January 7, 2011
BY JEFF SISTRUNK
SPARTA -- A township resident has won a lawsuit against the Sparta Board of Education seeking copies of executive session minutes, less than two years after winning a similar case against Vernon Township.
Superior Court Judge Theodore Bozonelis, who also heard the Vernon case, ruled in Jesse Wolosky's favor on all points last month and issued an order Monday that outlined his ruling and contained several mandates to the Sparta Board of Education.
Under the order, the board also must reimburse Wolosky for his court and attorney's fees. Wolosky said an amount hasn't yet been finalized and that Bozonelis will determine his attorney's fees.
Wolosky filed the lawsuit in September following a pair of Open Public Records Act requests to the board. The lawsuit alleged that the board "violated the Open Public Records Act, the Open Public Meetings Act and New Jersey common law right of access by denying Wolosky copies of executive session minutes, not timely approving executive session minutes and not identifying the names of individuals discussed in executive session."
Executive session minutes are records that pertain to matters discussed by a government body in private. Tom Cafferty, an attorney for the New Jersey Press Association, said that such minutes can only be withheld from the public as long as "the interest in privacy outweighs the public's interest in access."
Wolosky's lawsuit stated that Warren Ceurvels, the board's secretary, failed to produce any executive session minutes for the time period spanning Jan. 1, 2002, to Sept. 10, 2006, and declined to provide Wolosky access to 13 sets of approved executive session minutes from 2009 and 2010. The suit also stated that the board didn't "promptly approve" five sets of executive session minutes from 2009 and 2010.
In his decision, Bozonelis declared that all three of these instances violated the Open Public Meetings Act. He also ordered the board to provide Wolosky access to the names of the public employees and public employee titles discussed in all existing executive session minutes from Jan. 1, 2002, through July 20, 2010, and to amend its policy regarding the maintenance of meeting minutes.
"I got everything I wanted out of this lawsuit," Wolosky said. "The board's claim that they are transparent to the public is false. They're conducting business behind closed doors away from the public's eyes, in the Dark Ages."
Jennifer Dericks, president of the Sparta Board of Education, acknowledged that previous boards failed to keep some records but said that in the three years Ceurvels has served as secretary, the board has maintained comprehensive executive session minutes.
With regard to the 13 sets of withheld minutes, Ceurvels said in his certification statement that his understanding was that the minutes were "exempt from public disclosure until ... the board (takes) formal action on the matters discussed during the executive session meeting."
After Wolosky filed his lawsuit, the board took action at its regular session Oct. 25to approve the five sets of unapproved executive session minutes mentioned in the suit.
Dericks said she doesn't think the board's handling of its meeting minutes will change drastically in light of Wolosky's lawsuit.
"The only thing that will change is that there will be much more scrutiny in ensuring that executive session minutes from previous meetings are promptly approved at the next meeting," she said.
Bozonelis' order calls for the board's policy regarding the maintenance of meeting minutes to be amended to include a detailed privilege/redaction log "describing the general topic discussed, the date on which the topic was discussed and the reason for the redaction." The board must review these logs and "ascertain if the legitimate reason for confidentiality continues to exist."
Dericks said she believes the board already made these revisions to its policy via a bylaw approved at the board's Nov. 22 regular meeting that formalized the requirements for recording and distributing meeting minutes.
Wolosky said his sole concern in the lawsuit was promoting transparency in government.
"For some reason, politics get involved when it comes to a government agency violating the law," he said. "If they didn't violate the law, I wouldn't have to file a lawsuit and a judge wouldn't end up agreeing with me. People are going to think, 'How much did the lawsuit cost us?' but it's not about money."
In the Vernon lawsuit, Bozonelis ruled in Wolosky's favor after township officials failed to fulfill Wolosky's Open Public Records Act requests. That suit resulted in Bozonelis ordering the Vernon Township Council to introduce an ordinance requiring the township clerk to produce draft executive session minutes for approval at the next scheduled meeting.
