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| One of my flowering cacti. It is unrelated to this story. Yet, as I hope you will agree, it offers a momentarily pleasant diversion. (Bergeron Image) |
I’ve never understood why some municipalities and school
districts are so hard-nosed about providing information under the OPRA statute
of New Jersey. Without helpful
compliance to the Open Public Records Act, it becomes nearly impossible for
petitioners to get information in a timely fashion, if at all.
Still, some administrators and elected officials, often
acting in consort, either refuse to provide information as requested, stall, or
release it in an unacceptable manner.
But in New Jersey, such responses can come with steep penalties
attached.
The previous administration and elected officials of the
Borough of Raritan began to find this out the hard way about five years ago
when a request by the Courier News – part of the Gannett media chain –
requested payroll information in a specific electronic format, so that the data
could be crunched by a computer.
The Borough replied that the payroll data requested would be
made available through its vendor, Action Data Services, but that it could be
provided in a PDF format only.
