TRENTON — Government agencies in New Jersey can now charge only 5 cents a page for paper copies of most public records and must provide them for free if sent by e-mail under a new law that takes effect today. The change in copying fees lowers the cost of obtaining a paper copy of a government document through the state’s...
TRENTON — Government agencies in New Jersey can now charge only 5 cents a page for paper copies of most public records and must provide them for free if sent by e-mail under a new law that takes effect today.
The change in copying fees lowers the cost of obtaining a paper copy of a government document through the state’s Open Public Records Act by as much as 70 cents for a letter-sized page, and as much as 68 cents for a legal-sized page.
The new law also establishes that records can generally be obtained for free by e-mail from a government agency. It also forces governments to charge only their actual cost of providing records in another format, such as a compact disc.
New Jersey lawmakers voted unanimously in June to approve legislation seeking to lower the copying fees, and Gov. Chris Christie signed the bill into law in September. The changes, however, did not take effect for a period of 60 days.
The state Government Records Council, an agency set up to handle disputes and other public record matters, issued an alert last week explaining how the law change will affect New Jersey government-record copying policies.
For those seeking records, the law change means government agencies can no longer use the old rules, which included a fee schedule of 75 cents per page for the first 10 pages of records requested; 50 cents per page for the next 10; and 25 cents per page for every copy thereafter, according to the council.
Instead, documents will cost 5 cents for each letter-sized page and 7 cents for each legal-sized page, unless a government agency can demonstrate that its actual per-page cost of providing copies is higher.
The New Jersey League of Municipalities, which represents the state’s 566 cities and towns, issued an alert yesterday reminding local government officials to begin charging the new, lower fees on Tuesday.
The higher fees were established in 2002, when the state’s Open Public Records Act went into effect. Changes in technology since then have improved the way governments can store and distribute records, reducing the cost and need for making copies, according to the Office of Legislative Services, the non-partisan research arm of the state Legislature.
And a state appeals court ruled earlier this year that government agencies can charge no more than their "actual cost" of providing a copy of a record, either printed on paper or in some other format, according to the Government Records Council.
The court decision also threw out the fee schedule included in the 2002 law until the state Legislature could establish a new one.
The bill signed into law by Christie in September had nearly 20 legislative sponsors, including Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen); Assemblywomen Valerie Vaineiri Huttle (D-37th Dist.) and Joan Voss (D-38th Dist.); and Assemblymen Gordon Johnson (D-37th Dist.) and Scott Rumana (R-40th Dist.)
Despite the law change, some government document copying fees can be higher than 5 or 7 cents if they are established by other state laws that supersede the Open Public Records Act, the council said in its explanation.