Good Afternoon,

The New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) is in receipt of the
above-referenced request for records under the Open Public Records Act
(OPRA). 

After a review of your request, NJDOT has determined that your request for
“communications between 2009-2012 to and from NJDOT employees regarding
the demolition in 2011 of 1002 East Main St. in Maple Shade, formerly the
Moorestown Pub, and the buildings connections to Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.” is overbroad and improper.

Government agencies are required to disclose only identifiable government
records that are specifically described in the request. Gannett N.J.
Partners v. Middlesex, 379 N.J. Super. 205, 212 (App. Div. 2005). Neither
OPRA nor the common law countenances open-ended searches of agency files,
MAG Entertainment, LLC v. Div. of Alcoholic Bev Control, 375 N.J. Super.
534, 549 (App. Div. 2005), or permits a blanket request for every document
an agency has on file on a topic, Bent v. Twp. of Stafford, 381 N.J.
Super. 30, 37 (App. Div. 2005). OPRA does not require that custodians
conduct research when responding to OPRA requests. See Lagerkvist v.
Office of Governor of State, 443 N.J. Super. 230, 237 (App. Div. 2015)
(citing MAG Entm't, LLC, 375 N.J. Super. at 546-49).  "A requestor is
obliged to identify the documents sought with some particularity, thus
enabling government to maintain transparency while completing necessary
day-to-day functions." Ibid.  "A records request must be well defined so
that the custodian knows precisely what records are sought. The request
should not require the records custodian to undertake a subjective
analysis to understand the nature of the request.  Seeking particular
information from the custodian is permissible; expecting the custodian to
do research is not." Paff v. Galloway Twp., 229 N.J. 340, 355 (2017).

In addition, requests for correspondence must identify the individuals or
accounts to be searched and be confined to a discrete and limited subject
matter. Burke v. Brandes, 429 N.J. Super. 169, 176–78 (App. Div. 2012);
see also Elcavage v. West Milford Twp. (Passaic), GRC Complaint No.
2009-08 (Apr. 8, 2010) (stating that a proper request for email
correspondence must contain “(1) the content and/or subject of the e-mail,
(2) the specific date or range of dates during which the e-mail was
transmitted or the emails were transmitted, and (3) a valid e-mail request
must identify the sender and/or the recipient thereof”).

We require the information you provided in this request to be more
specific in order to identify the records you are seeking. Please respond
to this e-mail to identify the senders and recipients of correspondence
records you are seeking, the specific types of correspondence records you
are seeking, a more specific description of the subject matter contained
in the correspondence records you are seeking (i.e. a specific NJDOT
project or action associated with this subject matter would help to
identify relevant records), and a limited timeframe in which the records
you are seeking were produced (without more limiting search parameters, a
search for records spanning a four-year period would result in an
exceptionally voluminous set of potentially responsive records).

The NJDOT OPRA Unit is unable to process this portion of your request
until the clarification specified above is received.

In the meantime, the NJDOT OPRA Unit will continue an attempt to identify
records responsive to your request for “any emails from Paul Schopp to
NJDOT employees regarding the demolition of the building” from 2009
through 2012. However, without specific NJDOT employees identified as
e-mail recipients, we must conduct a search of all NJDOT e-mail accounts
to obtain responsive records and without a specific e-mail account
identified for Paul Schopp and with limited information provided about the
subject matter and/or specific search terms that would limit the scope of
potentially responsive results, we may require additional information to
process this portion of your request as well.

[1]Description: Description:
http://njdotsharepointinsgen.njdot.lan/S...

OPRA Unit

NJDOT Custodian of Records

Office of Inspector General

Phone (609) 963-1950

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Good Afternoon,

A request for "the names of the employee in charge of the road expansion project of Rt 73 where this building was demolished" is a request for information which is not covered under the requirements of OPRA (NJSA 47:1A-1 et. seq.). A request for information is not requesting a record made, maintained or kept on file in the official course of business. Therefore, NJDOT cannot process this amendment to request C156071.

Please note that the request for correspondence records that you submitted to NJDEP identified a specific Office within NJDEP and a specific, limited set of names as senders and recipients of the correspondence records you were seeking. Such details significantly narrow the scope of a search for correspondence records within a very large agency and were absent from request C156071, submitted to NJDOT.

The NJDOT OPRA Unit will be unable to process this request until the requested clarification is received. Please either provide the clarification of the original request discussed in our e-mail included below or submit a new amended request seeking specifically identifiable records held by NJDOT.

Thank you,

OPRA Unit
NJDOT Custodian of Records
Office of Inspector General
Phone (609) 963-1950

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