New Jersey Geospatial Forum 
General Meeting						
								
Minutes

Date:	March 23, 2007

Time:	10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

Location:	NJ Office of Information Technology
	Information Technology Conference (ITC) Room, 1st Floor
	Riverview Plaza, Building 300
	Route 29, Trenton, NJ 08625

Welcome & Opening Comments
Richard Rehmann opened the meeting by reading:
This meeting of the New Jersey Geospatial Forum is held in compliance with N.J.S.A.10:4-6, known as the Open Public Meeting Act.  Adequate notice of this meeting has been filed with the Secretary of State and distributed to the Trenton Times, Star Ledger, Atlantic City Press, and posted on the New Jersey Geographic Information Network (NJGIN) site.

Executive Committee Officer Election Results

Richard Rehmann announced the results of the election:

Richard Rehmann (Private Sector Constituency Group Representative – Civil Solutions) was re-elected Chair.
David Kunz (County Constituency Group Representative – Sussex County GIS) was elected Vice-Chair.
Janel Bisacquino (Non-government Organization Constituency Group Representative – Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association, GIS Center at Stony Brook) was elected Secretary.

Guest Speaker
Andy Rowan (NJ State Geographic Information Officer) introduced Catherine Starghill, Esq., Executive Director of the State of New Jersey Government Records Council.
HIGHLIGHT OF OPENING STATEMENTS

Ms. Starghill is a former tax attorney.

GIS datasets are not treated any different under OPRA than any other type of record type including databases.

Why? The GIS community has not lobbied for special treatment or exception.

Mr. Starghill distributed handouts supporting her digital slide presentation:

Open Public Records Act
http://www.state.nj.us/grc/pdf/act.pdf

SPECIAL SERVICE CHARGE 14-POINT ANALYSIS http://www.nj.gov/grc/pdf/OPRASpecialServiceCharge.pdf

OPRA EXEMPTIONS
http://www.nj.gov/grc/pdf/OPRAExemptions.pdf

RECORD DENIAL INDEX – see NJGF Minutes webpage

The Open Public Records Act: Understanding OPRA, Overview of the GRC Process and Review of GRD Decisions (Slide Presentation) – see NJGF Minutes webpage 	

HIGHLIGHT OF LECTURE INCLUDING ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

Civil penalty for obstruction - $1000 for 1st offense, $2500 for 2nd offense, etc.

GRC is a government regulatory body (administratively housed within the Department of Community Affairs). 

Public agencies should be leaning toward openness.

GRC upholds a custodian’s redaction of home addresses, telephone and, in some cases, names.

The obligation is on the denier to prove redaction under OPRA exception.

A public agency must grant, deny or request an extension with a documented reason, like storage or archives off site, within 7 days.

If a public agency routinely waits for the 7th day to respond, it is in violation of the spirit of OPRA.

Actual cost should be charged not the limit of the stated fees in the Open Public Records Act.

If a GIS map can be reproduced as letter or legal size than the charge must correspond to the limits of the stated fees in Open Public Records Act.

Transfer of GIS datasets can include labor cost to prepare the file format and media but cannot include cost to recoup any cost in the original creation of the GIS datasets.

If an outside consultant is used by the public entity to support the GIS data creation and maintenance, the public agency cannot pass on the cost of labor that might be charged by the consultant to fulfill the request. 

GRC has routinely disallowed outside attorney fees for review of the request as well.

There might be an exception if there is documentation that no staff member is available in the public entity to fulfill the request because the public entity contracted an outside contractor to create and maintain data.

Reasonable cost of GIS dataset format or medium conversion can be included based on:
	- extensive use of technology and labor for programming or
	- supervisory assistance required or
	- the request being so voluminous that will cause excessive labor

The GIS community can lobby for a ruling that GIS mapping requests are more a kin to a work order than a request for file format or medium conversion. 

A charge can be assessed per square inch of printed paper roll plus ink usage but cannot include a subjective “special service” charge.

GIS dataset requests are for data as it is.

Dawn McCall (Princeton University Facilities)  noted:
GIS is akin to making a cake, datasets are just an ingredients--uncombined, just like unbaked, they don't mean the same thing as the final product, a map. Requesters want the baked cake with icing--the cartographic and analytic work behind the product.

There is no specification for certifying the requested GIS datasets or products. The data is what it is.

Requesters from commercial entities cannot be charged any more or less than a requester from any other type of entity. Same rule applies to non-profit entities.

Question from the audience: Can public enties give threatened and endangered species datasets to organizations with missions helping protect and preserve them.
Answer from Ms Starghill: If a GIS dataset is exempt due to federal homeland security, a municipal agency (or any other agency in any level of government) cannot give out the dataset, even if they wanted to. 

If a dataset is available free on the Internet, the website must make it clear to requesters that there will be a fee if they want transferal any other way or in any other format. But what if it is not your website? 

Question from the audience: Does OPRA govern one government agency requesting GIS datasets or maps from another government agency at same or different level?
Answer from Ms. Starghill: GRC should not get involved in those politics.

There is no requirement to save requests or processing documents.

Splitting the price for two identical requests that are received within a reasonable time of each other or that will not cause any more cost to fulfill the second request is adhering to the spirit of OPRA.

In the spirit of OPRA, Ms. Starghill strongly encourages public agencies to make OPRA forms easy and available to the public. However, there is no requirement to publicize the form, the GIS datasets or map documents.

The custodian CANNOT put any restrictions on the GIS datasets requested. Rich Rehmann noted that this is a limitation of liability issue for the GIS community.

An audience member explained that two identical requests for a GIS dataset with time lapsed between the requests may require new work and incur more cost because the dataset must be checked for updates and timeliness.

If licensed software and datasets are used by a public agency, no proprietary software can be transferred with datasets requested but datasets must be transferred, even if the data is unreadable/usable without the licensed software.

If a usable dataset format is requested and conversion can be made, then the cost involved should be conveyed to the requester to allow a decision to be made to go forward with request.

Intentionally using licenses for GIS datasets and software to circumvent OPRA would be deemed against the spirit of OPRA. Note from an audience member for Pictometry to be aware of client's intentions.

Jim Girvan (Somerset County GIS) asked about the Virtual Entities Bill:
Virtual Entities Bill died because the introducer of the bill did not understand it enough to explain it to the committee.

An audience member explained that extremely accurate threatened and endangered species information could be used by poachers.

An audience member asked about the cause of the Brick Township case (Robert Tombs Complainant v. Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority Custodian of Record. Complaint No. 2003-123):
Brick Twp. at the time did not have the ability to redact the exempt information electronically. They could have done it in paper form but that was not the form requested.

It was past noon and Ms Starghill had to leave.

Rich Rehmann asked if an Open Public Reports Act (OPRA) NJGF Task Force would be supported by the NJGF membership, VOTE showed all present in agreement

Reports
Executive Committee - deferred to extend question and answer time with guest speaker
Constituency Groups - deferred to extend question and answer time with guest speaker
Task Forces - deferred to extend question and answer time with guest speaker

Open Discussion

Deferred to extend question and answer time with guest speaker

Announcements

Seth Hackman (NJ Dept. of Environmental Protection, Bureau of GIS) announced:

20th Annual NJ DEP Mapping Contest will be Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at the Trenton War Memorial from 10 a.m. to Noon. 
Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Urban and Regional Information System Association (MAC URISA) will have a cartography presentation and clinic (question and answer session) at the their spring meeting commencing directly after the NJ DEP Mapping Contest at the same location. Registration includes lunch.

John Bocchino (NJ Dept. of Environmental Protection, Bureau of GIS) announced:
Status of new  NJ DEP GIS datasets: 
	- 2002 Land Use-Land Cover finished for Watershed Management Areas (WMAs)
	- Drafts of 2002 streams datasets are available by WMAs
	- Highlands Water Protection and Planning Council completed: 
		- Land Use Capacity Map
		- Forest and Agriculture Resource Areas
		- Preservation Area
		- and more available at http://www.nj.gov/njhighlands/
Grant to design geodatabase consistent with USGS National Hydrographic dataset (NHD)
EPA requesting water quality data report at HUC 12 level. NJDEP determining HUC14 can be used for accurate HUC12 conversion.
John handed out an announcement flyer with details.

Andy Rowan (NJ State Geographic Information Officer) announced: 

The NJ digital aerial orthophotography coverage flight started yesterday (March 22, 2007).
The delay was due to constant cloud cover for the past few months.
Coastal areas will be focused on first.

NJ State GIS services contract is nearing completion of formal state processing.
NJ Statewide waiver for GIS software sold exclusively by ESRI is also nearing completion of formal state processing. (The waiver is to document for all that they are sole-source products.)
NJ State limited competition waiver has been awarded to Civil Solutions.

Edith Konopka (NJ Office of Information Technology, Office of GIS) announced:

Office of GIS server will be migrated soon
Authoring Geospatial Metadata with ArcCatalog Training will be held Thursday May 31, 2007 from   8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. 
The Metadata Doctor is IN workshop will be held Friday June 1, 2007 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.