with David Cruz" is provided by -- Promotional support is provided by insider NJ, a political intelligence network dedicated to New Jersey political news.

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♪ David: welcome to "Chat Box."

I'm David Cruz.

A lot happened this week, the legislature getting ready to change the rules regarding public access to government information.

That will affect all of us.

We will talk about that in the second half of our show.

Let's begin with a dive into this independent report on the state's handling of the Covid crisis.

This of the long anticipated report, 900 pages in all dealing with what went wrong or right during the crisis.

Let's welcome Dr. Stephanie Silvera, Professor, Montclair State University.

It has been a while.

Stephanie: how are you, good to see you.

David: this report, independent we are told, tells the story of the pandemic and how we dealt with it, or how it dealt with us.

The good, the bad and the ugly.

Let's take 90 seconds to hear from the lead author of the report.

Let's hear from him talking about the dark days of March 2020, then we will come back.

>> on March 16 the governor issued the Executive Order closing schools.

On March 21, 2020 he announced the closing of nonessential businesses with Executive Order 101.

At the time, if you remember, and I remember talking to many people, we were under the impression the closures would last a couple of weeks.

But it was too late, we were hit hard with deaths during that first wave.

We were not ready as a nation and a state.

There was an inadequate supply of personal protective equipment.

The cupboard was bare on the national level, and our supply had expired in New Jersey.

Key personnel went without personal protective equipment, and had to resort -- some nurses had to resort to wearing garbage bags to protect themselves at the hospitals.

There was not proper infection control for the long-term care facilities and veterans homes, and it was sorely lacking in terms of infection control.

New Jersey's numbers were hard.

We experienced the second highest death rate in the country during the first stage, some 13,000 deaths, horrific losses in long-term care facilities, veterans homes and correctional facilities, with a disproportionate impact on black and Hispanics during that stage and throughout the crisis.

David: this week's release of that report on how we handled the Covid crisis.

That brought back bad memories.

I will not blame you for not having read the entire 900 page report, but what jumped out at you from what you have seen of it?

Stephanie: believe it or not I did read the entire 900 page report.

For the past four years, there were really important things that came out of it, but I do not know that there was anything particularly shocking.

The lessons we have learned from this public health crisis is not entirely different from what we learned from previous health crises.

We know health inequities that lead to health disparities are bad, and any time it is a crisis, our black and brown communities are hardest hit, and until there is a will to fix those problems, this will unfortunately be another report.

David: it is almost four years to the day of the first emergency declaration.

The report says we are not ready for the next pandemic.

A, there will be a next pandemic, and, B, where we not ready?

Stephanie: there are a few areas we are not ready.

Every time we have a health crisis, we are always playing catch-up.

We have a severely underfunded public health system, and when we have that and end up with a patchwork of responses county by county and state by state, and there is a lack of federal coordination, we will always be playing catch up in these events.

We need a significant and sustained investment in public health.

David: that is one of the recommendations I want to dig into.

We heard talk about the impact on black, brown, poor and minority communities.

If the state cannot get it together for the population statewide, folks on the margins should expect what?

Let's talk about local health departments because these marginalized communities are the ones who rely on them most.

What was lacking during 2020, and are we still in the same condition when it comes to local health departments?

Stephanie: absolutely.

We are in roughly the same conditions.

We need to invest in local health departments.

What we saw at the beginning of the pandemic when testing was available, they were only available at drive up site.

That has a significant impact on people without cars or cannot drive to those sites.

We need to link access to health , easy for people in ways they can use.

We need to be in the community and listen to those communities to hear what they think they need instead of going in with preconceived ideas of what will be good for them.

We do not do a good job of listening to impacted communities.

David: sticking with the recommendations as well, training in local health departments is also terribly lacking, not to mention training in the broader community of New Jersey.

Stephanie: we need more formal training in the field of public health, whether epidemiology, education, vital statistics, our data and data systems are not up to par where we need them to be.

We need to not only invest in public health at the local public health department level but in public health training, whether that is providing funds to universities, and even Associates degrees in public health, or workforce development , we need to train people to do the jobs we need them to do before the crises hit, not ramp up after, which is what we did.

We did a fairly good job but we are playing catch up rather than investing before hand.

David: it seemed, watching and reporting on this, that we had a slow response in the state, but then the state got its footing a little bit.

Stephanie: yes, compared to a lot of other states, and the report touches on this, New Jersey did a fairly good job with a fairly aggressive approach to slow the spread.

There was a lot of pushback and it became politicized, and unfortunately we cannot look at New Jersey in a vacuum.

We have to look at the federal and global support, and there is not good federal support.

The national stockpile was depleted, when a state run slow, we should go to that, and there should be an effort at the federal level to fill-in the gaps.

We did not have this.

It was a breakdown at multiple levels, and we need to address that to be successful moving forward.

David: you touched on something there, the trust of not only our government at the highest level, because this is a federal government -- I do not know if folks can remember -- they were in denial about the virus and it spread.

That hurt the way the states responded to that.

Is there any sense that people will be more trusting of government as a result of this?

Stephanie: NO, unfortunately trust in government and public health has eroded.

We can see that with things like the measles vaccination rates going down and outbreaks of measles.

Information was coming fast, it was not necessarily explained well.

An example is how many times I was on your program and others trying to explain what the CDC guidelines were.

There was a lot of miscommunication and a lot of disinformation, and some came from the federal level, shining lights into people's bodies and disinfectant -- that was a problem, and we have not figured out how to return the trust of the population.

David: one of the recommendations of this report is there be a better early warning system.

How do you do that?

We cannot communicate enough to people to get them to mask up or get vaccinated.

33,000 people in this state died from Covid and COVID related illnesses.

That is more than 400 towns in New Jersey, the total population, an entire city gun.

-- an entire city gone.

How do we create an early warning system when there is so much different and conflicting information from even government agencies?

Stephanie: there are a few problems that have happened.

When you look at who was most likely to die, it did not impact you directly, especially communities of color and you do not feel an affiliation, it was easy for people to say that is happening somewhere else.

That is how humans tend to behave, and it is unfortunate.

We need to stop looking at everything we do in the state and in the country as individuals.

We are part of a collective.

My behavior impacts the community around me.

We need to do a better job bringing the community together to see the collective importance of good health.

The idea that if we lose an entire town of people, if not for moral reasons, than we should just let people die.

I believe in Texas the lieutenant governor said it is OK for people to die because we need the economy back.

The problem is people of working age were dying.

Even talking about the Latino community, those were people in their 40's who were dying.

One in four children in that community lost a parent.

That has an impact on the overall it economy.

If we cannot come together to do better for a moral reason, we need to do it for economic reasons.

David: just changing the culture when it comes to these kinds of crises, early on I remember people saying these are people with other conditions, so they should have stayed healthy.

We have to not victimize the victims, right?

Stephanie: right.

There is a lot of undiscussed ableism, there were even conversations about individuals who required ventilators for day-to-day living, whether or not they should go to people who developed COVID, rather than saying how do we make sure we can meet the needs of everybody and reduce the spread of COVID.

When we rolled out the vaccine, why should people who have obesity be on that list?

Why are they less deserving of life?

We need to really explore how we value the human condition.

David: lastly, kind of treading lightly on shutdowns because they have a real impact on our economy, and the biggest impact is on the poor communities who need those jobs.

Stephanie: right, and when we look at the school system shutting down, who could shut down quickly, who had parents at home to care for the kids?

Who had computers and broadband Wi-Fi available?

It had multiple impacts, and the people with the most choice were often the ones with the strongest opinions whether their kids should be in school or not.

A lot of lower income families lived in multigenerational homes, so they needed the children at home to keep the older adults safe, but they may have had less ability to keep the children home and be successful in the school system.

We do not talk about that.

David: epidemiologist in Montclair State University professor, Stephanie Silvera, good to see you.

David: news out of Trent today, the OPRA reform bill just got a hard stop sign from speaker Coughlin, who pulled it from the appropriations committee meeting today.

Part of what he said in the statement, we are working on various amendments to ensure we get the bill right.

There will not be enough time to compose the amendments, review them and have further meetings with the public prior to the assembly Appropriations Committee.

The bill will not be heard for consideration this week.

Let's bring on Peter Chen, Senior Policy Analyst, New Jersey Policy Perspective, he has been breaking down the specifics of this bill all week.

How are you doing, good to see you.

Peter: good to see you, thank you for having me.

David: Thursday morning the tide had turned, people were chanting this is what democracy looks like.

I guess it is, a lot of pushback on this bill all week.

Peter: that is definitely the case.

There has been huge pushback from across the political aisle, conservative Republicans, Libertarians and progressive groups like ourselves have come out in favor of protecting the public records law and trying to improve it rather than tear it down.

David: it was a weird congregation of people.

One Republican bucking the Republican caucus, and one Democrat bucking the Democratic caucus.

It was a weird day in Trenton.

We are not sure what these amendments will be, but what were some of the biggest objections people were talking about this week?

Peter: it is helpful to start with context, we have one of the worst public records access laws in the country.

48th in the nation in terms of access to public records.

We are talking about government records that the government reduces with the government money which is the public's money, they are creating it on our behalf, and we should be able to see those records with reasonable exemptions.

When we think about what public records reform should look like, it should be about improving access to those documents.

Something the proponents of the bill have rightly noted is that it has been a long time since we have taken a serious look at OPRA, and there have been a lot of changes at how the world works in terms of digital documents, in terms of collection of videos and other kinds of documentation that did not exist and were not looked for in 2000.

What we should be thinking about is how do we make those accessible to the public in a meaningful way?

Rather than closing them a further.

What this adulation did come other proposal we have seen, there were amendments included in the Senate on Monday, but the public was not allowed to see them which is in accepts elation -- which is an encapsulation of all the problems.

A lot of it was cutting off and exempting certain materials from being accessed, but even small changes were being made to affect something like the enforcement.

OPRA is enforced, you have to sue if you do not get access to the documents.

If you sue, you will not get money back, you will get the document, the data you asked for.

The law as it stands now provides attorneys fees, and enforce the public records law.

If you are an attorney, why do I take this case?

I will not get paid, maybe I will or maybe I will not.

I like having a steady paycheck and not having to guess for the work that I do.

David: you did an interesting analysis on X on what the bill did and did not do for transparency.

You took some lines and says this is what it says it does but this is actually what it does.

Can you share one or two of those things that you noted in your thread this week?

Peter: one example, something that sounds reasonable on its face but becomes a big problem in the application is the thing that comes at the beginning of this bill, which is that it allows for discretion for public agencies to deny access to public records if the agency believes it harasses somebody or can reasonably lead to harassment.

On the surface you may say, that is bad to be harassed, but when you think about the scope of records that could apply to any specific person that an agency could say this could be used for harassment later -- I found somebody's dui report from 2020, and that person could be harassed as a result of releasing that information.

That is true but there is a strong public information to get that information out, and allowing discretion to public agencies to decide -- and harassment is not defined -- it becomes a blanket and one more obstacle to accessing records if you want them.

You could say, it could be used for harassment.

Will you go through the process to find out?

If you do not have resources, probably not.

David: a lot of discretion given to public agencies in terms of what constitutes harassment, and what is represented by the term is too broad of a search.

Peter: that goes to the emails and metadata exemptions.

If I put in a request for some emails, I do not know who the employees of the school district are.

If I want to see all the emails they have to do with the school bullying policy, between the relevant staff and what decisions were made, I cannot do that under the new bill.

The school district can say that is too broad.

You have to give us a specific person, specific time, specific subject matter.

It creates another obstacle.

This is already a statute with a lot of obstacles to overcome.

David: we heard from Mike Cera, they are one of the driving forces behind this.

Let's listen to what he said.

>> our concerns are that the volume of commercial processes that have been made, any local government should do is due diligence, there are privacy issues.

The privacy commission report is 20 years old.

Technology has changed so much in 20 years since it passed.

We are concerned about the cost, and the fee shifting is essential component of this, making it a shall to a may.

That means a judge will have discretion to make that call.

David: what about the cost factor on the municipalities?

Not just fee shifting but the cost of simply meeting all of those requests, is that a genuine concern?

Peter: we have not seen any numbers.

You can say the costs are high.

We have not actually seen data.

David: you have to OPRA those.

Peter: exactly, and they will get denied because they are a draft.

If you are going to advance a cost that the -- advance an argument that the costs are onerous, you have to show the costs are onerous.

David: it is potentially true, they talk about commercial interests who seek lots of information, or individuals who having lost one OPRA request will request another dozen.

In theory that puts a burden on a local clerk's office, but as you say, we have not seen any evidence to back that up.

Peter: if that is the data, prove it.

If this is so onerous, we should be able to see it relatively easily.

Because these changes are drastic, you require a lot of evidence.

You have to have extraordinary evidence to back up and asked ordinary claim.

These are government records produced on behalf of the public, they should be public.

A lot of these concerns should have an actual online data portal.

The state has a useful set of data portals for a lot of materials available for the public to view.

The bill does lipservice in that direction to try to suggest that these data portals should be used at local and smaller government levels.

We have to see with the costs are.

David: municipalities are way behind on the tech aspect, it is not so easy to go, say in Jersey City, to find your local crime stats.

Peter: and they are spread out across different departments, different websites, whichever contractor was used five years ago to produce one data portal -- these are all issues.

What we should be thinking about is the value that we should be pursuing and make sure the public can access the documents that these documents are supposed to serve.

These are people who have been entrusted with the public trust, and they should be showing what it is they are working on, because if the public is supposed to be served, they should see with the government is producing on their behalf.

A lot of this could be digitized, think about title searches were ordinance changes, these are things -- budgets, crime statistics -- these can be regularized and standardized, and instead it is total chaos even knowing what to request.

David: we will keep an eye on this bill and see what other amendments come up.

Peter Chen is with NJ policy perspective.

Thank you for breaking this down.

That is "Chat Box" for this week.

Thank you also to Stephanie Silvera for joining us.

Find more "Chat Box" including web episodes when you scan the QR code on your screen.

Thank you for watching.

We will see you next week.

Major funding for "Chat Box with David Cruz" is provided by the New Jersey education Association, and promotional support is provided by Insider NJ, dedicated to New Jersey political news and committed to giving serious medical players an interactive form for ideas, discussion and insight.

Online at insidernj.com.

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