2024-09-01 SDL Desktop - New Jersey OPRA Updates 

Earlier this year changes to the OPRA laws in New jersey were updated.  Additional guidance was also provided in August.   Based on this, several changes were made to the Desktop and Portal applications.

New Fields

The Request is for Commercial purposes and is for a Legal proceeding, check boxes have been added to the Desktop form.  You will need to contact Support for an updated datagrid to see these fields there.

Request Application

The request application report was also updated based on GRC guidelines.  A one page and full version have been created.  Note the Fill in the Have/Have Not checkboxes on the report based on the request settings.  If you don't want those values filled in you can uncheck the Fill in Checkboxes.  

Please note you can still Link an OPRA Request to a parcel on the new Location tab.  We felt adding the is commercial and is legal checkboxes should be on the Request Tab.

As part of these new fields you are allowed additional time to process these requests.  We have added a new Link to set the 14 business days due by

Reports

Changes were made to all reports.  Existing Granted, Not Valid and Denied reports will say fourteen(14) when commercial is marked on that request. 

A new Appeal report is available for Print or to add as an attachment for emails.  We have opted to keep this a separate report for now.  You may consider putting a link to the GRC site in case Appeal rights change over time.

Based on information provided by the GRC a new OPRA Request Full report has been added to include the new fields, reasons for denial and application rules.

Instructions

Instructions wording was provided by a client and we added as new report.  It may provide helpful on denials to let the requester how to properly request an OPRA.  It can be added as an attachment for emails

Portal

Changes to track the new fields have also been included in the last Portal Update.  With the desktop update these will fill on when you process an OPRA request.  You may want to consider adding the GRC appeals site link to our instructions on the portal request page