To the editor: There is a great deal of disinformation being circulated in local newspapers regarding the legal fees that resulted from my successful Open Public Records Act (OPRA) lawsuit against former Township Clerk Kevin Byrnes. A review of my lawsuit’s history is in order. On December 11, 2003, the township council unanimously enacted the Attorney Accountability Ordinance. This ordinance, which was the first of its kind in New Jersey, requires attorneys who are appointed to local government jobs, such as zoning board attorney and municipal prosecutor, to publicly disclose their entire disciplinary histories as a condition of being appointed. Without the ordinance, the public’s knowledge of an attorney’s disciplinary history is limited to the relatively sparse information that the New Jersey Supreme Court allows the public to see. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court and the New Jersey Bar Association both zealously endeavor to keep the bulk of the attorney disciplinary process behind closed doors and outside of the public view. The council enacted the ordinance because it realized that in many, if not most, instances, attorneys are appointed to government jobs because of their financial contributions or allegiance to the political party in power rather than upon their legal skills or adherence to ethical standards. The council correctly determined that the ordinance which requires publication of appointed lawyers’ unvarnished disciplinary pasts would benefit the public because lawyers with checkered disciplinary histories would shy away from public employment lest their hidden pasts be revealed. When Republican Mayor DiDonato and the new all-Republican township council took over on January 1, 2004, they appointed William J. DeMarco, who had no experience in municipal law and previously served as the Passaic County’s Republican Party’s lawyer, as the township attorney at a $120,000 annual salary. This action struck many, including myself, as the type of unprincipled, partisan appointment that the ordinance was intended to counteract. So, in accordance with the then newly-minted ordinance, I submitted a records request for DeMarco’s full disciplinary history on January 31, 2004. After evading my request for a couple of months, Clerk Byrnes finally, on April 2, 2004, sent me DeMarco’s disciplinary history report. Byrnes, however, had redacted (i.e. blacked out) so much of the report as to render it useless. On April 6, 2004, my lawyer, Richard Gutman, faxed a letter to Township Attorney DeMarco informing him that I would sue Byrnes unless he immediately gave me DeMarco’s complete disciplinary report. After it became apparent that neither Byrnes nor DeMarco were going to abide by the ordinance, Gutman filed my lawsuit on April 29, 2004. On October 15, 2004, Passaic Superior Court Robert Passero dismissed my suit. On December 6, 2004, I appealed, and on May 25, the Appellate Division of the Superior Court unanimously reversed Passero and held that the Attorney Accountability Ordinance was valid and lawful. Thereafter, the present township council, in order to avoid more litigation, agreed to provide me with DeMarco’s full disciplinary history report and to pay Gutman $33,000 in legal fees (OPRA, the statute that I sued under, specifically entitles me to collect my attorney fees if I successfully obtain a denied record). Just today, I received DeMarco’s complete disciplinary history report from present Township Attorney Fred Semrau. I have uploaded both the redacted and unredacted report, along with Judge Passero’s decision and the appellate briefs to www.cjnj.org/html/wm.htm If West Milford taxpayers review those documents, they’ll find that all of the disciplinary information that Byrnes redacted from DeMarco’s report was already public information at the time that Byrnes suppressed the information. Specifically, the recently released, unredacted report reveals that DeMarco was publicly reprimanded by the Supreme Court on July 17, 1991 and was also privately reprimanded in 1978 and 1986. But, that information was already public and appears on page 506 of a report on the New Jersey Supreme Court’s website at http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/oae/oae2004.pdf Of course, there is no way that I could have realized this, because the report Byrnes provided me with was so heavily redacted that it could not be determined exactly what was redacted. In sum, Kevin Byrnes, back in 2004, decided to suppress disciplinary information regarding William J. DeMarco that was already a matter of public record. And, during the two years that the suit was pending, nobody on the council or in the township administration, said “Hey, defending this lawsuit is pointless because the information we’re withholding is already public.” Instead, the township allowed the suit to continue while the attorneys’ meters ran. So, I disagree with any statement that it was my fault that West Milford taxpayers spent nearly $50,000 in legal fees. The blame for that lies with Kevin Byrnes, William DeMarco and those within the West Milford Township government who arrogantly chose to disobey the law and abandon common sense. John Paff Sommerset