Voters reject push to gut New Jersey’s public records law, poll says

Lawmakers eyeing changes to our state’s public records law have done a remarkable thing in this era of political division: They have managed to get an overwhelming majority of New Jersey’s registered voters to agree on something.

The problem for Trenton is lawmakers are on the wrong side.

A new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University on voter opinion of a bill that would revamp the Open Public Records Act says 81% of respondents do not want the law revised, versus just 14% who back the proposed changes.

The details are even more remarkable. Support for not touching the Open Public Records Act stands at 79% among Democrats and 85% among Republicans; 79% among respondents without a college degree and 83% among those with a degree; 76% among those 30 and under and 81% among those 65 and older; and 71% or higher for white, Black, Asian, and Latino respondents.

“Nobody thinks this is a good idea,” said poll director Dan Cassino, a professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson.

That may not matter. By all accounts, our legislative leaders are laser-focused on taking an ax to OPRA. Among their complaints: too many people file too many requests; commercial entities use the law to further their business interests; and public entities are forking over legal fees because of public records disputes.

I’ve already dispensed with these arguments a few times (but just as a reminder: citizens being interested in their government is a good thing!; the people who run businesses pay taxes, too, and have as much right to public records as anyone else does; and public entities would pay less in legal fees if they stopped withholding so many public records). But the poll results add a new reason for lawmakers to end this misbegotten enterprise: the public wants them to.

Supporters of the bill may take issue with the way the poll was worded. Pollsters said the measure “would make it harder for citizens to access to public records, and limit what records they can request,” and that’s not how Sen. Paul Sarlo, Assemblyman Joe Danielsen, and the other bill’s other sponsors would describe it. But their own descriptions of the bill are flagrant lies exposed by even a cursory reading of the legislation. Sarlo told a television reporter last month that the bill would “modernize” OPRA, and Danielsen told us that most of the bill’s provisions would increase access to documents. Both claims are absolute nonsense.

If anything, the poll wording didn’t go far enough. I would have suggested asking, “Do you support a bill that would make it easier for towns to ban residents from filing requests for public records?” Or maybe, “Do you support a bill that would make it harder for residents to see emails their town’s leaders exchange about public business?” Perhaps, “Do you support a bill that would allow a town to charge someone whatever it wants in exchange for handing over a public record?”

Sarlo and others have chafed at public opposition to the bill, whining that news stories about it are biased. This new poll should make them consider that the negative reaction to the bill seen at the Statehouse is reflective of larger public opinion that the bill is nothing more than a transparent attempt to keep New Jerseyans in the dark about their own government.

“Supporters of the OPRA overhaul say that if the public knew what was really in the bill, they’d feel differently about it,” said Cassino. “These numbers show that if that’s true, they’re going to have to do a lot of explaining in order to get the public on their side.”