Is your mayor, council, school board, or county commission lobbying to weaken N.J.’s Open Public Records Act?
Paid lobbyists for municipalities, school boards, and counties are a major force behind the bills that would curtail access to public records and the ability to challenge public records denials in New Jersey.
Ask your elected representatives where they stand on S-2930 and A-4045 and the fast-tracking of these bills without a transparent process that includes all the stakeholders. Get officials on the record.
Better yet, file public records requests to see if your elected representatives reached out to legislators over the past two weeks voicing their support for the bills. Lobbyists sent out alerts this month telling elected officials to contact their legislators and encourage them to pass the bills.
Keep your request narrow at first and focus on March 1-15. You can always go back later and request other dates if you need to do so. These bills have been in the works behind closed doors for a year now.
You can copy and paste the template below, customizing it for your request, and then email it to your records custodian. Just embed the text in the body of the email. Don’t send it as an attachment. You can also use OPRA Machine, but note that there are sometimes delivery errors and other bugs with the platform.
If you have questions or trouble, please contact us and we will try to help you. We’d love it if you pass on any responses to us that show that your officials lobbied for the bills.
Template
Date: [ ]
Dear Records Custodian [insert name or title if you know it]:
This is a request for information pursuant to the Open Public Records Act, N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1 et seq., and the common law right of citizens of the state to obtain access to public documents.
I am requesting copies of the following for the period of [March 1 through March 15, 2024]:
Each email sent by [for municipalities insert names of mayor, council/committee members, clerk, business administrator/municipal manager; for school boards insert names of school board members, superintendent, and business administrator; for counties insert name of executive, commissioners, clerk, business administrator] referencing any of the following:
“OPRA”
“Open Public Records Act”
“A4045”
“A-4045”
“S2930”
“S-2930”
“Sarlo”
“Danielsen”
If you determine that any portion of the requested materials is exempt from release, please redact the portion you believe is exempt and explain the reason for the exemption.
The New Jersey Open Public Records Act requires a response time of seven business days. If access to the records I am requesting will take longer than this amount of time, please contact me within the seven-day period with information about when I might expect copies.
If you deny any or all of this request, please cite in writing each specific exemption you feel justifies the refusal to release the information.
Thank you for your assistance.
Very truly yours,
[Name]
Krystal Knapp is the founder of The Jersey Vindicator and the hyperlocal news website Planet Princeton. Previously she was a reporter at The Trenton Times for a decade. Prior to becoming a journalist she worked for Centurion, a Princeton-based nonprofit that works to free the innocent from prison. A graduate of Smith College, she earned her master's of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and her master's certificate in entrepreneurial journalism from The Craig Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY.