NO OPRA, NO INFO
Township Clerks Hate It, But Eventually Have To Comply With Law
SUMMARY: Mount Holly Twp. has a compliance problem with the Open Public Records Act. On 2/24/26, The Reporter requested invoices and contract for a township vendor but received silence instead. A complaint was lodged with the State on 3/19/26, and compliance was achieved on 4/20/26. But not without sarcastic commentary from township officials.
The Law Works
As I relayed in the article “Peek Behind The Curtain”, the Municipal Clerks’ Association made their hatred of the Open Public Records Act [OPRA] clear in 2024 when they urged our Legislature to make hard reforms.
But the reforms didn’t go far enough for some Clerks who seem to indicate that OPRA compliance is the last thing on their to-do list. If not for OPRA, requests to municipal officials would often go without response. Unfortunately, Mt. Holly seems to be one of the townships where that is the case.
I have submitted so many complaints to the State Government Records Council [GRC] that I may be on a first name basis with GRC staff. That is regrettable since it means that the township of Mount Holly has an OPRA compliance problem. My latest complaint was dubbed 2026-146 by the GRC. It was a 2/24/26 request for the invoices and contract documents associated with the vendor who stores Mount Holly files.
The township has 10 working days to respond by law. And for a couple weeks I thought that perhaps Mount Holly didn’t get my email, because I got no response. But after more emails to them, on the third week I lodged a complaint with the GRC. And that prompted Mount Holly to “lawyer up” and acknowledge my existence again. Ah, they were getting my emails after all.
Don’t Fall Behind
Not to excuse Mount Holly’s non-compliance, but records management can be overwhelming and it seems that our town needs to hire a new employee for that task. It would be helpful in more ways than one. Firstly, the township would be able to avoid the waste of legal resources for a case they are going to lose. Secondly, they could have that employee train up on records retention law and do an inventory of the files that are costing Mount Holly nearly $100,000 per year. Who knows, perhaps 50% of the documents we are storing could be destroyed, which would be a huge savings. Our records storage vendor states on their web page that if you don’t inventory your documents and assign destruction dates to files:
“Your records could sit in file rooms or on storage shelves in perpetuity.” Iron Mountain
Thanks to the State GRC, The Records Dispute Was Settled
If you decide that you need to use OPRA to get info that somehow was not being provided by the municipality, be prepared to get some spicy emails if you wind up in a dispute. Complaint 2026-146 was settled after 2 months.
So a task that is supposed to take about 10 days took more like 60 days. I finally received not only the information requested but a lecture about how I should manage my expectations for communication:
