As this issue went to press, Gov. Murphy was considering signing a series of revisions to the Open Public Records Act (OPRA) that would reduce access to information generated by public bodies in the state.
In the age of electronic information, it is no secret that people’s private data can be easily compromised. Public officials have woven this concern into their rationale for dialing back the Open Public Records Act (OPRA), a pillar of our democratic process in New Jersey.
The exploitation of OPRA by commercial data aggregators is a second prong of this attack. Proponents of OPRA reform contend that OPRA was never intended to support for-profit companies’ insatiable demand for information. The proposed changes would restrict public information requests under OPRA to non-commercial uses only.
These issues aside, advocates for open government believe that the proposed OPRA changes would go too far. In particular, they would limit access to certain other types of information and give public officials more latitude to decide whether they need to respond to an OPRA request and how soon.
It has been shown in the past that public officials sometimes cannot be trusted to comply with OPRA, and these changes would give them more places to hide information that should be disclosed.
OPRA in its original form allows courts to impose financial penalties on public officials who wrongfully fail to disclose public documents. The changes would shift the burden of paying those penalties to public institutions, thereby punishing the taxpayer for calling attention to individual public officials’ wrongdoing. This also makes public officials less accountable for their actions.
OPRA has its flaws, which have been compounded by the electronic age, and these do need to be addressed. Many contend, however, that the process of revision has been too quick and is lacking in transparency.
Further, it has been pointed out that conservatives in the Legislature may hold Gov. Murphy’s agenda hostage by refusing to support it if he doesn’t approve these OPRA changes. We hope Gov. Murphy holds firm in defending the public’s right to know.
Latest draft of OPRA bill: https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/bill-search/2024/A4045