State GRC rules in favor of Orange resident’s OPRA request appeal

ORANGE, NJ — Orange resident Katalin Gordon, who previously uncovered that former Chief Financial Officer Jack Kelly had overbilled her and others by millions of dollars during former Mayor Eldridge Hawkins’ administration, has won another appeal on a failed Open Public Records Act request from the Orange City Clerk’s Office.

On Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2017, the state Government Records Council issued its final ruling in the matter of Katalin Gordon v. the city of Orange Township.

“The Government Records Council came down with its final decision regarding my last submitted OPRA-related complaint against the city,” said Gordon on Friday, Jan. 5. “It was submitted to the agency in March 2016. The agency took its time, reviewed the case … in November 2017,” ruling that Gordon’s complaints about the clerk’s office were justified.

Gordon and others in Orange have complained about difficulties in getting OPRA requests fulfilled in recent years. Most of Gordon’s unanswered OPRA requests occurred while Deputy Clerk Madeline Smith was running the Orange City Clerk’s Office after former City Clerk Dwight Mitchell left the job due to a car accident, before current Mayor Dwayne Warren was elected.

Joyce Lanier was hired a few years into Warren’s first term in office, so she was not responsible for any of the violations or service failures that the Government Records Council ruled that Gordon had experienced.

Attempts to get comments from Lanier about Gordon’s latest Government Records Council victory were unsuccessful by press time this week.

“The city clerk complied with the order, requested a search and came up with, and submitted, the responsive document to the (Government Records Council),” Gordon said of the resolution of her complaint, adding that “the GRC held, in addition, that because the clerk responded timely to the interim order, by producing the requested records, even if 20 months late, the original denial was not done in a deliberate fashion.”

  Government Records Council, Katalin Gordon