FDU poll: Most N.J. voters oppose rolling back public records access

4 out of 5 voters oppose changing OPRA

Proposed changes to New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act (OPRA) currently being considered by the state legislature aren’t popular with good government groups, labor unions, activists, or journalists. Now it’s also clear that the changes aren’t popular with the general public either.

According to the latest results from a Farleigh Dickinson University Poll, 81 percent of registered voters in the state support keeping OPRA as it is, rather than tightening access to public records, with just 14 percent of voters backing the changes.

“It’s rare to see any bill attract this much opposition,” said Dan Cassino, a professor of government and politics at Farleigh Dickinson University, and director of the poll. “Republicans and Democrats, young and old, Black, Hispanic and white – nobody thinks this is a good idea.”

The current version of New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act dates to 2002. The law dictates what government information is public at the local, county, and state level. Proposed changes to OPRA, detailed in a bill that two Assembly and Senate committees voted to advance on March 11, would exempt certain government information from public records requests and require more specificity in requests. The bill would also give government bodies more leeway to refuse requests. It would be harder for citizens and journalists to sue government agencies for wrongful records denials because the bill takes away the right to attorney’s fees for citizens who go to court and win.

Democrats in the state are a little more likely than Republicans (15 percent versus 11 percent) to support changes to OPRA, and Black voters (25 percent) are more likely to support it than members of other racial and ethnic groups. The geography of support for the bill closely follows the patterns of partisan support, with the highest levels of support in the urban counties (18 percent), and the lowest in the coastal areas of the state (10 percent). Even among groups that are relatively supportive, the overwhelming majority say that they oppose changes to OPRA.

Bill sponsors Paul Sarlo in the Senate and Joe Danielsen in the Assembly have said the proposed changes to OPRA are just misunderstood. They have tried to claim that the bill will promote transparency and modernize OPRA while protecting residents’ private information. But many of the claims they have made about what the changes will do are untrue. For example they say the proposed changes to OPRA will protect private information like social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and credit card numbers. However, the law already protects the information from disclosure. They also say data miners take advantage of the law and overwhelm clerks. No research or data have been presented to back their claims. Good government groups have called on the state to create an OPRA study commission to work out improvements to the law that will promote transparency and access to public records.

“Supporters of the OPRA overhaul say that if the public knew what was really in the bill, they’d feel differently about it,” said Cassino. “These numbers show that if that’s true, they’re going to have to do a lot of explaining in order to get the public on their side.”

The survey was conducted between April 1 and April 8, using a voter list of adult New Jersey residents carried out by Braun Research of Princeton.