September 12, 2010
By PHILLIP MOLNAR
NEWTON -- Martin O'Shea, a former journalist and open government advocate, called his municipality's township manager in fall 2008 and asked her to lower public fees for government records.
O'Shea spent much of his life, especially his 18 retirement years, bringing much-needed reform to open government and the Open Public Records Act -- a tool for everyday New Jerseyans to learn the inner workings of their government in a state well known for corruption.
Hardyston Township Manager Marianne Smith said last week she couldn't remember what came first, "the chicken or the egg," but the township soon decided after speaking with O'Shea to lower its fees for paper copies of government documents and audio recordings of meetings.
The township became the first municipality in Sussex County to lower fees to 10 cents per copy. The rest of the county took longer.
"Trying to cause change takes time; it takes effort," said Sparta activist Jesse Wolosky, who was also fighting to lower government record fees around the same time as O'Shea.
The activists' hard work paid off. Today all municipalities in the county charge 10 cents or less per paper copy -- instead of as much as 75 cents as many once did -- and the change is happening all over the state.
Sussex County was one of the "isolated pockets" in the Garden State that pushed officials to lower fees for government records, according to John Paff, the chairman of the New Jersey Libertarian Party's Open Government Advocacy Project.
Late Friday afternoon, a bill lowering the fee of letter size paper documents to 5 cents per copy and legal size pages to 7 cents per copy was signed by Gov. Chris Christie.
Now, the average citizen who was once charged $7.50 for 10 pages of government records, will instead pay just 50 cents.
The bill, which also made documents sent by fax and e-mail free, had been approved by the state Legislature in June. Christie had until Monday to sign or veto the bill.
New Jerseyans have more access to government documents, such as budgets and meeting minutes, since 2002, when the Open Public Records Act, known as OPRA, was passed. But confusion about how much to charge for government records has baffled municipalities since.
"The Legislature didn't know what the Legislature meant," Paff said.
Regardless, individuals concerned about government transparency fought hard to change what they said was an injustice.
The problem, as Wolosky and many others saw it, was that the bill's default rate for what to charge the public for paper copies was 75 cents per page (the maximum allowable by law) for the first 10 pages -- but nowhere in the law did it say the government agencies should charge that much, especially considering one sheet of paper and toner hardly reached that amount.
The public could also be charged 50 cents for each of the next 10 pages and 25 cents for every page after that.
"They should have been charging actual costs," Wolosky said, noting the law did not allow agencies to charge labor costs. "It was a shakedown, and people weren't aware of it."
O'Shea had already reduced fees for records in the County Clerk's Office, Andover Township and Hardyston, when Wolosky revved up his own campaign to lower fees in summer 2009. Although the two individuals were on similar missions, they never met.
"We were doing the same thing," Wolosky said. "But we took different paths."
Wolosky started out the year settling a complaint with the Government Records Council, which oversees OPRA complaints, against Hopatcong. Before his complaint, Hopatcong had been charging $20 for audio recordings, the maximum amount for government records, and was not using the model OPRA form.
Wolosky later convinced Hamburg, Stillwater, Newton, Vernon and Walpack to lower their fees after personally speaking with the clerks.
"I just walked in and asked the clerk, who was very pleasant, and said, 'Would you mind lowering the fees for audio and paper?'" he recalled of visiting Hamburg Clerk Doreen Schott, who then presented a proposed change to the council.
In May 2009, he e-mailed the remaining 16 Sussex County municipalities seeking fee reductions. Most of them lowered the fees, or had done so already. Fredon and Green were final holdouts in the county.
Sussex County may have been ahead of the curve with the OPRA law, but thanks to a February state appellate court ruling, the rest of the state caught up.
In his opinion, Judge Jack Sabatino wrote that beginning July 1, "The defendant counties (Hudson, Hunterdon, Morris, Middlesex, Mercer, Passaic and Sussex) and other government agencies may not charge requestors more than the 'actual costs' of photocopying government records."
The rest of New Jersey, not just the seven counties included in the appellate decision, will start next week finding it more affordable to obtain government records.
"This new law brings a new day for transparency in New Jersey," wrote Bobby Conner of the New Jersey American Civil Liberties Union in a press release Saturday morning. "Now public records will be more available to everyone, not just those who can afford it. It will help New Jersey's citizens to better hold their officials accountable."
