Comply with open meetings laws or face public humiliation

Three billboards have popped up around Gloucester County in New Jersey attacking the freeholders’ Open Public Meetings Act violations.

The freeholders believe the billboards are politically motivated. The county Republicans are seen as the main suspects, as they are vocal about transparency. But they deny any affiliation. “This is not something that the Republican organization did,” said party chairman Bill Fey. “(Although), it’s certainly in line with our message.”

The billboards do not mention the sponsors of the messages. The billboard company is respecting the wishes of the client to remain anonymous.

One of the signs has “Embarrassing” in red capital letters printed on it. Below that, it reads in black print, “Gloucester County Freeholders need a babysitter.”

A Superior Court judge recently found Gloucester County in violation of the Open Public Meetings Act and ordered the board to hire a court-appointed monitor to oversee them, which is the referenced “babysitter.”

To prevent this from happening to you, or to make sure your local government isn’t deserving of similar measures, read the following links on Sunshine Review:

*New Jersey Open Public Meetings Act
*Freedom of Information Act
*Public records
*Proactive disclosure
*Your state’s sunshine law
*Find your local government

NJ Senator wants every state & local gov. check posted online

New Jersey Senator Joseph Pennacchio is backing legislation that would put every state and local check online. The proposed bill would require transparency from municipal, county, state, and school officials and varies from coordination with the state treasurer to posting every check online.

“Fifty years from now it will be a joke that we even had to legislate something like this,” he said. “It’s such an affordable, common-sense program that will easily provide information that can be accessed from homes, libraries and businesses. It is long past time that we listen to taxpayers who are demanding that Trenton be accountable.”

The bill was already passed in the senate, and now needs approval from the general assembly.

NJ FOIA’s made affordable by law

Today, Governor Chris Christie signed into law a bill which will lower the fees charged for public records requests. Now letter size documents are capped at $.05, and legal sized at $.07, compared to the previous $0.75 per document.

I can’t believe that the state got away with $0.75 per document prior to this bill. Have you run into fees equal to or lower than this? If so, please let us know in the comments section.

Also, if you’d like to discuss this bill further please make sure to join us and Scott Hodes, from The FOIA blog this Friday on FOIAchat.

H/T: @jlmosebach

Ordinance to limit open meetings act fails

Last Friday on #FOIAchat, our live Twitter chat on Freedom of Information Act issues, the Dover, New Jersey open meetings ordinance came up. The ordinance required citizens to turn over videos of open meetings. Why? As the Mayor stated, “With today’s technology, people can edit, tape, doctor or alter the real intent of what’s discussed.”

(It is true that video tapes can be altered. So can basically anything else that’s recordable.)

But last Tuesday the Board of Alderman rejected the ordinance.

Alderman Pat Donofrio, the only member to oppose the ordinance at its introduction two weeks ago, was pleased with the proposed law’s defeat. Not only did he see the law as unnecessary, by more seriously, Donofrio also saw it as a “reactive response” by Mayor James Dodd to restrict recording the meetings by certain residents.

Edward Correa, founder of the group Dover Democrats For Change, said it was nonsensical to expect citizens to hand over recordings. It was also harmful to open government. “There were too many regulations that would have discouraged people from taping the meetings.”

Luckily, this ordinance was defeated. But governments and officials keep trying to defeat open records and open meetings laws. In Texaschallenge the constitutionality of the Texas Open Meetings Act. Let’s stay informed and make sure attempts like these to limit our information don’t make it very far, and that we have officials like Alderman Donofrio looking out for transparency government.

Transparency in Government Act for New Jersey

Senator Joe Pennachio of New Jersey (R-Morris) has sponsored legislation that would create a website allowing taxpayers to see how tax money is spent int the state. The bill was proposed in 2008. The Senate approved the Transparency in Government Act, 29-3, on Thursday and has moved into the New Jersey Assembly.

“A number of states already authorize taxpayers to track their tax dollars online. This affordable, common-sense program will provide information in a user-friendly format that can be accessed from homes, libraries and businesses. It is long past time that we listen to taxpayers who are demanding that Trenton be accountable.”

This came just in time. An editorial in the Courier Post Online complains about the lack of transparency in New Jersey. “It’s not 1995, where people are just starting to get the Internet in their homes. It’s 2010.” Citing the US PIRG’s report on state website transparency (which we include on our state website evaluation articles) which graded New Jersey an “F” for their lack of a government transparency website.

Sunshine Review gives the New Jersey website an “A” for the amount of information disclosed.

The data that would be accessible to the public following the Transparency in Government Act are:
*disbursements by state agencies,
*receipts and deposits by state agencies,
*agency earnings,
*annual state bonded indebtedness,
*bond debt services,
*salaries and wages,
*contractual service purchases,
*capital outlay and improvements,
*aid to local units of government,
*annual state revenue,
*taxes, and
*federal grants.

Four of these items are items on our 10 point transparency checklist. As for the rest, those items alone should be enough to greatly decrease the amount of Freedom of Information Act requests the state received. This will turn out to benefit the state and the people: people won’t have to wait to get the information they are due, and the government won’t have to expend as many resources on providing this information by just providing it upfront.

New Jersey taxpayer-funded lobbying confuses taxpayers and Senator

The National Taxpayer’s Union is a little irked about taxpayer-funded lobbying. They way they describe it, the practice boils down to governments “spending tax dollars to persuade the state Legislature to give them…more tax dollars.” And NTU asks two important questions:
*Couldn’t that money be used more wisely?
*Why do towns even need these lobbyists?

Two questions governments have a duty to answer to taxpayers. NTU also noted a common argument against taxpayer-funded lobbying: “Municipalities should be a priority for their state legislators, who are elected to represent those very towns.”

The main problem for NTU, however, isn’t necessarily government lobbying, but rather the lack of transparency and accountability. Laws on public lobbying are not as demanding as those on private lobbying. It therefore becomes easy to obscure the already-convuluted chain that taxpayer dollars go through in order to end up as payment to lobbying firms. The solution is better legislation. State Senator Loretta Weinberg in New Jersey (D-Bergen) has introduced a bill in the New Jersey legislature that would require towns to report any lobbyists they hire, the purpose, and how much the firm was paid.

The senator, like NTU, is also confused by the practice and questions the necessity of taxpayer-funded lobbying. “Why do they need a middle man? Municipalities are our most important clients. Towns don’t need a lobbyist to come to my office. I can’t remember a single time when I thought they were getting their money’s worth [by hiring lobbyists].”

At Sunshine Review, we’ve been working to find and compile information about taxpayer-funded lobbying and taxpayer-funded lobbying associations. Please join us in adding to public understanding about what it is that your government does.

For more New Jersey resources, see the links below. And be sure to join us at #FOIAchat on Twitter tomorrow from 2-3 pm EST, where we’ll be live chatting about FOIA in the news.

*New Jersey state website transparency evaluation
*New Jersey cities
*New Jersey counties
*New Jersey school districts
*New Jersey taxpayer-funded lobbying

Freeholders concerned about New Jersey Association of Counties

Morris County in New Jersey is concerned about its membership in a taxpayer-funded lobbying association.

Taxpayer-funded lobbying associations are groups of similar government entities. These groups facilitate communication between like-governments, such as county-to-county, and represent the collective interests of these governments before the legislature.

The county will be withholding dues of $10,000 to the New Jersey Association of Counties (NJAC), pending an independent audit of the agency. The county also wants cuts in pay and benefits to NJAC’s director and staff.

Dues for taxpayer-lobbying groups can range from a low hundred-dollar figure, to several tens of thousands, as the dues for NJAC. In return, organizations offer education, suggestions on adhering to state policy, and legislative updates, as well as legislative representation.

The freeholders involved in questioning the NJAC are not diminishing the importance or legitimacy of such organizations:

“NJAC is worthwhile. It gives counties a voice in Trenton. But I believe some drastic reforms are needed.’’

Freeholder boards in Sussex and Warren counties will also withhold dues. As a result of the attention, the association has hired an auditor to scrutinize the operation and finance and personnel committees were revived.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Taxpayer-funded lobbying is an obscure area, and a lot of the ethical issues are, as of yet, not worked out.

UPDATE: The executive director of the New Jersey Association of Counties plans to step down from position as a result of the recent criticism.

Open Government, Jersey-style

Open Government is an awesome and effective issue to advocate for all levels of government. The only problem is, as a New Jersey elected official found out, if you talk the transparency talk, you gotta walk the transparency walk.

APP.com reports on a scuffle involving Long Branch city councilman Brian Unger and Mayor Adam Schneider. Unger, usually a transparency proponent, allegedly sent an inappropriate email to the Mayor regarding a female city employee’s salary, which he considered premium pay. Unger employed the old copycat defense, claiming the comment was in line with comments other councilmen had made at meetings, but then refused to disclose which members were inappropriate, though Schneider sent him an email asking him to do so.

After that exchange, Unger made a crucial error:

Unger sent an e-mail to Rob Miller, his IT professional, and asked him “to kick” the e-mail [asking Unger to disclose the names of other inappropriate board members] “back to” Schneider “with an error message so he thinks I never got it.” He also asked Miller to ban Schneider’s e-mail address from Unger’s work computer.

Unger accidentally sent that e-mail back to Schneider.

Unger said he asked Miller to kick back the e-mails after three Fridays in a row of receiving what he termed as abusive e-mails from the mayor. According to the time in that e-mail, however, Unger asked Miller to alter it at 7:43 a.m. Monday, three days after the mayor sent him an e-mail telling him to go public with his allegations.

Oops.

This tale would be a little funny if we were talking about something other than government employees acting like children and destroying public documents, as well as public trust.

***
While I was reading the above story, I couldn’t help but notice this one also, regarding government employees and others using taxpayer-funded gasoline for their private vehicles. I know gas prices are high, but it’s so not worth going to jail over. From the article:

The state Attorney General’s Office has announced indictments charging six current or former employees of the state Children and Families Department with official misconduct. Also charged are two municipal employees from Camden, and four Camden Board of Education workers.

The state plans an audit of vehicle and gasoline usage within the Children and
Families Department, whose fleet of 2,500 vehicles uses tens of thousands of gallons of gas each week.

Yeesh.