Northeast
New Jersey legislators advance public records access law overhaul
New Jersey lawmakers pushed ahead Thursday with legislation overhauling the state’s public records access law, reigniting debate over the revisions that stalled earlier this year amid vocal opposition from civil rights and other groups.
The Democrat-led state Senate’s budget committee approved the amended legislation Thursday, with its Assembly counterpart set to take up the bill on Friday.
The bill’s revival comes after Republican minority leader Anthony Bucco signed on to co-sponsor the measure and following agreement on concessions by an influential group behind the legislation that represents the state’s more than 500 towns and cities.
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Among the proposed changes is the end of a prohibition on commercial record requests, by real estate developers for instance. Instead, the new measure would allow government clerks up to 14 days to respond to requests for records and allow for commercial interests to pay up to twice the cost of producing the records.
“When both sides are potentially not thrilled you have a good compromise,” Senate Budget Committee chairman Paul Sarlo said.
The General Assembly Chamber of the New Jersey State House in Trenton, New Jersey, is photographed. (Getty Images)
Civil rights groups, citizens and media organizations testified Thursday against the measure, citing in particular the end of what they said was a key component of the law: attorney fee shifting, which under current law provides for government agencies to pay legal fees only if the government is found to have improperly denied records.
That provision is important, according to attorney CJ Griffin who testified in opposition Thursday, because journalists and the public often don’t have the funds to pursue costly legal cases to obtain records.
“If your goal is to handle commercial requests … this bill doesn’t do it,” Griffin said. “This bill instead guts transparency.”
The bill’s sponsors countered that a court could determine that attorneys’ fees were warranted if a government records custodian acted in bad faith.
Another new provision of the proposed measure that drew opposition Thursday was the authorization for lawsuits to be brought in state Superior Court for records that requesters have determined to be interrupting “government function.”
Sarlo said he thought the criticism was inaccurate, but didn’t specify.
Lori Buckelew, a top official with The League of Municipalities that pushed for the legislation, said the changes are necessary to protect taxpayer dollars from the abuses of overburdensome records requests.
Paul Mordany, the mayor of Deptford, New Jersey, said his town has 200 pending requests, only three of which are from town residents. The rest are from lawyers, real estate developers and other commercial interests. The stress wears on the town clerk responsible for handling the requests under the Open Public Records Act, or OPRA, he said.
“I literally sat in her office more than one time as she literally cried over OPRA requests,” he said.
Access to officials’ emails and other public records regularly results in news stories shedding light on how the government works.
In 2018, for instance, the records law resulted in the disclosure of emails showing the then-governor’s administration working with the executives of a utility company lobbying lawmakers for a $300 million bailout for its nuclear plants.
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Boston, MA
When did Southie get richy-rich? – The Boston Globe
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Born and raised in Southie, Heather Foley has seen her neighborhood morph over the past three decades of scrubbing, renovation, and new construction for higher-income new arrivals.
But even Foley was surprised to discover that her South Boston, where kids once went to the corner to buy milk and cigarettes for parents, has emerged with the city’s second-highest average income, even ahead of Charlestown and Beacon Hill.
Her first thought?: “I gotta start being nicer to my neighbors if that’s the kind of money they’re making.”
What’s a household?
Decades ago, when “Good Will Hunting” was filmed in the neighborhood and Southie was known as a working-class area, there were more kids around and maybe just a single breadwinner in some homes.
Since then, Southie saw more two-earner households, fewer kids, and spiffier rental units where three or four roommates could contribute to a “household.” The changes, along with spillover from the adjacent, pricier Seaport, or South Boston waterfront, are factors in Census data showing more than 40 percent of Southie households earn more than $200,000 a year.
Staying put
Foley, 46, a photo shoot producer, considers herself lucky. She didn’t move out to the South Shore like many neighborhood longtimers. She’s living in a family home on a block with residents — oldtimers and newer arrivals — who aren’t flipping properties for big bucks.
Another blessing, particularly valuable this winter? She has a driveway.
As a kid, she went to church and school at Gate of Heaven, St. Brigid, and St. Peter, and jokes that she’s “so sad I didn’t buy a three-decker with my First Communion money, because I probably could have.”
Waves of gentrification
She remembers the earlier waves of newcomers, when glassy sports bars like Stats Bar & Grille muscled in among longtime restaurants like Amrheins.
But now, even the popular Stats is moving out at the end of the month. The property owner is developing a five-story, mixed-use residential building at the site.
A small silver lining
Foley notes that some of the onetime “newcomers” have been here for three decades — and in some ways, have stabilized the place. Many have raised kids, who, like her son, may return to the neighborhood as young adults (albeit splitting a rented apartment with friends). Stats, the sports bar, says it will also return to the neighborhood’s thriving food scene.
“We have a lot of great restaurants now,” Foley says, “and everyone cleans up after their dog.”
Read: These maps show Boston’s wealthiest and most populous neighborhoods — plus other key trends.
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♯ Teenage dreams: The future rock stars were teenagers when they wrote songs, influenced by David Bowie and Stevie Wonder, about a fictional nightclub. A half-century later, Squeeze has reworked and is releasing those songs.
💻 Death by chatbot? A new lawsuit alleges Google’s chatbot sent a man on missions to find an android body it could inhabit. When that failed, it set a suicide countdown clock for him. (WSJ)
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Thanks for reading Starting Point.
This newsletter was edited by Heather Ciras and produced by Ryan Orlecki.
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Pittsburg, PA
As his polarizing Pitt career winds down, a banged-up Cam Corhen has saved his best for last
Connecticut
Hartford community grieves men killed in police shootings
The Hartford community is grappling with two police shootings that happened within eight days of each other. Both started off as mental health calls about someone in distress.
People came together to remember one of the men killed at a vigil on Wednesday evening.
With hands joined, a prayer for peace and comfort was spoken for the family of Everard Walker. He was having a mental health crisis when a family member called 211 on Feb.19.
Two mental health professionals from the state-operated Capitol Regional Mental Health Center requested Hartford police come with them to Walker’s apartment on Capitol Avenue.
A scuffle ensued, and police said it looked like Walker was going to stab an officer. The brief fight ended with an officer shooting and killing Walker.
The family is planning to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the city.
“All I will have now is a tombstone and the voicemails he left on my phone that I listen over and over again at night just so I can fall asleep,” Menan Walker, one of Walker’s daughters, said.
City councilman Josh Michtom (WF) is asking whether police could have acted differently.
“To me, the really concerning thing is why the police were there at all, why they went into that apartment in the way that they did, in the numbers that they did,” he said.
The president of Hartford’s police union, James Rutkauski, asked the community to hold their judgment and wait for a full investigation by the Inspector General’s office to be completed.
A different tone was taken in a statement released about another police shooting on Blue Hills Avenue on Feb. 27.
Rutkauski said the union fully supports the officer who fired at 55-year-old Steven Jones, who was holding a knife during a mental health crisis.
In part, the union’s statement says that Jones “deliberately advanced on the officer in a manner that created an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury. This was a 100% justified use of deadly force.”
The Inspector General’s office will determine if the officer was justified following an investigation.
The officer who shot Jones was the fourth to arrive on the scene. Three others tried to get him to drop the knife, even using a taser, before the shooting.
“It just feels like beyond the conduct of any one officer, we have this problem, which is that we send cops for every problem,” Michtom said. “I don’t know how you can de-escalate at the point of a gun.”
Jones died from his injuries on Tuesday.
The union’s statement went on to say that officers should not be society’s default for mental health professionals. The statement said in part, “We ask for renewed commitment from our legislators to remove police from being the vanguard of what should be a mental health professional response.”
The officers involved in both shootings are on administrative leave.
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