The 2013 Bridgegate scandal continues to haunt the Christie administration. On Thursday, a state appeals court ruled that administration officials could face civil penalties for failing to release documents, requested by a newspaper group under the state's Open Public Records Act, related to the abrupt September 2013 closure of local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee.
The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed against the administration of Gov. Chris Christie by the North Jersey Media Group, the former parent company of The Record of Hackensack. The suit demanded documents related to the lane closures shortly after their suspicious nature came into focus. It was later discovered that the closures were orchestrated by a Christie aide and Port Authority officials as retaliation against Fort Lee's Democratic mayor, who refused to endorse Republican Christie's gubernatorial re-election bid that year.
Christie's aides initially claimed the closures were due to a traffic study. The Record began to file OPRA requests for emails, texts, letters and other documents related to the closures.
NJMG's attorney, Samuel Samaro, said the administration, in unsigned responses, repeatedly denied that there were any records that would comply with the OPRA requests. The appeals court noted that New York's Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher the firm hired by Christie to conduct an internal investigation of the lane closures eventually told the company that it had compiled a report containing approximately 250,000 documents related to the lane closures that were available on the firm's website.
NJMG filed a lawsuit against the administration, alleging that the administration engaged in an "ongoing pattern and practice of violating OPRA and denying public access to public records." NJMG was awarded unspecified counsel fees, but Mercer County Assignment Judge Mary Jacobson said the OPRA statute did not authorize her to impose civil penalties on the unidentified records custodians who denied the company's records requests. NJMG appealed.
Appellate Division Judge Francis Vernoia, joined by Judges Clarkson Fisher Jr. and George Leone, said trial judges do have the authority under OPRA to impose civil penalties against records custodians who knowingly and willfully violate the OPRA.
"The civil penalties under [OPRA] help ensure that records at all levels of government, including the highest levels of our state government, are not willfully and knowingly withheld in an effort to shroud possible wrongdoing from the public's view or deny access to government records to which any citizen is entitled," Vernoia said.