Executive meeting minutes.
Dear Lacey Township,
This is a request for public records made under OPRA and the common law right of access. I am not required to fill out an official form. Please acknowledge receipt of this message.
Records requested:
Executive meeting minutes from January of 2023 to March of 2023.
This would also fall under OPMA.
Please reply directly back To this request as I am not required to go through your system.
Thank you
Yours faithfully,
Veronica
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Lacey Township, NJ Public Records
Your record request #23-859 has been submitted
successfully.
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Lacey Township, NJ Public Records
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• [1]To Clerk OPRA Log 23-859 Veronica.pdf
• [2]To Clerk OPRA Log #859 Veronica - Clerk
Response.docx
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Lacey Township, NJ Public Records
Record request #23-859 has been closed. The closure
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Dear Lacey Township NJ Public Records
As always please attach your response Directly to this request, rather than a random third party site of the municipalities choosing.
Yours sincerely,
Veronica
Dear Lacey Township,
It looks like my previous email may not have gotten to you, but as you know. Since the request came from this forum, the reply should be to this form. And not a third party site of the municipalities choosing. Please attach response to this request directly
Yours faithfully,
Veronica
The Township is in receipt of your OPRA request dated November 17, 2023
requesting access to the “Executive Session minutes for meetings of the
Township of Lacey Committee from Jan 1-March 2023.”
Please be advised that these minutes are in draft form and have not been
presented and adopted by the Governing Body. The justification for this
denial is rooted in N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1.1 which excludes documents in draft
form from being produced. However, not only does the statute explicitly
exclude draft documents, draft documents, specifically minutes, qualify as
ACD material which are not subject to disclosure under OPRA. Guidance for
this conclusion is derived from Libertarians for Transparent Gov’t v.
Gov’t Records Council, 453 N.J. Super. 83 (App. Div.), certif. denied 233
N.J. 484 (2018) where the Appellate Division affirmed that trial court’s
decision finding that the GRC lawfully denied access to draft meeting
minutes. The court concluded that “the inherent nature of a draft document
as both advisory and requiring deliberation prior to approval, compels the
conclusion that draft minutes are ‘[ACD] material,’ and are not subject to
disclosure under OPRA as a government record. See N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1.1.” Id.
at 92; see also Parave-Fogg v. Lower Alloways Creek Twp., GRC Complaint
No. 2006-51 (August 2006) where the Government Records Council held,
citing N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1.1, that draft, unapproved meeting minutes are
exempt from disclosure as “interagency or intra-agency advisory,
consultative, or deliberative” material, which is not included within the
definition of a government record.
Therefore, because these minutes are in draft form, yet to be adopted
access to the same are denied. When these minutes are formally adopted you
are welcome to make a new request for the same and at which time we will
review your request in accordance with N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1, et seq.
Thank you
Veronica Laureigh
Municipal Clerk/Administrator
Township of Lacey
818 Lacey Road
Forked River, NJ 08731
609-693-1100, ext. 2200
Fax: 609-693-0526
[1][Lacey Township request email]
[2]www.laceytownship.org
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Dear Veronica Laureigh,
Yes, that is all true regarding drafts, however the NJ Supreme Court In Kean Federation v Morell, 2018 ruled that closed session minutes are no different than open session minutes and are subject to the "promptly available" requirement. In this case, the NJ Supreme Court determined that a meeting in September whose minutes were released in February was an "unreasonable" amount of time no matter what the excuses were. We are way past 5 months. We're over double that time.
The Court also reminded the entity-the entity in this case is Lacey Township Govt- that they could modify the minutes so as not to reveal anything of a personal nature that may infringe on someones rights. The defendant in the case claimed they only held closed session meetings 5 times a year and that is why there was such a lengthy time for releasing minutes. The Court also ruled that should the entity continue to hold meetings five times a year causing the unreasonable amount of time that they would entertain this issue again. Imagine if the case they were hearing was for executive minutes occurring twice a month.
This information can be found in paragraph 2 of their ruling.
Based on this ruling, at a minimum, January through June needs to be released immediately. At this point I would suspect that many of the alleged private issues in those meetings no longer exist, such as former school board attorney discussions. If there is a personal matter regarding an employee of the township, it just needs to be modified and the balance of the minutes released.
Thank you
Yours sincerely,
Veronica