School officials can't charge newspaper thousands for records
By The Associated Press
10.29.02
MOUNT HOLLY, N.J. — A school district cannot make a newspaper pay thousands of dollars to review its legal bills, a judge has ruled.
However, the Lenape Regional High School District can charge the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill an administrative fee for providing access to the documents, Superior Court Judge John Sweeney ruled yesterday.
Sweeney said the fee would be based on clerical costs and the time it would take for Patricia Milich, the district's public information director, to review the billing documents to remove confidential material.
The ruling comes several months after the newspaper asked to see legal bills related to the construction of a $45 million high school in Tabernacle. It was not immediately known when the records would be turned over.
The district wanted to charge the Courier-Post $6,000 to $8,000, saying its lawyers would have to review the bills before the newspaper could see them. Lenape officials also argued that forcing the district to pay for expenses incurred under the state's new Open Public Records Act would violate the New Jersey constitution's ban on unfunded mandates.
"We're glad Judge Sweeney agreed that the public has a right to learn what's in its documents without paying an exorbitant price," said Stuart Shinske, the Courier-Post's managing editor.
Milich said the district had not decided whether it would appeal the ruling. However, she said officials were pleased that the court recognized that "the district was entitled to recapture a lot of the costs" related to the newspaper's request for more than 4,000 pages of public documents.