January 25,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood Nj, OPRA requests are now not affordable in the town. They have now (since last 2-3 months) started charging hundreds of dollars for each OPRA request because they don’t want residents to questions all these things happening at the same time with unprecedented push, without satisfactory answers from the council and administration. The Mayor uses his personal email account for most emails and some of them use their cell phones (text) to communicate, even when they are sitting at the public meetings.
There cannot be smoke without fire. If so many residents are going to these council meetings and they are frequently going to 1-2AM with residents speaking for 6-7 hours, there must be something wrong going on. Hopefully this new prosecutor will look at this and get to the bottom of this, which we the normal residents can’t do without access to all the data.
There are state laws limiting the amount of fees that can be charged for filling OPRA requests (Open Public Records Act ). Anyone being charge excessive amounts should check that out and file a complaint.
How much were you charged?
https://www.nj.gov/grc/public/complaints/fees.html
What is a special service charge?
A special service charge is essentially a labor fee that may be charged when a request is voluminous, requiring extensive time and effort, or when the request required extensive use of technology. Special services charges must be reasonable and based on actual direct cost of fulfilling the request. Actual direct cost means the hourly rate of the lowest level employee capable of fulfilling the request (no fringe benefits).
The imposition of a special service charge is extremely subjective and the determination is made on a case-by-case basis. No special service charges can be established in advance by ordinance.
The custodian must notify the requestor in advance of the special service charge. The requestor has the right to disagree with the special service charge. If the custodian and requestor cannot reach an agreement regarding the special service charge, the request is considered denied. Complainants may challenge a custodian’s special service charge by filing a Denial of Access Complaint with the Government Records Council or filing an action in the Superior Court of New Jersey.
The following is an example of a special service charge for a voluminous request:
Request: Meeting minutes from 2005 to present. There are 1,000 pages of responsive records which will take the custodian 2 ½ hours to copy. The Custodian may charge her direct hourly rate for the 2 ½ hours required to fulfill request. Custodian must estimate cost and notify requestor before fulfilling the request.
