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BY JOE TYRRELL
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Bridgewater Township officials turned a dispute over a $5 fee for public records into more than $17,000 in legal bills for taxpayers.
The township still lost its fight against resident Tom Coulter, who in March 2008 asked for a compact disc copy of an audio recording of a township meeting.
When the township clerk charged him $5, Coulter paid although the cost was higher than allowed by law. Because the public already has paid to create government records, the state Open Public Records Act limits fees for standard copies to the "actual cost" of making them.
In October 2008, Coulter took the matter to the state Government Records Council, charged with mediating disputes over access to public records. The matter dragged on, but in July 2009, Bridgewater sank its own argument.
Submitting a municipal voucher and certification from Deputy Township Clerk Hector Herrera, Bridgewater demonstrated that it bought 50 CDs from W.B. Mason for $41.33, according to GRC records. Even when adding the cost of a sleeve for each CD, the township put its expenses at less than 97 cents apiece.While township attorney Alan Grant made a number of other arguments, including that Coulter's claim was "frivolous," the GRC found the municipality had admitted charging five times its cost of making the copy.
But the council deferred a decision on whether Coulter was entitled to attorney's fees as the prevailing party, so the legal meter kept running until Aug. 24, 2010, when it
decided he did. A month later, the parties reached a settlement with Bridgewater paying the bills.
Grant told the Courier-News of Bridgewater that the cost to taxpayers would have been lower if Coulter had agreed to settle earlier.
But Coulter's attorney, Walter Luers, said it was the municipality that ran up the bills.
"My fees were $3,500," he said. "The other side's were about $14,000."
Even his own bills were higher than usual for a case before the GRC, "because the other side so vigorously litigated the case," Luers said.
The newspaper reported that Township Administrator Jim Naples said the litigation was necessary to defend the township's fee ordinance.
In its filing to the GRC, however, Bridgewater criticized Coulter for not bringing his complaint to the municipality first. If he had done so, "the Township would have refunded a portion of the Complainant's money and amended its fee ordinance," according to the township submission.
The protracted battle is even more peculiar, because since 2005 a series of rulings by courts and eventually the GRC have affirmed the "actual costs" standard for access to public documents.
Reflecting those rulings, the Legislature dramatically lowered the cost of paper records from a sliding scale beginning at 75 cents a page for the first 10 pages. The new fees, five cents a page for standard size sheets and seven cents for legal, mean people getting government copies pay close to what commercial copiers charge.
"My takeaway is that lawyers who work for public agencies have no incentive to control fees, and municipalities are thoroughly unsophisticated purchasers of legal services," Luers said.
Joe Tyrrell may be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
