Toms River Schools Weigh Policy On OPRA Request Charges – Toms River, NJ Patch

TOMS RIVER, NJ — A flood of public records requests in recent weeks to the Toms River Regional School District that have overwhelmed distric staff has prompted the district to take a look a formal policy to charge for extensive requests.

Stephen R. Leone, the attorney for the Toms River school board, said the district’s public records custodian has received “an inordinate number of requests” for public records, including emails, contracts and other items.

About 60,000 pages of documents have been requested in the last few weeks.

“That has placed a tremendous burden on the district,” he told the board Wednesday night during its committee meetings.

The surge in requests has come as the campaign for three seats on the Toms River school board has heated up with accusations against several of the candidates, two of whom are former school board members and one of whom is an incumbent.

Among them have been several requests for two or three years’ worth of emails — a complex request because every email has to be reviewed for confidentiality and redactions made of personal information.

Leone said the district’s public records custodian, Helena Gregitis, has the responsibility for those reviews and redactions. Among the items she has to look for are private student information, health and medical information, both of which are protected under federal law; confidential personnel records, and home addresses or phone numbers.

He said it takes about an hour to review 60 pages of material. After Gregitis reviews the material, she often has Leone review it to ensure protected information hasn’t been inadvertently missed.

Under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act, public entities have seven days to respond to a request, though they can request extensions for more involved requests. They also have the right to charge for filling the requests under certain circumstances, such as when they can show the request is burdensome.

The Toms River school district doesn’t have a formal policy in place except to charge 5 cents per page for records requests that are fulfilled by delivering copies of paper documents. A new policy would extend charges to requests for emailed documents in cases where the requests were extensive.

William Burns, an attorney in Leone’s firm, said the decision to charge to fulfill an OPRA request is a case-by-case basis, because if the requestor challenges the charge, the district has to be able to support its charge.

The state law requires public bodies to charge based on the salary of the lowest-paid employee who can review the records. Burns and Leone said Gregitis is that person, due to the sensitive nature of the information that must be redacted. Her annual salary works out to $40 per hour, which is the charge under consideration for the policy.

“It’s the cost to make sure we don’t erroneously release private information,” he said.

Leone said the $40 doesn’t take into account the time spent by the district’s information technology staff in retrieving electronic records, particularly emails, nor does it account for reviews by Leone.

The goal is to encourage the requestor to narrow down their OPRA request to reduce the volume of documents. If they’re willing to pay the fee, the request will be fulfilled, he said.

Burns said the OPRA request volume isn’t an issue for the Toms River schools alone.

“Several public bodies are facing the same issue,” he said, in part because of the creation of what Burns called “OPRA request clearinghouses,” where a citizen can file a records request that is then directed to the appropriate agency, and the information returned to the requestor through the clearinghouse.

One of those clearinghouses is the OPRA Machine, created by Gavin Rozzi of Lacey. It has logged more than 12,700 requests statewide since its launch in 2017. A dozen records requests have been made to the Toms River schools in the last two weeks through the OPRA Machine alone. That doesn’t account for requests made directly to the school district.

“These are extraordinary requests,” Leone said.

Burns said the increased interest in OPRA requests has created a burden for public records custodians across New Jersey, and there are discussions going on about how the need for public transparency can be balanced by the needs of the public bodies to conduct their daily business.

But for the time being, the remedy to managing the workload is the ability to charge for responses to requests, he said.

Board members asked whether there can be restrictions placed on people who repeatedly file public records requests, and Leone said that is an issue that has to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. If it appears they are filing serially to avoid a charge, that’s something that would have to be looked at.

The policy may or may not be ready for next Wednesday’s school board business meeting, as it is being refined. It will need a first reading and a second reading before it takes effect, meaning the soonest it might be in place would be December.

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