A bill package overhauling New Jersey's public records law is being criticized as an assault on transparency Democratic assemblyman Joe Danielson is proposing new restrictions on the state's open public records act that would among other things limit access to government documents bar people requesting records from challenging their denied requests in Superior Court put limits on those who make frequent requests and shield documents related to public contracts opponents like CJ Griffin a media and public interest lawyer say if passed this new measure will keep the public in the dark she joins me now CJ you know there are a few bills I can think of in the last several years that have really riled both the public and Advocates like this one what's your biggest concern with this package there are so many concerns with it it's hard to know where to start but I will say that um a5614 in particular um really gets Oprah in the sense that Oprah's fee shift and your right to go to court are the two um enforcement mechanisms of okra that really mean that agencies need to comply with it um and I can fill you in on more details of what I mean by that yeah I mean give us some examples exactly right so right now if an agency denies your request and you think that request was unlawful you can consult with an attorney and because there's a mandatory fee shift in Oprah meaning if you win in court the agency has to pay your bills lawyers like me are willing to take a case we evaluate it if we think we can win we will represent you and we'll pay the filing fee and we will not charge you any legal fees and then when we win the agency will pay our fees and then there's a risk of non-payment and what we can do is we can go to two forums right now we can go to Superior Court and have a judge decide our case or you can go to the government records Council or the GRC I always go to Superior Court because it's just a much better and faster Forum the GRC takes two years almost to hear a complaint a5614 takes away the right to go to Superior Court a judge can no longer hear your case now you have to go to that very slow GRC Forum they're giving the GRC 200 fifty thousand dollars which is never going to fix the problem and then even worse they are changing the way in which GRC members are selected so right now the governor appoints them with advice and consent of the of the Senate now just the governor the speaker of that assembly and the Senate President get to decide who's on this on the GRC without any other part voices in the mix um so it's already you know that causes me concern about who might be deciding those cases let alone who decides if it's the GRC that you're that is the one that denied the request than to make matters worse they're taking away the mandatory fee shift so it's an optional feature and then on top of that they're saying well it's an optional fee shift and if they do award you a fees it can only be at the very low rate that means the poll attorneys are paid and on top of that whenever you apply for fees from the GRC or Court they also review your bills and they Mark downtime that they think was excessive and so you will you will if you're an attorney like me it'd be next to impossible to take a case because I'm if I take a case now my risk of non-payment is that if I lose but in this setting the risk of non-payment is that if I lose I don't get paid if I win I might not get paid if I do happen to get paid my time is going to be cut and then they're going to give me this very low rate and so it just makes it really impossible and without that fee shift no one can afford thousands of dollars to pursue public records not even the media that's laying off reporters right I'm curious you know the bill sponsor assemblyman Danielson is on the record saying listen I've knocked on tens of thousands of doors and never once has anyone in the public come to me with their concern about access to public records but what does this ultimately mean for transparency and for folks Like Us in in the news media who need access to those records well I think it means that we're not going to have access and I think maybe one of the reasons why people aren't complaining to him is that he's speaking to the wrong people um because if I think he spoke to reporters if he spoke to people that were really tuned in they do care and I also hear outrage from people about the amount of money that municipalities waste um complying with Oprah but it's not because of Oprah it's because municipalities are often very secretive they sometimes deny access to records uh no they have to know that there's no lawful basis to do so and then they defend it in court they sometimes file appeals and then ah magically as soon as an election's over then they're willing to release the records um and so people are all right are very irate about how municipalities engage in these like ridiculous lawsuits and then end up paying fees because they make frivolous arguments give us uh quickly CJ an example of just how this uh may impact an ordinary Citizen's everyday life and I'm thinking back to pandemic the veterans homes other long-term care homes where a lot of what we found out about how the the outbreak was handled would not have been known if not for open uh public records exactly one of my uh big clients my uh is the North Jersey Media Group the kidnap papers and we actually had to sue because the administration wouldn't release uh records and emails relating to the nursing homes and because of the free shipping provision we were able to sue but the newspaper otherwise didn't have a budget to file to spend thousands of dollars litigating against the state which has unlimited staff time resources to try to defeat your public records to so often these cases require a real fight and if you think about some of the biggest transparency wins we've had in this state it's been you know uh contingency cases some of them that I filed to gain access to use of force reports and the names of officers that have that use deadly force to gain access to police Internal Affairs reports to gain access to all sorts of Records dash cams body cams those are all things that we had to fight tooth and nail because the government will not release anything voluntarily so that you know that that's one part bill but then there's three others and they all contain problematic Provisions too a5616 actually it kind of shockingly contains this provision that says it exempts records that relates to a person's interactions with public agency with regards to applications for or receipts of contracts so are we really going to allow people to communicate with secretly with public officials about getting a government contract that's that's an open door for corruption and perhaps a conflict of interest is that so many of all our lawmakers have government contracts CJ Griffin is a media and public interest attorney CJ thanks so much [Music]