Esther Wintner's OPRA fees
Donation protected
This past week, against strong community opposition, the City Council of Jersey City approved of the transfer of 16 acres of valuable land to the Liberty Science Center for $1/acre.
Community activist and longtime resident Esther Wintner filed an OPRA (Open Records Act) request with the city of Jersey City, to request information relating to this transfer. Her plan was to go through these documents and make them available to the public, in an attempt to understand how this transfer came to be.
The response from the city was as follows:
The Agency’s search for records in response to your request for “all written communications; email, text and hard copy between David Donnelly and: Steven Fulop, Paul Hoffman, Jeremy Farrell, JC Atty has returned voluminous results. It will require an extraordinary expenditure of time to process these results to determine if any contain responsive records. For example, each communication must be reviewed individually to ascertain whether it is responsive to your request, and/or contains non-disclosable information that must be redacted.
We estimate it will take one staff person a minimum of five (5) to eight (8) hours to review the results. During this review, the staff person must be diverted from her other assigned duties. Because we are a small outfit, the loss of this employee for this period of time will cause a disruption in Agency functioning. Accordingly, we request a seven-day extension to complete the review.
Please be further advised that pursuant to the holding in Fisher v. Division of Law, 400 N.J. Super. 61 (App. Div. 2008), the Agency may impose a special service charge to cover the cost of labor and production. While the statute permits a charge of $32 per hour, the Agency will charge its actual labor cost of $27 per hour. That would result in a charge of $135 for five hours labor. The Agency will charge only for actual time spent, which may be less or more than five (5) hours.
In other words, the city is charging Esther for what is normally a request granted for free, in what appears to be an attempt to dissuade and discourage her from getting these documents.
This Gofundme was started on Esther's behalf to raise the funds necessary to get these documents. We are attempting to raise enough money to pay for 8 hours worth of the above-mentioned staff member's time, which equals $216.
ALL of the money raised by this Gofundme will go directly to Esther and to this cause (minus the small processing fee charge by Gofundme). Absolutely none of it will be diverted anywhere else. It was started by a friend and neighbor of Esther's, who is volunteering her help on this matter. Neither she nor Esther are being paid anything.
We ask you to consider donating to this cause to help shed some light on this very confusing and concerning deal.
Community activist and longtime resident Esther Wintner filed an OPRA (Open Records Act) request with the city of Jersey City, to request information relating to this transfer. Her plan was to go through these documents and make them available to the public, in an attempt to understand how this transfer came to be.
The response from the city was as follows:
The Agency’s search for records in response to your request for “all written communications; email, text and hard copy between David Donnelly and: Steven Fulop, Paul Hoffman, Jeremy Farrell, JC Atty has returned voluminous results. It will require an extraordinary expenditure of time to process these results to determine if any contain responsive records. For example, each communication must be reviewed individually to ascertain whether it is responsive to your request, and/or contains non-disclosable information that must be redacted.
We estimate it will take one staff person a minimum of five (5) to eight (8) hours to review the results. During this review, the staff person must be diverted from her other assigned duties. Because we are a small outfit, the loss of this employee for this period of time will cause a disruption in Agency functioning. Accordingly, we request a seven-day extension to complete the review.
Please be further advised that pursuant to the holding in Fisher v. Division of Law, 400 N.J. Super. 61 (App. Div. 2008), the Agency may impose a special service charge to cover the cost of labor and production. While the statute permits a charge of $32 per hour, the Agency will charge its actual labor cost of $27 per hour. That would result in a charge of $135 for five hours labor. The Agency will charge only for actual time spent, which may be less or more than five (5) hours.
In other words, the city is charging Esther for what is normally a request granted for free, in what appears to be an attempt to dissuade and discourage her from getting these documents.
This Gofundme was started on Esther's behalf to raise the funds necessary to get these documents. We are attempting to raise enough money to pay for 8 hours worth of the above-mentioned staff member's time, which equals $216.
ALL of the money raised by this Gofundme will go directly to Esther and to this cause (minus the small processing fee charge by Gofundme). Absolutely none of it will be diverted anywhere else. It was started by a friend and neighbor of Esther's, who is volunteering her help on this matter. Neither she nor Esther are being paid anything.
We ask you to consider donating to this cause to help shed some light on this very confusing and concerning deal.
Organizer and beneficiary
Amy Wilson
Organizer
Jersey City, NJ
Esther Wintner
Beneficiary
