To the Editor: A quote from West Milford’s township clerk in your story “The public’s right to know vs. personal privacy” (March 2), illustrates why the municipality often wrongfully withholds records from the public. According to the story, clerk Antoinette Battaglia said, the decision to withhold certain records from me was because they concern a “personnel matter“ and therefore are not subject to open records law. Ms. Battaglia, as the township’s custodian of records, should know that residents of the state are entitled to access to public documents not only under the Open Public Records Act, but also under the common law. Every request I make for records is made under mandates of the common law, which trumps OPRA. Nationwide, there is an overwhelming body of common law that says Ms. Battaglia and the lawyers who advised her to withhold documents from me regarding the disciplining of police captain David Hardin are wrong. Closer to home, an Ocean County Superior Court ruling in 1990, which later was upheld by the state Supreme Court, concluded among other things that police reports are “public records” within the meaning of the common-law right of access. Not to split hairs, but your story also noted that I see my “job” as making “sure that folks who are supposed to be working for the taxpayers are doing the right thing.” While there is a ring of truth to that, it is not entirely accurate. Ever since the days when I was I kid reporter, I considered it my job to gather the facts of stories I was assigned to cover and to give them to the public in a clear, responsible, unbiased way. As the years passed, only one of the things I came to understand is that the public’s right to know often is frustrated by elected and appointed officials who frequently want to bury information because they will be embarrassed by its release. I would like to make one more comment about your story. I once worked with a man who led a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper investigative reporting team and who was included on Richard Nixon’s Enemies List. It was when Nixon was at the height of his paranoia about Watergate and my colleague told people that he considered making Nixon’s list to be a badge of distinction. I feel pretty much the same about the people your story calls my “detractors” in West Milford. Martin O’Shea Stockholm