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Harry Scheeler is a citizen vigilante requester, conducting his own audits of New Jersey’s FOI law, the Open Public Records Act (OPRA), and helping others in their records retrieval. Last week, MuckRock caught up with Mr. Scheeler to talk about about citizen requesting, the politicization of public records, and how you can help.

As of September 10, Scheeler vs. the Office of the Governor of New Jersey is one step closer to being resolved in favor of the Plaintiff and transparency. Judge Mary Jacobson has ordered that Harry Scheeler’s requests for Open Public Records Act (OPRA) logs be satisfied and that the various New Jersey State agencies in question make the documents available by October 10.

The battle for access to New Jersey’s Open Public Record Act (OPRA) logs carries on, even after last month’s Superior Court ruling.

As part of the media whirlwind surrounding “Bridgegate,” New Jersey state agencies began issuing unusual rejections of standard requests for their OPRA logs. Now the ACLU has taken up the cause of citizen requester, Harry Scheeler, to reestablish the right of the citizens to access these documents over the desire of the Christie administration to keep them private.