October 17, 2010
BY JEFF SISTRUNK
SPARTA — Following a successful 2009 lawsuit against Vernon Township for failure to properly fulfill an Open Public Records Act request, Jesse Wolosky is taking the fight to the Sparta Board of Education.
Wolosky, of Sparta, filed a denial of access complaint against the Sparta board in September. The lawsuit alleges that the board “violated the Open Public Records Act, the Open Public Meetings Act and New Jersey common law right of access by denying Mr. Wolosky copies of executive session minutes, not timely approving executive session minutes and not identifying the names of individuals discussed in executive session.”
Warren Ceurvals, the board’s business administrator, said the attorneys for the two parties are exchanging information.
The lawsuit states that, when presented with two separate open records requests by Wolosky this year, Ceurvals failed to produce executive session meeting minutes for any meetings between January 2002 and September 2006, and that he disclosed minutes for only seven of 20 executive sessions between January 2009 and July 2010.
In regard to the minutes that were disclosed, the document alleges that the names of the Board of Education members who were discussed were redacted, which “there is no basis for under OPRA or OPMA.” In addition, the lawsuit alleges that the Board of Education has “only approved 12 sets of minutes from those 20 executive session meetings.”
According to the state Open Public Meetings Act, a public body must keep minutes of its meetings “showing the time and place, the members present, the subjects considered, the actions taken, the vote of each member, and any other information required to be shown in the minutes by law ...” and promptly make them available to the public.
Wolosky filed a complaint against Vernon Township in 2009 after his open records request for council minutes spanning a five-year period from January 2003 to November 2008 was fulfilled, albeit with redacted documents and excluding minutes from September through November 2008. In that lawsuit, Wolosky asked for the excluded minutes and unredacted copies.
Ultimately, a state Superior Court judge said the council had not been in compliance with open meetings and records laws in response to Wolosky’s request for the August through November 2008 minutes and ordered it to adopt an ordinance requiring the municipal clerk to prepare the requested minutes in time for approval at its next meeting.
Ceurvals said, in respect to the minutes he declined to release, “some information is, under the law, classified as non-disclosable, and some of the minutes fall into that category.”
“I don’t think (Wolosky) has grounds,” he said. “His claims are based on his interpretation of at what point closed session minutes are available to the public.”
