November 15, 2009
By SETH AUGENSTEIN
FRANKFORD -- The retired township clerk violated the state's Open Public Records Act three times last year, according to recent decisions by the Government Records Council.
The GRC determined former clerk Louanne Cular violated the law by not fulfilling two citizens' government requests last year. The requests sought documents such as financial disclosure statements for public officials and minutes from most township committee meetings in 2008.
Cular said Friday she had not heard about the decisions, and declined comment.
The battle between Cular and the requestors, resident Henry Knaust and local activist Jesse Wolosky, turned into a sometimes-hostile dialogue last year over whether the clerk was required to e-mail or fax the documents.
The documents Knaust requested were faxed to him several days before he filed the complaint, and the GRC did not award him attorney's fees for his complaint, even though Cular violated OPRA, according to GRC. However, Wolosky was fully denied parts of his longer request, and although some of the documents were made available at a copying cost, they were not sent by e-mail as he requested.
Hostilities marked the months-long dialogue between the clerk and the activist. Wolosky's interaction with the clerk turned into an e-mail standoff at one point, just before he filed his complaint. He bluntly asked in one e-mail, "Are you ignoring me and denying my OPRA request?"
Cular responded curtly three hours later.
"We have been in touch with you from the day that your request was filed," she wrote. "We asked for a deposit; you ignord (sic) that. You ignored my deputies (sic) e-mail also. So please drop the arrogant attitude. Your records have been sitting in my office since the day after you requested them."
The GRC determined they should have been e-mailed. Now the council will review the documents Wolosky was denied, and then decide whether they should be released. After that, the council will determine whether Wolosky receives attorney's fees, and whether Cular was "knowing and willful" in violating OPRA. If she was "knowing and willful," she could be subject to a personal fine. First-time complaints against records custodians carry a $1,000 fine.
The third violation, for denying Wolosky's request for executive session minutes and for charging him $25 for an audiotape of a meeting, will also undergo the same "knowing and willful" scrutiny by the council.
Walter Luers, Wolosky's lawyer, said the records should have been released, even if they had to be partly redacted to protect confidential information.
"You can't just withhold whole documents," Luers said Friday.
Wolosky's Frankford requests are only a part of his countywide OPRA endeavors. He was a driving force behind the sea change in Sussex County open records fees, which have been lowered in nearly every town to 10 cents or less per copy. He said Frankford was a special case among all the other towns -- and is now undergoing some self-evaluation, through contentious elections and even an upcoming recall election of Mayor Paul Sutphen.
"There was something wrong in Frankford Township," Wolosky said Friday. "(Now) the people are making changes for democracy and transparency. Maybe I helped them get there."
Patricia Bussow, the current Frankford clerk, said the township had made changes in direct response to Wolosky. First, Frankford lowered its per-page cost for copies to 10 cents, and then it made open records requests available by e-mail.
"We did change, so we could get on board with that," Bussow said. "We tried to simplify as much as we could."
According to the Government Record Council's Web site, denial of access complaints across the Garden State are multiplying as citizens have become more familiar with OPRA, which was passed in 2001. There were 220 such complaints in 2006, 310 in 2007, and at least 284 in 2008.
