Dear Old Bridge Township,

Under OPRA and the common law right of access, please provide copies of:
1) the resolution adopted for Re-Warding Commissioner compensation,
2) copies of all "scenarios" (maps) submitted to the Re-Warding Commission for consideration, including but not limited to those submitted by Remington Vernick Engineers, Re-Warding Commissioners, and members of the public,
3) copies of all correspondence, including email messages and attachments, sent from the Municipal Clerk to Thomas Lynch, or from Thomas Lynch to the Municipal Clerk, between December 16, 2020 and January 26, 2022, regarding the following topics: wards, ward boundaries, maps, scenarios, Re-Warding, and/or the Re-Warding Commission,
4) copies of the final ward boundary map adopted by the Re-Warding Commission.

Please confirm you have received this request, and feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Thank you kindly.

Yours faithfully,

Charlie Kratovil

Dear Old Bridge Township,

Please confirm receipt of my OPRA request. Please be advised the correct dates for item #3 are between December 16, 2021 and January 26, 2022.

Yours faithfully,

Charlie Kratovil

Dear Ms. Nelson,

Thanks for your question. I understand that due to the changes in Clerk during this period of time, there may have been important communications that went to staff. As such, I would greatly appreciate it if you could include emails to/from the Municipal Clerk's entire staff in your response.

Also, I wanted to make sure you saw my follow-up email clarifying that the correct dates for item #3 of my request: between December 16, 2021 and January 26, 2022.

Yours sincerely,

Charlie Kratovil

Dear Ms. Nelson,

You are delinquent in your response to my request for records filed on January 26.

On February 10, you wrote me a note stating: "We will need an extension to 2/18/2022." It is now February 22 and I have not received any records.

Please immediately provide the requested records. Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Charlie Kratovil

Dear Ms. Nelson,

Thank you for your response. Your office remains delinquent with respect to my request filed on January 26. On February 10, you wrote to inform me that my "request for documents relative to the re-warding of the Township is taking longer to review," and that you "need an extension to 2/18/2022."

I'm still not clear why any extension was necessary. As of today, nearly a month after the request, your office has produced only one single page, satisfying just one of the four items (#1) enumerated in the request.

With respect to item #2, you claimed that the records are "not the property of the Township," and directed me to file my request with another government agency. However, I have proof that the Township Clerk's Office has been included on e-mail messages that contain the requested records, either as links or as attachments, and I have reason to believe that several other Township officials have also received the records I requested. Are you denying that municipal officials have received these records?

Further, you claim the records requested in item #2 are exempt from disclosure under OPRA. If they are "exempt as... inter-agency or intra-agency advisory, consultative or deliberative materials," then why would you refer me to another agency to obtain them? Perhaps your office can directly contact Mr. Thomas Lynch, Administrator at the Board of Elections and Secretary to the Re-warding Commission, to seek his guidance on how to proceed with respect to this item. I understand there have been personnel transitions in the Township Clerk position, and I am sympathetic to the issues that stem from such situations, but that is no excuse for non-compliance with the OPRA. Additionally, even if you find these records are exempt under OPRA, they should be released to me under the common law right of access. I am a journalist who has been covering Middlesex County for over a decade, and as you may know, I am also engaged in government and politics specifically in Old Bridge Township. It is clear to me from the discussions that I witnessed and recorded at the Old Bridge Re-Warding Commission's public meetings held in January that several individuals who did not serve on the Re-Warding Commission were provided with each of the maps in question. It's fundamentally unfair to release these maps to some individuals but not others. As such, please reconsider your denial and release the requested records to me under OPRA and/or common law.

With regard to item #3, I am also perplexed by your response. You acknowledge that you have the records, but state that you are "unable to open them to attach" and that you've requested they be sent to you for a second time. When will your office be able to provide me with the requested records? Again, I am sympathetic to the circumstances and can certainly understand the nature of unforeseen delays, but it would not be appropriate or wise for me to consent to an indefinite, open-ended extension of time under the OPRA, so I must insist that you provide a reasonable timeline for the production of these records.

Finally, you provided no response whatsoever to item #4 of my request. Please immediately produce the requested record. Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Yours sincerely,

Charlie Kratovil

Dear Ms. Nelson,

This request is not complete. Your February 24 message contains a single .html attachment containging none of the records that I requested. When I click on the "Download Files" button within the .html file, it takes me to a page that reads as follows:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2022 04:35:50 GMT
Connection: close

No records were provided at either page. So far, I have only received one single-page .pdf file that fulfills only item #1 of my request. The other three items requested still have not been provided, as the broken link contained within the .html file includes no records. It is now one full month after my request.

While I understand that it may be challenging for your office to transmit a 64.54 MB file, there are several simple solutions that would accomplish this goal. One option is to send the file(s) to my New Brunswick Today email address ([email address]) using WeTransfer, a free file transfer service. Another method would be to place the file(s) in a Google Drive folder and share the file with me at my personal email address ([email address]). A third method would be to place the file(s) on a "flash drive" (also known as a "thumb drive"), which I could pick up at your office. Since the file in question appears to be a .pdf file, another option would simply be to split the file up into two or more smaller files, each of which could be emailed without any problem. Unfortunately, the method you used was not successful, and the request remains open. Please call me at 732-993-9697 if you wish to discuss how to transmit files that are too big to send via email so that we can align on a method that works for both of us, and minimizes any inconvenience you may be experiencing with respect to my request.

However, this is not the only issue we need to resolve. Your most recent message is very unclear. Based on my reading of the message, it appears the file you attempted to send only addresses item #3 of my request. Are you continuing to deny access to the records I requested in item #2? In my February 24 message, I suggested you reach out to Mr. Thomas Lynch to seek guidance with respect to whether these items ought to be released. Did you do so?

As a courtesy, I will draw your attention to the following link, which contains an email that I received this week from the Monroe Township Clerk's Office, wherein Mr. Lynch directs them to release the very same records for their Township in response to OPRA requests:
https://opramachine.com/request/29032/re...

In that email, Mr. Lynch specifically notes that "during the Old Bridge Rewarding Commission meeting on January 12th, both scenario maps were displayed during the public meeting; thereby making them public documents according to advice from County Counsel." Do you feel that the County Counsel is wrong on this point? Have you consulted any attorneys who have a different opinion than the County Counsel? If not, why are you withholding records that the County Counsel, the County Elections Administrator, and every other relevant Municipal Clerk's Office in the County believes should be released? Is the Old Bridge Clerk's Office less transparent than Woodbridge, Piscataway, South Amboy, and Monroe? Sadly, it appears so.

I urge you to heed the advice contained in that email, and immediately release to me the maps and charts that were provided to your office for both of the "scenarios" considered by the Re-Warding Commission.

Finally, with respect to item #4, you state that "The most recent map produced was found to have a number of errors, and therefore still falls under the OPRA exemption for 'inter-agency advisory, consultative or deliberative materials' under NJSA 47:1A-1.1. Once the map has been finalized and approved, we will be posting it on our website." This is extremely alarming, considering the Re-warding Commission already voted to give their final approval to the map in question. Further, that Commission has already missed the deadline to submit a final ward map to the Secretary of State. Did the Commission submit a map to the Secretary of State that was erroneous? When was it discovered that the map contained errors? Whose fault was it that the map contained errors? How will the Commission correct these errors? Will they be holding another meeting to correct the errors and approve a proper map without errors? I respectfully ask that you notify me in advance if the Re-Warding Commission plans to meet again so that I may attend the meeting.

Further, the exemption you cite does not state and should not be construed to mean that records containing errors are exempt from OPRA. Your attempt to apply that exemption to this record is entirely inappropriate.
Regardless of your opinion that the map in question has errors, it was approved by a majority vote of the Re-warding Commission and is therefore a public record. I demand that you immediately release the map that was approved by the Commission at their January 14 meeting. If you do not swiftly release all of the records I requested, I will be forced to retain counsel and file an order to show cause in Superior Court.

I've been sympathetic to your situation, and I will continue to be, but your office's obstruction must cease.

Sincerely,

Charlie Kratovil