Town files papers in Supreme Court on OPRA request

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — The township of Bloomfield has filed papers with the New Jersey Supreme Court challenging several requests made to the court by a Bloomfield resident. The resident, Pat Gilleran, had submitted an OPRA request to the town in 2014 to obtain a video surveillance tape. The township denied her request, and Gilleran brought them to court. She won in Superior Court. The town appealed, and she won again in the Appellate Court. The town then appealed to the NJ Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear the case. An attorney for Gilleran suggested the case will not be heard until later in the year.

The surveillance tape, which is 14 hours long, recorded happenings on the parking space of Mayor Michael Venezia, located behind town hall near the police station. The defendants in the case are the township of Bloomfield and Louise Palagano, in her capacity as records custodian. As the Supreme Court hearing looms, attorneys for the two sides are submitting papers to the court concerning the scope of the case.

One of the points of contention is an opinion expressed by the Appellate Court. Although that court ruled in favor of Gilleran, it also stated that asking to view such a long tape was unusual. Gilleran has picked up on the point and has submitted papers asking the Supreme Court to modify that opinion and not consider it when judging her argument.

But, Assistant Township Attorney Steven Martino said in papers delivered in Trenton on Feb. 16 that Gilleran’s request for a modification was not properly submitted and should be ignored by the court.

In a telephone interview earlier this week, Martino said the length of the recording also has some bearing on his objections. Specifically, when it comes to vetting the tape if they were required to hand it over to Gilleran
“This particular camera would have to be reviewed by a number of people,” Martino said. “And it’s not just this request. Others could request seven days of recording. This is not just about Bloomfield.”

Martino also has concerns over the site recorded by the camera.
“A lot has to do with the specific camera instead of being an innocuous camera in a hallway,” he said. The township has argued that because Town Hall is connected to Bloomfield Police Headquarters, the camera pointing at Venezia’s parking space could possibly record confidential police matters, such as undercover agents, informants and crime victims. The township further argued that inspecting a 14-hour recording for confidential police matters would be prohibitively burdensome if not impossible.

“The Appellate Division said that the legislature didn’t contemplate the review of hours and hours of tape,” he said. “Gilleran wants that out. The Supreme Court could piggy-back on this and not have to review 14 hours of tape. But they’re going to consider it anyway. The thing is if they agree with it.”

Martino also objected to Gilleran’s contention that she should have been provided with a redacted version of the recording if any parts were objectionable.

Martino called Gilleran’s request impractical and said that if the Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Appellate Court, then “the public entity has two choices: either turn the videotape over without reviewing it; or have multiple employees review it and hope that individuals assigned to review the videotape are able to redact the portions that qualify as confidential.”

Martino again objected to Gilleran’s allegation that the state legislature, when making the OPRA law, contemplated OPRA requests for hours of recordings.

“There is nothing to support that proposition,” he said in court papers. “However, the basis for the initial denial of the request was that information on this particular video camera was confidential.
He said the denial of Gilleran’s request did not mean recordings from all surveillance cameras.

Martino argued that Gilleran said Bloomfield could have imposed a special service charge for redacting the objectionable parts of the recording. Martino cited a court case, Bernett v, City of Bergen, when Social Security numbers had to be redacted from millions of documents. The court ruled it was appropriate that a service charge be applied when the work was being done by an outside vendor.

But regarding Gilleran’s request, he said “an outside agency could not review the videotape and have sufficient knowledge to determine what information on the videotape would or would not be confidential. Not any random clerk or police officer could review the videotapes and recognize the seriousness of something on them that would rise to confidentiality.”

Martino said Gilleran’s request for a 14-hour videotape also did not sufficiently identify any particular content. He said if someone wanted to OPRA emails, they could not request documents wholesale. He provide case law, Elcavage v. West Milford Township, to substantiate his claim. He said if Gilleran had been more specific in her request, the response by the township would possibly have been different.

Gilleran had originally asked for several days of recordings but limited her request to one day when the municipal clerk’s office explained the scope of her request. Gilleran chose one day. Her intent, she said, was to determine if a high-ranking Bloomfield Democrat Party official was using Venezia’s parking space with a parking placard in their car windshield.

Her contention was that if this were true, the placard may have been provided as a political favor. A parking placard allow the driver of a car to park in otherwise restricted spaces.