What's the rush to limit transparency, up gas tax in NJ?

Sometimes bills proposed in the New Jersey Legislature can take weeks or even months before consideration at a committee hearing — if they are heard at all — and they then spend time in a kind of legislative purgatory before facing a floor vote. Still, on occasion, proposals are fast-tracked.

This week, Trenton lawmakers offered several prime examples of fast-paced legislation. Bills that would reform the Open Public Records Act and renew New Jersey's Transportation Trust Fund — increasing the gas tax in the process — have been streamlined to the point where they are poised to go from introduction to enaction in less than a month.

And not every Trenton lawmaker is at peace with the speedy pace of the bills. Legislation to reform OPRA and renew the TTF cleared the state Senate Budget Committee on Monday. The OPRA bill may see amendments in the Assembly this week, and the TTF has already advanced from committee in that chamber.

While voting against releasing the OPRA bill from committee, state Sen. Andrew Zwicker, D-Somerset, said the bill was flawed and that it’s something that “we must get right.”

After the meeting, Zwicker noted that although the TTF bill does have something of a deadline, it’s not until the end of June, so “this is a time to slow things down.”

“I think it is really important that we just handled three bills of enormous consequence that have an impact on every single person in this state,” Zwicker said. “We want to make sure all three of these we get right and we're very deliberative.”

Advocates raise concern about OPRA bill's pace

Advocates such as Christian Estevez of the Latino Action Network said the “breakneck speed” at which the OPRA bill is being moved has made a full review of the 29-page bill impossible.

State Sen. Paul Sarlo, D-Bergen, who chairs the budget committee and is the sponsor of the OPRA bill, said he doesn’t know if his bill will be on the list for Monday’s Senate session but that the Assembly Appropriations Committee was “considering a lot of the amendments that we talked about” during Thursday’s hearing.

Under the new bill, access to email and call logs, dog license information, email addresses and even digital calendars would be exempt. Requests for email would need to include a "specific subject matter" and "discrete and limited time period" as well as a specific person, as opposed to a title or government department.

Our View: Don't be fooled by OPRA 'reforms.' NJ deserves more transparency

The bill would also ban the release of metadata, which is the information about when an electronic file was created and who created it. Requests that an agency thinks could lead to "harassment" can be denied, and an official OPRA request form would need to be used.

One of the most notable changes would be to the policy regarding attorneys' fees in the event of a lawsuit. Requesters who win OPRA lawsuits “may” be entitled to legal fees if the public agency is found to have knowingly violated the law or unreasonably denied access.

What did experts say?

Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said the way these bills have been fast-tracked seems to show that legislators may not be inclined to hear from advocates and the public at large.

“It’s hard to look at the speed here and not conclude that it’s designed to minimize public input,” he said. “If this was being done in a thoughtful way, it wouldn’t be rushed … it’s hard not to conclude that the message is 'we don’t want your input.'”

Rasmussen also said that although renewing the TTF is necessary before the end of June to ensure that the work continues, there is no such need for OPRA, and in situations like this involving a change in policy, the process should be more deliberative.

The last time the TTF needed to be renewed was in 2016, and it didn’t get done before the June 30 deadline. Then-Gov. Chris Christie and the Legislature, under former Senate President Steve Sweeney, squabbled for four months over changes to the long-underfunded capital fund while construction work halted.

Those for and against the 2024 TTF renewal bill all said they want to avoid a repeat of 2016, but many insisted on taking extra time to make sure this version — which includes a new fee on zero-emission vehicles — includes good policy.

Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey, was one of several people who said the proposed policy changes to charge for zero-emission vehicles was flawed and asked both the Assembly and Senate to consider revisions to the TTF bill.

“Right now, this bill is putting forward a schizophrenic policy to promote [electric vehicles] on one hand but penalize EV drivers on the other,” O’Malley said.

Those arguments were enough for Zwicker and state Sen. John Burzichelli, D-Gloucester, to vote yes with warnings that more discussion was needed.

State Sen. Declan O’Scanlon, R-Monmouth, criticized the Murphy administration for putting this bill together with no input from Republicans or responses to their questions. He also needled Sarlo about moving the bill through committee less than a week after it was introduced; Sarlo responded that it was unacceptable if Republicans didn’t take the time to read the bill.

“Nobody disagrees about the value of keeping the TTF funded, of keeping the funding consistent and the value of the hundreds of millions of dollars that go toward local projects,” O’Scanlon said. “The disagreement is simply: How do we continue that funding? You mentioned it’s a two-page bill. I can assure you it isn’t the Republicans’ failure to take an Evelyn Wood speed-reading course that is the problem here, it’s that an alternative plan is complicated.”

Staff Writer Colleen Wilson contributed to this story.

Katie Sobko covers the New Jersey Statehouse. Email: sobko@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Why NJ bills to upend OPRA, gas tax are moving quickly