Transparency NJ

PRESS OF ATLANTIC CITYTwo of 17 Atlantic towns settle public records suits By EDWARD VAN EMBDEN Staff Writer, 856-649-2072 Published: Thursday, December 18, 2008 A civil suit brought against 17 Atlantic County municipalities for alleged violations of the Open Public Records Act has resulted in two towns changing the way they conduct business. Both Buena […]

One of the most secretive areas in local government is the police department’s “internal affairs” process. Through several OPRA requests, I have obtained internal affairs records from the Ocean Township Police Department in Ocean County (i.e. Waretown). I have uploaded here, public filings regarding OTPD disciplinary actions from 2004 through 2007. There are two different […]

After my recent posting, I received a few comments advising me that the Local Finance Board, which handles the bulk of the municipal ethics complaints filed in New Jersey, is very slow processing the complaints. I concur with these correspondents and offer the following as evidence of the slow pace at which the Local Finance […]

Here’s an article that touches on the permissible and impermissible uses of email by public officials. The League of Municipalities’ publication–“The Perils of E-mail”–discussed in the article is on the League’s site here. —————————————-New Jersey towns cautioned against using e-mail to sidestep public meeting lawsMonday, December 15, 2008By STEPHEN J. NOVAKThe Express-Times WASHINGTON – It […]

Lately, I’ve been endeavoring to use OPRA to dislodge settlements of lawsuits where at least one of the parties is a government agency, official or employee. Some of the agreements, like the one in the following news article, contain confidentiality clauses that prevent the parties from discussing the settlement terms. Others don’t have confidential clauses […]