a controversial Bill critics say would gun government transparency is making its way through Trenton it reforms New Jersey's open public records act which was enacted more than two decades ago creating a Statewide set of rules for the Public's access to public documents supporters say reforms have long been needed to protect the privacy of citizens but Watchdog groups lawyers public defenders and journalists and a whole bunch of others say it'll make it harder to uncover corruption Fraud and Abuse that runs rampant in New Jersey senior political correspondent David Cruz reports the irony is almost too rich on National Sunshine week we're reminded of how important access to public records is for a healthy democracy the law in New Jersey to ensure that very right is about to get gutted relax relax lower the temperature everybody budget committee chairman Paul sarlo was as cool as the guy with all the votes at his Committee hearing this week his Oprah Reform Bill is long overdue he said painting a dark picture of a good law gone bad we want to make sure we protect our citizens and our children some folks uh quite frankly and for a lack of better words have have some made re some really creepy creepy requests but there's been Fierce push back from Good Government groups and others incl including journalists who say the proposed law takes a machete to a bill that needs a scalpel what else does this bill do uh to limit access restrict access well draft material would no longer be available including notes generated and used to prepare final reports documents or records logs of telephone calls emails or texts would no longer be available you get the idea it's the sort of in the weeds nooks and crannies of government information that journalists use to expose things like corruption in government the nursing home scandals and remember time for some traffic problems those came to light via Oprah requests suvio's reporting for nj.com exposed abuses in public run facilities that cost people their lives we um use the open public records act to request emails um particularly from the veterans homes and as well as nursing homes in New Jersey um to find out um you know what's the conversation going on but we were we were primarily focused on Veterans homes because they are public and what we found was that people weren't seeing doctors people weren't getting Medical Care they weren't eating because nobody was there helping them but journalists and advocacy groups were not the only ones sounding the alarm about the bill which goes before another committee to tomorrow where some amendments are expected if Boards of Education or municipalities do not want to answer questions and the only way you can get your answer is through an Oprah well that's what we have to do young people are entrusting you to be good stewards of our democracy and let us not be on the wrong side of history and also I do want to mention that you know we we can't we drove about an hour to get here and I find it completely disrespectful that half of you haven't been looking at me when I've been speaking it's true lawmakers those who stuck around did seem more interested in their phones than in the testimony after the session sarlo ignored reporters waiting to talk to him assembly sponsor Joe Danielson meanwhile lashed out at media coverage calling it fake news by the way he and all his colleagues in the legislature are exempt from Oprah rules Al together I'm David Cruz NJ Spotlight News NJ SpotlightNews