If adopted, a citizen-driven initiative in Plainfield's sister community North Plainfield would leave the Queen City in the dust when it comes to access to public records.
Led by a committee of six residents and needing to collect 300 signatures by the end of this month (tomorrow), the effort is an outgrowth of North Plainfield Citizens for Community Rights (NPCCR), a grassroots community organization formed two years ago. See their website here.
Provided enough signatures are gathered, the petition would place a fully formed ordinance (The North Plainfield Sunshine Act) on the November ballot, where ratification by the voters would make the ordinance a public law in the borough.
Plainfielders interested in access to public records would do well to study the proposed ordinance -- see the petition and ordinance here (PDF) -- which sets out a clear and comprehensive public meetings and public records policy.
Among items of interest are the following --
PUBLIC COMMENTSAll in all, this is a very forward-looking effort and one that Plainfielders and the City Council should keep an eye on.
Not only the Council, but every board and committee would be required to establish a period of public comment near the beginning and end of EACH PUBLIC MEETING (section 6). As things stand now in Plainfield, the public can only comment at the end of the Council's agenda session, and there are no established overall rules for public comment at various boards and committees.
RECORDINGS
An explicit policy is set that sound recordings be made of ALL meetings -- including closed (executive) sessions, and that they be made available in a prompt manner in both printed and electronic format(section 8). Procedures for redacting minutes of closed meetings are outlined as well as a process for guaranteeing these minutes eventually become open public records to the extent allowed by law. Aside: As I learned in 'Clerk University', municipalities which sound record their public meetings but not their executive sessions put the town at risk in case of lawsuits over what was discussed at those closed meetings. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that executive sessions of Plainfield's City Council have had improper conversations in the past, a situation which the North Plainfield proposal would discourage its Council from indulging in.
ACCESS
The proposed ordinance would make access to public records (including financial records) easy by posting them to the borough's website or making them available electronically, or both. This would allow residents to download minutes or financial spreadsheets and perform their own analyses of payments made or budget allocations, etc. -- something to delight open government advocates anywhere.
FEES
Lastly, the proposal establishes a common-sense and up-to-date fee structure that includes not only photocopying fees (as state law currently specifies, but at a lower rate that reflects recent adjudications on the matter), and outlines fees for providing records in other formats, such as DVD, etc.
- Website: "Grassroots Groundswell"
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2 comments:
One has to wonder if you are so much for this, how come you never made this happen for the 8 years you were in charge of Public Information for the City of Plainfield Dan? For those eight years, nothing was put up on the city's website. No minutes. No documents. no nothing! Seems you cherish to live the double life. Perfect in every way. Way to go Damon!
To 6:25 AM --
Ain't exactly as you say.
But since the current Administration trashed the old city website COMPLETELY, and there is no way to recover whatever was there, you can go to your grave believing as you wish...
...unless, of course, you think all this openness stuff is for the birds and we should go back to living under a rock....
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