TRENTON—Two 39th District legislators have introduced measures aimed at greater municipal government transparency — including town councils, school boards and planning/zoning boards.
The measures require advance meeting notice online and call for links to “relevant documents” now exempt from disclosure under the Open Public Meetings Act.
The legislation was introduced this summer by state Assemblyman Robert Auth (R-Old Tappan) and state Assemblywoman DeAnne DeFuccio (R-Upper Saddle River), to update the state’s Sunshine Laws initially approved in 1975 to make government more transparent.
The legislators are seeking cosponsors, hoping to make what they say are needed changes to the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA), a law passed nearly a half-century ago, and last updated over two decades ago.
Auth said he hoped the bill would be posted in the Assembly’s State and Local Government Committee soon.
“There isn’t any guarantee it will ever get posted; we are subject to the dictates of the majority party’s whims and judgment on what bill will be given a hearing,” Auth told Pascack Press.
The district, represented in the state Senate by Holly Schepisi (R-River Vale), covers most of northern Bergen County and portions of Passaic County.
Auth and DeFuccio had developed the proposed law after discussing the need to update the OPMA legislation — originally drafted in 1975 and last revised in 2002 — with Hillsdale Mayor John Ruocco, who has been pressing for advanced release of public documents that are listed on a public agenda but often not publicly available until after the meeting where they are discussed.
Moreover, Ruocco has been criticizing the Hillsdale Borough Council majority for more than a year, pressuring the body to release certain public documents, such as the local redevelopment plan, the redevelopment agreement, and architectural studies, in advance of meetings where they were to be discussed.
His efforts have not been successful; instead the borough clerk and attorney say they rely on the OPRA exemption to not release “advisory, consultative or deliberative” documents in advance of a public meeting where they are on the agenda.
Ruocco and the council, all Republicans, have repeatedly argued over the need to release so-called “draft” documents in advance of public meetings, with Ruocco charging council members with refusing to be “transparent” and members saying that Ruocco is wrong and that the current OPRA law is on their side.
Generally, the public and press can request so-called “ACD documents” via a public records request after meetings when they are officially introduced.
That normally occurs, though the public and press do not get to review the documents until they have been officially acted upon, leaving residents in the dark as public officials discuss their contents.
In Hillsdale, the Borough Council majority, by a 5-1 margin, together with the clerk and attorney, have consistently opposed Ruocco’s pushing for early release of documents, citing current OPRA law.
We have reached out to Hillsdale Council President Janetta Trochimiuk for comment.
In December 2021, Ruocco publicly released a $16 million estimate for proposed recreational field upgrades and a possible community center from a consulting architect, ahead of what other council members said was an agreed-upon release date.
That created a council uproar, and a subsequent change to council bylaws that eliminated Ruocco’s “ex-officio” status on committees and made him speak first during the regular meetings’ final council commentaries, preventing Ruocco from having the final comment on any borough matter.
Ruocco said the bylaws were changed to punish him for demanding transparency and criticizing the council’s decision not to consider early release of some “ACD” documents.
(See “Mayor releases $16M estimate for center, turf field ahead of council’s plan, drawing members’ ire,” Dec. 17, 2021, Pascack Press.)
Under recently introduced Assembly bill 4432, the legislation states: “…A public body that is a municipal governing body shall provide electronic notice of a meeting of the municipal governing body through the Internet, which electronic notice shall include any documents relevant to the scheduled deliberations, including those documents that are considered deliberative, advisory, or consultative drafts that have been discussed by the municipal governing body at any prior
meeting of the governing body, except those documents which are deemed to be confidential…”
The legislation provides for a minimum 48-hour advance meeting notice unless specific “emergency” circumstances exist. The bill also provides for state reimbursement through the Department of Treasury for local costs incurred to comply with the bill. (No cost estimates were noted in the bill.)
Following the failure of a June resolution to increase Borough Council transparency and which failed to get a second to be put up for a vote, Ruocco wrote to Pascack Press to express his frustration.
“Elected officials should be held accountable for the actions that they take in public meetings and should make it possible for residents to know in advance what they are voting on. Yet there are many municipalities like Hillsdale that vote on resolutions that refer to agreements without disclosing those agreements until after the Council takes actions,” Ruocco said.
“Not only is this contrary to ‘good government’, but it is inefficient since it forces the public to make requests under the Open Public Records Act (OPRA) for that information,” said Ruocco.
Ruocco previously wrote to the state Government Records Council, which adjudicates OPRA questions and concerns, and they told him that the matter related to the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA), not OPRA.
He noted, “On Feb. 15 (2022), the GRC responded in a letter saying that the issue was not a proper one for its guidance. They referred me to a decision by the courts that initially supported my view of more transparency, but which was subsequently overturned because the appellate judge didn’t believe that he had the freedom to deviate from how the term ‘agenda’ was defined by the Legislature 47 years ago when the Open Public Meetings Act was passed.”
He continued, “But he astutely observed that the emergence of the Internet allowing information to be shared more easily should prompt the Legislature to reconsider adopting a more transparent and modern view of what municipalities should share via published agendas.”
The proposed legislation offers four conditions to exempt a meeting from the new 48-hour electronic notice for agendas and related documents, upon the approval of three-quarters of its members.
The exemptions include:
- If a delay would cause “substantial harm” to the public interest;
- If the meeting is limited to discussion and acting on such matters of urgency and importance;
- If electronic notice is provided as soon as possible following the meeting scheduling; and
- If the public body “could not reasonably have foreseen the need for such a meeting.”
In mid-June, the council voted 5-0 (Councilman Frank Pizzella was absent) to support Resolution 22-118, calling for 16 OPRA statewide reforms to reduce the time and effort required of municipal clerks to fulfill local OPRA requests. The resolution noted reform legislation on OPRA had remained stagnant since 2019, when first introduced.
Asked why three years went by and 16 prior OPRA reforms called for remained unaddressed, Ruocco said, “As was explained to me and other mayors who attend monthly meetings of the (Bergen County League of Municipalities) chapter, there seems to be an inherent bias in favor of greater public disclosure.”
Ruocco said, “But municipalities are now pointing out the abuses and expenses related to excessive OPRA requests, some of which have led to the release of personal information of residents or otherwise have threatened their privacy. So, the municipal empire is striking back, so to speak. I would note that my transparency resolution would actually serve as a means to reduce OPRA requests.”
Ruocco told Pascack Press in June that after attending a state League of Municipalities seminar with a panel of attorneys, “I learned that this practice of denying information to the public was taking place around the state since many municipalities were automatically applying in blanket fashion a certain exemption contained in OPRA that treated agreements coming before Council for a vote as drafts or works in progress.”
He said the attorneys acknowledged it was legal, but raised questions about why elected officials would routinely do this. There is no requirement that municipalities apply that particular OPRA standard.
Municipalities are free to adopt other reasonable standards or make exceptions to the blanket application of the “draft” standard, Ruocco said then.