My months of appealing to the Burlington County Prosecutor's office for help enforcing the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA) appear to have paid off.

I learned today that on March 18, 2008, Burlington County Prosecutor Robert D. Bernardi sent a letter to at least some (and hopefully all) municipalities in Burlington County "strongly suggest[ing]" that they review the OPMA, and advising them that "full and complete compliance with all provisions of the OPMA is absolutely necessary to avoid the possibility of monetary sanctions [and] . . . to continue to maintain the public trust." He credited the NJLP as being the impetus for the letter.

As citizen oversight of government grows, public agencies are resisting the oversight. One of the ways public agencies resist oversight is by threatening to sue members of the public who exercise their rights. These types of lawsuits are called “SLAPP” lawsuits – Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.

Citizen oversight of government is essential. To perform adequate oversight of New Jersey public agencies, which include public schools, municipal, county, and much of State government, citizens must have information. In New Jersey, one of the tools citizens can use to acquire information is the Open Public Records Act (“OPRA”). Under OPRA, citizens have the right to inspect or request copies of “public records,” which are broadly defined as:

On February 11, 2008, after learning that the Mount Holly Municipal Utilities Authority (MUA) had failed to record executive session meeting minutes for at least ten years, in blatant violation of the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA), I asked Burlington County Prosecutor Robert D. Bernardi to do more to ensure compliance with the OPMA by public agencies within Burlington County.

I received a February 19, 2008 response from Assistant Prosecutor Thaddeus E. Drummond informing me that he had contacted the MUA's attorney about the ten-year lapse, but his letter did not address the larger issue of his office's proper role in generally enforcing the OPMA.

All the correspondence, including my March 4, 2008 reply to Drummond, is on-line at: http://www.lpcnj.org/OGTF/MtHollyMUA1.pdf

John Paff
Somerset, New Jersey