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BY RON MISKOFF
COMMENTARY
During its lame duck session eight years ago the New Jersey Legislature took a big step toward more transparent government when it unanimously passed the Open Public Records Act, known as OPRA. But our lawmakers stumbled when they failed to reduce the excessive copying fees traditionally charged for government records in our state.
Based on the complaints we at the New Jersey Foundation for Open Government hear, these high copying fees are a significant obstacle to meaningful citizen participation in government. Charging $6.00 for eight pages of a budget summary or $22.50 for a copy of a 50-page report is a real deterrent.
It sends exactly the wrong signal when government agencies set copying fees five or more times greater than the price a commercial copy shop just down the street charges.
While we can all applaud efforts by government to find enterprising ways to save taxpayer dollars, gouging citizens who must obtain government documents or want to see how their tax dollars are being spent is not the way to do it.
In fact, at a time when we badly need the aid of the general public to help look for wasteful spending and root out corrupt practices, cutting the cost of copying government documents will likely save, not cost, taxpayer dollars.
Currently if you want to buy copies of most government documents in New Jersey you will be required to pay at least 75 cents per page for the first 10 pages, 50 cents per page for the next 10 pages and 25 cents per page for additional pages. These rates date back to the early days of photocopying before technological advances made copying much easier, faster and cheaper.
Unfortunately, despite the clear intent of OPRA to limit the cost of copies to actual costs, these obsolete rates have somehow become the default rate for most local and state agencies, with some agencies charging even more for commonly requested records.
This has led to a number of court cases in which citizens have successfully challenged such high fees on the basis that they far exceed actual costs.
Three years ago class-action lawsuits forced Burlington and Camden counties to reduce the per-copy price for using self-service machines in their county clerks' offices to five cents per copy. Burlington had been charging 50 cents and Camden had been charging a dollar. A similar lawsuit in Gloucester County resulted in that county reducing its fee to 12 cents from 50 cents.
The trend has been similar on the local level. Three years ago Hoboken dropped its fee to five cents after a Superior Court judge ruled it could not charge more than actual costs while Hamilton adopted the same fee as a gesture toward open government. More recently, this past summer, 18 of the 24 municipalities in Sussex County dropped their copying charges to 10 cents per page or less, partly to avoid potential lawsuits.
While we could wait for case-by-case legal rulings to gradually force state and local agencies to reduce their fees, the better course is for the Legislature to do now what it failed to do back in 2002: Set a reasonable statewide fee for copying most government records. This would let us avoid the long, costly and unnecessary legal siege that seems to be developing.
Fortunately, the Legislature can do this by passing Senate Bill 1646 and Assembly Bill 1095, identical bills with bi-partisan sponsorship that would cap the cost for copies of most municipal, county and state records at 10 cents per page for letter-sized documents and 15 cents for legal-sized.
At least two other states — Kentucky and Washington — have already capped the price of copying public documents at 10 cents a page. While New Jersey can't be the first state to adopt a state-wide fee within shouting distance of actual costs, passage of this bill now would signal clearly that New Jersey is serious about letting all of its citizens play a role in monitoring and reforming their government.
Ron Miskoff is president of the New Jersey Foundation for Open Government (www.njfog.org), founded in 2001 as a non-profit, non-partisan coalition of civic groups and individuals who believe that openness and transparency in government is essential to genuine democracy.
