As readers of this blog know, on June 5th the Governor signed into law a bill that, for the first time since OPRA’s inception, significantly revises the law. Over the next several weeks, I’ll publish posts analyzing each of the various new provisions in the statute. Today, I want to make a few general comments about this comprehensive revision of OPRA.

Requestors, the media, and other organizations that oppose the bill have levelled the charge that enacting the bill has “gutted” government transparency under OPRA. I disagree. OPRA continues to provide public access to most records made, maintained or received by the government. The statute’s key requirements governing requests for government records, and responding to requests, have not changed.

The claim that the new legislation undermines public access is based primarily on the fact that attorney fees will now not be automatically awarded to a requestor who succeeds in OPRA litigation. This argument rests on two premises: without mandatory fee awards, attorneys will not take on cases for OPRA requestors; and without the prospect of such awards, public bodies will have less motivation to comply with OPRA.

But OPRA, as revised, still provides for fee-shifting. It states that a court or the GRC “may” award attorney fees to a prevailing requestor; moreover, if the agency unreasonably denied access, or otherwise acted in bad faith, an attorney fee award is mandatory. So there is still a substantial threat that a public agency will have to pay the requestor’s attorney fees when there is litigation.

It appears, as indicated in the Governor’s bill signing statement, that OPRA now follows the model of the federal FOIA, which gives a court discretion to award fees to a prevailing requestor, and requires consideration of the reasonableness of the government’s denial of access in making this determination. I’m not aware of FOIA requestors having problems retaining attorneys for litigation.

The other reason given for claiming that OPRA will no longer be effective focuses on the new provision that allows public entities to sue for a protective order where the requestor sought records “with the intent to substantially interrupt the performance of government function.” The argument is that this threat of being sued will deter people from making requests.

This logic doesn’t hold up. The section does not apply to the typical requestor who is legitimately seeking records, and it’s appropriate for the Legislature to provide a means to deal with someone who uses OPRA to interfere with government.

In addition, I doubt there will be much of a deterrent effect because I think this type of protective order suit will rarely be filed. First, such a complaint may be filed only after the public body has made a “good faith effort to reach an informal resolution of the issues relating to the records requests.” And if this step doesn’t work out, there is an exceptionally high bar to filing a complaint against the requestor: it’s often very difficult to prove in court what the requestor’s intent was, and this is heightened even more by the fact that the statute says this intent must be proven by clear and convincing evidence, an extremely strict burden of proof.

In short, OPRA has not been severely weakened. I think requestors will continue to use OPRA as extensively as they have over the past 22 years of the statute’s existence.

The present situation reminds me of the state of affairs when OPRA was originally enacted, and I was overseeing OPRA legal issues for the Attorney General’s Office. Over the first several years of the statute’s existence, we fielded countless questions, and handled many litigation matters, concerning how to interpret OPRA’s provisions. I expect public bodies throughout the State will similarly have numerous questions, and face a lot of litigation, over the meaning of the new language of OPRA.