Defend Democracy — Protect Open Public Records!

Save OPRA: Vote NO on S2930/A4045

The New Jersey Legislature is fast-tracking a bill that guts the Open Public Records Act (OPRA). Just this Monday, the Senate Budget and Appropriations Cmte and the Assembly State and Local Government Cmte passed this bill out of committee, despite hours of compelling testimony from every corner of our United For Justice coalition.

This legislation continues to be fast-tracked and is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly Appropriations committee this Thursday, 3/14 at noon. It could be heard on the Senate and Assembly floor as early as Monday, 3/18. Please send this updated email to your legislators today.

S2930/A4045 creates unnecessary and difficult hurdles to access public records, limiting the public's ability to hold government accountable. Among other things, the bill:

• Exempts email and call logs, while also making it incredibly difficult to request emails at all;

• Undermines fee-shifting, making it prohibitively costly for the public and even the media to sue to gain access to records;

• Sets up additional unnecessary hurdles for the public to request documents or receive them in their requested formats;

• Creates a vague and subjective "harassment" loophole that will lead to unreasonable redactions and request denials;

• Establishes an unbalanced task force charged with examining public access to police records without meaningful community or stakeholder engagement.

Stand up for transparency and urge your legislators to vote NO on S2930/A4045.