Our elected leaders have apparently decided to do whatever they think they can get away with to make our government less transparent and open. So the debate we have been forced to have on the New Jersey Open Records Act, unfortunately, is between holding the line and taking a giant step backward.

The prospect floated by legislative leaders would gut this landmark citizen empowerment law — a bill moving during the lame-duck session now underway that creates a false emergency and a debate about preserving the existing law. The conversation we should be having, however, is how to improve the law to give citizens easier access to the information they need to be constructive participants on solutions to the public challenges in their hometowns.

For now, the energy must be used to stop the legislation on the table because, if adopted, it would make it easier for New Jersey government officials at all levels to delay and block access to government records that citizens need to make decisions about government policies. They need that access to hold their officials accountable, but also to devise their own proposals for improving their communities.

The specific changes proposed include almost limitlessly expansive loopholes, such as enabling government officials to deny records requests if they require “research” into or review of government records. The proposed bill would also restrict the right of appeal and saddle citizens with the legal costs of appeals, even when they win.

Perhaps most importantly, the bill limits access to information about public contracts, inviting more government-contractor contributions to fund political campaigns at the expense of taxpayers. Given the recent nearly complete removal of our state pay-to-play protections, shining a light on these costly and corrupt practices is the only remaining check on them.

A better way

The advent of new technology enabling citizens to search for successful existing solutions to the challenges facing their communities when combined with our current open-records laws provides citizens with the opportunity to identify successful policies that can better their towns.

At The Citizens Campaign, we teach citizens how to research local policies in their communities and advance proposals to improve them with a no-blame approach through using the information that they secure through open-records requests. This benefits the public dialogue by moving the focus to solutions, instead of finger-pointing and negative attacks.

Given technological developments since the passage of the Open Records Act more than 20 years ago, we should be thinking about how to modernize the law to deliver more information to citizens in the most efficient way. For example, we could require that all levels of government post “citizens budgets” on their websites, providing budget information in a standard user-friendly way.

Similarly, we could mandate that local, county and state government have all ordinances, resolutions and laws adopted in a searchable database. These kinds of changes would have the added benefit of cutting down on the number of open-records requests.

A strong open-records act is foundational for citizens’ full democratic participation. Instead of seeking to weaken it, we should modernize and strengthen the existing law to create easier and more universal access to government records. This way we will not only improve government accountability, we will better tap the ingenuity and common sense of New Jersey’s citizens to forge pragmatic solutions.

Let’s think bigger and produce a modernized Open Records Act that can be a model for the nation.