An amended bill to change the Open Public Records Act is back for legislative consideration, and it may have the support it needs to pass. That was one of the messages from a panel of journalists and academics at Rider University, where the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists held a forum April 30 on the need to defend OPRA.

In March, a fast-tracked bill to amend OPRA made it through committees in the Assembly and the Senate in just one week before it was pulled amid strong and broad-based public criticism. The bill then went behind closed doors for amendments.

C.J. Griffin, a Jersey City attorney who has had a decade of involvement in public records cases, told the panel that she expected the bill to be back in “the next couple of weeks.”

It happened even faster than she predicted.

The bill is again under consideration and again being pushed for fast enactment. Lawmakers are expected to hold hearings on the new version of the bill today, May 9. The bill’s sponsors want a full vote of the Legislature as soon as Monday, May 13.

In March, community groups testified for hours against the bill. Lawmakers were forced to pull it in the face of the strong and widespread opposition. Now they are again trying to fast-track the measure, with no explanation of why it must move through the Legislature at such speed.

At the Rider forum, panel member Walt Kane, of News 12’s “Kane in Your Corner,” reminded the audience that when the bill was pulled in March there were promises from its sponsor, Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen), that part of the amendment process would include reaching out to stakeholders. Neither Kane nor others on the panel knew of any stakeholders who have heard from the legislative group amending the bill.

That left the two-hour defense of OPRA by the panel without specifics on the changes that may have been made since the March version of the bill was withdrawn.

The audience heard about the history of OPRA, signed into law in 2002, and the particulars of the March bill that had provoked widespread public opposition. There was a reminder that a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll in April showed that 81% of New Jerseyans rejected changes proposed for the OPRA law.

The version of the bill that was pulled in March before a full vote included more than 20 changes to the OPRA statute. The bill’s initial sponsors, Sarlo and Assemblyman Joe Danielson (D-Middlesex), said that the original statute had not kept pace with changes in technology and was in need of an overhaul.

A major area of concern for the sponsors was protecting privacy rights. The New Jersey League of Municipalities, a supporter of amending the OPRA statute, says on its website that residents are “losing their privacy because they applied for a license” or “signed up for a municipal program.”

The most often cited argument for changing OPRA is that technology now allows commercial entities to gain access to public information through OPRA that they then use to augment databases where they sell information.

The commercial requests, supporters of the change to OPRA say, are burdensome for municipal clerk offices, cost the taxpayer money and are transforming OPRA “into a commercial tool it was never intended to become.”

Opponents on the panel said these arguments are cover for the true intent of the changes, which they say is to make access to government documents more difficult, and in many cases impossible, for citizens, government watchdogs and journalists.

The panel discussed examples of major stories that would have not been possible for journalists to do had OPRA not been available, citing the Bridgegate scandal among others.

Most telling, they argued, is that the proposed overhaul of OPRA, purported to be in the public interest and protective of public property, seeks to change a key feature of the OPRA statute that allows private citizens to advance the fight for access to information when that access is wrongfully denied.

The change would remove the requirement that an offending public agency or government that wrongfully denies a request must, if a court agrees the denial was inappropriate, pay the legal fees of the applicant. The amended language says the offending agency may be required to pay those expenses.

Take away the fee guarantee, opponents argue, and lawyers will be less interested in taking public records cases and citizens will be faced with the potential for high expense if they pursue a case even when they are certain the denial of access was wrongful.

This key change to the statute is still part of the revised bill that has been brought back to committees in the Assembly and Senate. There is a tweak to the original language when the public agency is shown to have acted in bad faith, with no definition of what constitutes bad faith.

One side claims OPRA needs modernization, the other says the changes are an attempt to gut the statute and cast more darkness on government actions.

The attempt to amend the statute does not have roots in some grassroots effort where a public worried about its privacy is demanding change. The major impetus for the proposed changes is coming from the municipalities, the panel of journalists argued.

They also pointed to studies that show a significant percentage of legislators receive public paychecks as local government attorneys or even local elected officials, setting up a conflict of interest that the panel members claimed state rules do not prevent.

Panel members said they fear that despite the strong public support for the existing statute, the Legislature, under pressure from the municipalities, will attempt to pass it anyway. Some even predicted it would come back on a fast track, and they were correct.

The New Jersey League of Municipalities has put out an urgent notice to its members asking that they call lawmakers and stress the need for passage of the legislation. Meanwhile, the ACLU of New Jersey, the League of Women Voters of New Jersey and several other groups are circulating petitions opposing the changes.

One ominous sign cited by the panelists is that the Senate version of the bill has now picked up a new sponsor, Anthony Bucco (R-Morris). Panel members said that the Democrats need Republican support to pass the OPRA changes in the Senate. Bucco’s name as a new sponsor means those pushing for the OPRA changes may have the votes to get it done despite what polls say about public opinion.

The Senate Budget Committee was scheduled to hold a hearing today, May 9, at 10 a.m. on the amended bill. Yet the text of the new bill was still not available to the public on the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services website as of Wednesday afternoon. Opponents of the bill say the rush to a vote can only be explained by a desire to get the bill passed before the public can organize its opposition.

Contact the reporter, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.