Murphy’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad transparency record

I began representing requestors in Open Public Records Act (OPRA) cases during the Christie Administration, which quickly became a full-time job. From Bridgegate emails to use-of-force records, it took many court fights to pry records loose from Christie.

When Phil Murphy took office in 2018, I had a glimmer of hope. Just months earlier, I had sued the Attorney General’s Office because it refused to comply with a recent New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that made email logs subject to OPRA. Shortly after Murphy’s first Attorney General was confirmed, he quickly settled the lawsuit and coughed up the logs.

But just a few months later, it became clear that Murphy would follow in Christie’s footsteps. In late 2018, an adenovirus outbreak killed several people in a nursing home in Wanaque. I battled Murphy’s Department of Health for almost two years in a case the judge called a “poster child for how not to handle an OPRA request.”

Thereafter, the Murphy Administration put up obstacle after obstacle to access. State agencies kept important emails about COVID nursing home deaths secret; invoked the Emergency Health Powers Act to deny access to lab contracts, information about personal protective gear, and hospital capacity data during COVID; kept every detail of the Coronavirus Task Force secret; withheld COVID case data by zip code; refused to hand over text messages sent to the Governor’s official comment line; denied access to ARRIVE Together data; adopted rules to hide GRC complaints; refused to disclose how often police subpoena newborn baby blood samples; failed to meet a slew of mandatory reporting requirements; concealedFIFA World Cup contracts; frequently took more than a year to fulfill OPRA requests to the State Police; and denied access to records explaining why the Department of Transportation bypassed the highest-scoring bidder. The list could go on.

Those fights were frustrating but familiar, similar to those we had fought with the Christie Administration in court and won. But Murphy has been far worse on transparency. His Administration didn’t just deny OPRA requests; he dismantled OPRA itself.

Over the objection of more than 80% of the public, Murphy signed S2930 into law in 2024. The bill added new exemptions and created new hurdles, like making it more difficult to request email correspondence and requiring courts to consider an agency’s special service charges to be presumptively reasonable.

But the real nail in the coffin was gutting OPRA’s fee-shifting provision. Previously, requestors were guaranteed to have their attorney’s fees paid if they won in court, enabling lawyers to take cases on contingency. Now, fees are awarded only at a judge’s discretion. That uncertainty means lawyers must generally charge requestors a fee–costs that most requestors, including journalists, simply cannot bear. As a result, denials of access are going unchallenged and agencies are more secretive.

Murphy recently claimed that he’s “done more for transparency than any administration in the history of the state.” In reality, after gutting key campaign finance laws and eliminating independent public notice requirements (which will soon leave residents in the dark about basic government actions), Murphy has indeed set a record: no modern governor has done more to undermine transparency and accountability in this state.

The fact that he recently dismissed gutting OPRA as mere “sausage making” is offensive. Certain things, like the public’s right to know, are pillars of democracy, not bargaining chips. 

But Murphy threw our transparency rights into a meat grinder and then gaslit us when he insisted it would cause no harm. In reality, because of Murphy’s actions, it is now harder for reporters to do their jobs and easier for public officials to evade scrutiny or commit corrupt acts.

Last week, I argued before the Supreme Court in another case about whether email logs should be public. The Attorney General’s Office argued strenuously that the email logs should be off limits. It did not surprise me. That early sliver of hope I felt when Murphy first took office dissipated long ago. 

Gutting OPRA might not have been a dealbreaker for Murphy, but it is to me and countless others. Even with his commendable record on criminal justice issues, Murphy’s legacy will be permanently stained–and our state forever harmed–by his fatal blows to our transparency and accountability laws.