, who acknowledged that even after his recent decision to disclose the names of officers who receive major discipline, New Jersey still lags behind the rest of the nation when it comes to providing transparency ...
Every year, transparency warrior Senator Loretta Weinberg introduces a bill which would modernize and improve OPRA. This year’s bill is S107. Given that Democrats now control the Senate, Assembly, and Governor’s Office, we are hopeful that the bill has a chance of passing.
While the bill overwhelmingly improves OPRA, through a series of blogs we will highlight how some small provisions of the bill that seem non-controversial can actually cause some major problems for requestors.
First topic? Copying costs.
Currently, agencies cannot charge a copying charge to send ...
