WHAT ARE THEY DOING?
Request For Records Elicits No Response. The Township Lawyers Up.
As the Mount Holly Reporter recently posted, the Township Manager’s contract and other documents which are supposed to be kept by the Township were or are still missing. Since the contractor who is keeping our records could not find the requested document, The Reporter inquired about the identity of this contractor and how much they are being paid.
[previous article https://www.themounthollyreporter.org/p/peak-behind-the-curtain ]
The Township did not respond to this valid Open Public Records Act [OPRA] request. We waited 10 days, inquired again, and reminding the Township Clerk that she is required to respond. No response. We waited an additional number of days and made a 3rd request which likewise got no response.
And so, on March 19, 2026, the Reporter lodged a complaint with the State of New Jersey Government Records Council [GRC] stating that the Township of Mount Holly had failed to respond to a valid OPRA request for government records.
On March 30, 2026 attorney Steve Raymond notified the GRC that he would represent the Township in the GRC Complaint 2026-146. The Reporter emailed Mr. Raymond inquiring what problem the Township was having with the records request. Raymond did not respond.
A GRC mediation hearing will be held sometime in May or June.
UNORTHODOX BEHAVIOR
State law is quite clear with regard to the requirement to respond. The Township can request extra time, or it can say that the request is too vague, or say the task is too disruptive to operations, or it can impose “extraordinary time consumption” fees on the requestor. What it can not do is just blow off the request.
The Reporter believes keeping residents informed about who stores our records and how much they charge is a reasonable activity for a news organization. The Reporter understand that government is allowed to claim that OPRA requests have become disruptive to township operations.
But what we have just seen, over and over, is that the township’s record keeping practices are disorganized to the point that basic records, which they are required to keep, like a contract or an invoice, are essentially lost.
We don’t know at this point why the township has failed to respond. But the GRC will be setting up a time for those questions to be asked and answered.