My first request and the school's response has been published here:
- "OPRA / FOIA Request Denied by North Hunterdon Voorhees Board of Education," by Dan Kleinman, SafeLibraries, 1 November 2024.
Here is the second OPRA/FOIA request and the new evidence:
Second OPRA Request:
OPRA Request: Martha Hickson #002
17 November 2024
Dear Custodian of Records:
Under the New Jersey Open Public Records Act, N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1 et seq., I am requesting an opportunity to obtain electronic copies of public records that comprise communications about public business made by school librarian Martha Hickson on her private social media account on X called @sassy_librarian that she keeps "protected."
Using her position at the school as librarian and while conducting public business of managing the school library and acting locally, statewide, and nationally in support of conducting her business for the school library, she interacted with many people, organizations, and legislators on her @sassy_librarian account. For example, to advance the business of the school library, she worked with American Library Association and its subgroups including EveryLibrary and New Jersey Association of School Librarians and New Jersey Library Association, and with New Jersey legislators and media. So she worked in support of legislative bill S2421/A3446, the New Jersey Freedom to Read Act, about which she is the principal non-legislative proponent in New Jersey having worked directly with ALA and its subgroups. See this video of her testimony on A3446 to NJ Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia: https://x.com/DawnFantasia_NJ/status/1799189362363515033. All to advance the business of the school library.
So all communication in @sassy_librarian is being requested, from 1 January 2019 to present, including posts, replies, and direct messages. The account is used principally for the school's business. To date it comprises only 6,099 posts, so this OPRA request should be easy to fulfill.
"Protected" accounts and "direct messages" are designed to help users manage who has access. They are not a means to evade open government laws such as OPRA. Numerous courts have found in favor of open government access to private accounts when said accounts conduct public business. I'll assume you know this so I'll leave out going into further detail on this point. Public business is what Martha Hickson does with @sassy_librarian.
To ensure the correct account is being accessed, here is a fuller description from her main page, "SPIRIT OF JEZEBEL🐱Martha Hickson @sassy_librarian 2023 NJLA Librn of the Year; Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librns; NCAC Outstanding Librn; AASL, NJLA & NJASL Intel Freedom Awards. Ban book banners!" or "CHILDLESS 🐱 LADY Martha Hickson @sassy_librarian 2023 NJLA Librn of the Year; Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librns; NCAC Outstanding Librn; AASL, NJLA & NJASL Intel Freedom Awards. Ban book banners!" And by "book banners" she means the school parents who challenge anything in the school's library that she manages.
If you tell her about this request, she may delete various posts or delete the account entirely. If that happens, she may have violated New Jersey records retention laws for public entities, and ditto with the school. You must figure a means to obtain the requested information before she destroys it. It is a regular practice for librarians to destroy evidence once they feel information needs to be hidden from the public. I'm warning you about this now, so you best consider putting a legal hold or the like on those public records so they don't disappear, or obtain the evidence immediately before it is destroyed,
You may say to yourself this is a private account so you don't need to turn over any records under OPRA/FOIA and you can say it's a private account over which you have no control. But that impulse would be one that violates the law including case law. It may get you in trouble, not just Martha Hickson, for violation of OPRA, records retention laws, other laws and ethical codes. So I suggest not making such a claim. You already have in my first request, and below I prove why you were wrong to do so.
You also may say to yourself either she conducts no public business using @sassy_librarian or there is no evidence that she conducts public business thereunder, so you'll respond accordingly, and that's exactly what you did in your response to my first OPRA. In either case, you would be wrong and again embroil yourself in possible legal and ethical violations. As you may know, the school board is currently being reviewed for ethical violations relating to school business Martha Hickson conducted, including by using her @sassy_librarian account. See, "Ethics Complaint: North Hunterdon-Voorhees Regional High School District Board of Education," by Dan Kleinman, SafeLibraries, 23 October 2024, https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2024/10/ethics-complaint.html.
For your own edification, Martha Hickson definitely uses @sassy_librarian to conduct the public's business, specifically school business. Below I prove it's irrefutable.
Since Martha Hickson uses @sassy_librarian solely to promote her public work for NVH school, I seek all her posts and replies and direct messages from present back to the entirety of 2019, when she first began defending books that violated Pico and N.J.S.A. 2C:34-3.
This shouldn't be too hard nor too time consuming. Simply collect all posts, replies, and DMs from 1/1/2019 to present from @sassy_librarian. I tell you how to do this below. I will take it from there and publicize them, the very purpose of open government laws including OPRA.
If there are any fees for searching or copying these records, please inform me if the cost will exceed $100. However, I would also like to request a waiver of all fees in that the disclosure of the requested information is in the public interest and will contribute significantly to the public’s understanding of why school librarians are filling school libraries with reading material that is pervasively vulgar and educationally unsuitable. It is literally an issue that is being used by both presidential candidates, that's how big this is, and precisely because American Library Association turned it into a "wedge issue" for political gain so more politicians would promote ALA goals regarding school children. See: "Library Boards Trained to Lie by ALA; Banned Books Wedge Issue Adopted by White House," by Dan Kleinman, SafeLibraries, 21 June 2023, https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2023/06/library-boards-trained-to-lie-by-ala.html.
The disclosure of her transaction of public business on her private @sassy_librarian account may also be relevant to potential criminal charges being brought against her for violation of obscenity law. See: "Time to Charge NJ School Librarians Martha Hickson and Roxana Caivano With Obscenity Under 2C:34-3," by Dan Kleinman, SafeLibraries, 15 April 2024, https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2024/04/time-to-charge-nj-school-librarians.html.
I will take this information and make it public at my popular SafeLibraries blog with almost a million and a half views. My request is related to news gathering purposes. This information is not being sought for commercial purposes.
The New Jersey Open Public Records Act requires a response time of seven business days. If access to the records I am requesting will take longer than this amount of time, please contact me with information about when I might expect electronic copies of the requested records.
If you deny any or all of this request, please cite each specific exemption you feel justifies the refusal to release the information and notify me of the appeal procedures available to me under the law.
Thank you for considering my request.
Under penalty of N.J.S.A. 2C:28-3, I certify that I have not been convicted of any indictable offense under the laws of New Jersey, any other state, or the United States.
I sent the above request in the past and you denied it on spurious grounds. I now reassert it, somewhat modified to remove circumstantial evidence of how @sassy_librarian is used for business because below I present direct evidence from an unimpeachable primary source on that particular topic.
To deny it the first time, you argued:
1) "[T]he Board also objects to the request as overly broad and unduly burdensome." Neither is the case. To obtain the records one can go to a single web page to see all of the posts (except the DMs) then save the resultant page to a file. That's neither overly broad nor unduly burdensome. Indeed this is the simplest of any possible OPRA request. Simple go to a single web page, save the results, then send them to me. Were you not obstructing access to public records under the open public records laws, you could complete this request in minutes. You'll never get an easier OPRA to fulfill. Simply go to a web page I'll give you, click the gear icon in the upper right, check the first checkbox for "infinite scrolling," then scroll to the bottom of the page and, as the screen continually refreshes due to infinite scrolling, simply keep scrolling down repeatedly until that's no longer possible. Then save the resultant page that's created. Then send it to me. Simple. Not overly broad. Not unduly burdensome. You people really think public laws about open public records don't apply to you to ever think a single web page is overly broad and unduly burdensome. So get Martha Hickson to unprotect the account, then do what I said above on this web page: https://xcancel.com/sassy_librarian/with_replies
2) "The request fails to identify the specific records being sought with reasonable clarity, and instead appears to be a general inquiry for information, requesting all content within the social media account without any specificity. There is no discernable government record requested, and if a request does not name specifically identifiable records or is overly broad, a custodian may deny access." The request specifies all of them. Why all? Setting aside that a single web page of results is neither overly broad nor unduly burdensome, all records are requested because they have been intentionally hidden from public view by Martha Hickson, so it is not possible to be specific about records that have been intentionally hidden from public view. To deny access on that basis would reward the hiding of public records from public view. Further, the entirety of the account is used for school business related to the library, as proven below.
3) "Similarly, the Board also objects to the use of the word 'all' in your request since it is well established that under OPRA a request for 'all' or 'any and all' documents and records is unclear, overly broad and burdensome. See New Jersey Builder's Assʼn v. N.J. Council on Affordable Housing, 390 N.J. Super. 166 (App. Div. 2007). Similarly, in Shipyard Associates, L.P. v. City of Hoboken, the Court determines that the term 'not limited to' constituted an improper request, noting that such a 'broad application lacks specificity and would require the clerk to conduct research to uncover "any and all" documents "concerning" [the request].' Shipyard Associates, L.P. v. City of Hoboken, No. A-3794-13T1, 2015 WL 10352982, at *4 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. Sept. 1, 2015)." Both of those cases do not apply here, and you and your lawyer know it. He's just throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks. He's just trying to intimidate the public so they will give up on obtaining documents to which they are legally entitled. Nice try, No go. I'm not asking for "extensive" documents that would be "unreasonable" to find. There is zero "magnitude and complexity" to my request. I'm asking for a single document that could be obtained in just a few minutes, as described above. You just don't want to provide it, hence all the spaghetti. And as far as "require the clerk to conduct research to uncover 'any and all' documents 'concerning' [the request]," that's just more spaghetti. Absolutely zero research need be done. None. There's nothing to research. Nothing. I told you where is the document, at @sassy_librarian on X, and I told you how to show it on a single web page then save it to a file to send to me. So you just showed me two legal cases that don't apply. That's intentional. It evidences an unwillingness to comply with open government laws.
4) "An OPRA request is a vehicle for accessing identifiable government records rather than for the purposes of submitting general requests for information. OPRA requires that a request for public records identify, with reasonable clarity, the specific records that are being sought, and if a request does not name specifically identifiable records, a custodian may deny access. Moreover, a records custodian is not required under OPRA to conduct research to discover which records, if any, are relevant or responsive to an overly broad request, nor to create any records that do not otherwise already exist." Aw come on now. You did not just make that argument as a reason to deny my request. But yes you did. I cannot see that as anything else other than obstruction of OPRA. I didn't make a "general request for information." You don't need to "conduct research to discover which records, if any, are relevant or responsive to an overly broad request." I did not ask you to "create any records that do not otherwise already exist." I asked for a single document, the document already exists if you simply follow the instructions above, you're not going to create any new posts on @sassy_librarian. You need conduct zero research. Just get the document, save it to an electronic file for sending to me, and send it. Your claim here that I essentially went on a fishing expedition is laughable. Worse, it shows the public that you have no intention of complying with the law and that you are hiding something. The Barbara Streisand effect is coming your way.
5) "The request fails to identify the specific records being sought and, even if the Board had access to the account (which it does not), it would require the custodian to conduct research (of at least the alleged 6,044 posts you identified, as well as all replies and direct messages) and/or create a record, which is beyond the scope of a custodian's duties. See Mag Entertainment LLC v. Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, 375 N.J. Super. 534 (App. Div. 2005) ('[w]hile OPRA provides an alternative means of access to government documents not otherwise exempted from its reach, it is not intended as a research tool to force government officials to identify and siphon useful information. Rather, OPRA simply operates to make identifiable government records "readily accessible for inspection, copying, or examination. N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1'). See also New Jersey Builders Association v. New Jersey Council on Affordable Housing, 390 N.J. Super. 166, 180 (App. Div. 2007) ('Research is not among the custodian's responsibilities')." I've already told you there is zero research involved. There's no need to "identify and siphon useful information." You're not creating any records, you are simply printing them out in the manner described above that anyone can do but for the block Martha Hickson has placed on the public records to block parents she calls "trolls" from see what she is doing. Just print out all the posts and replies of @sassy_librarian as I described above. As to the DMs, they can be provided as well, I just don't know how, but once you have access, you'll know how.
6) "Further, the Board also objects to the extent that the request for social media communications did not comply with the requirements applicable to requests for communications. To that end, the Government Records Council has previously established that for an OPRA request seeking emails to be valid, the request must contain: '(1) the content and/or subject of the e-mail, (2) the specific date or range of dates during which the e-mail was transmitted or the emails were transmitted, and (3) a valid e-mail request must identify the sender and/or the recipient thereof.' See Joseph A. Elcavage v. West Milford Twp., GRC Complaint No. 2009-07 (April 8, 2010). See also Armenti v. Robbinsville Board of Education., GRC Complaint No. 2009-154 (February 28, 2012), where the GRC has applied the logic of Elcavage to overly broad requests encompassing communications in addition to emails.'" The spaghetti keeps flying. I don't want emails. I don't need to supply content or subject of emails. The sender is Martha Hickson. It's single account. It's on X. There's an easy way to get it all loaded on a single web page. You simply print out that page as I described above. This is not hard at all. You look foolish to kept coming up with wild excuses for not providing the documents as required by law.
7) "As the request acknowledges the account is a private, individual/personal account, that is kept protected, the Board further objects to the extent the request seeks personal information which would infringe upon a citizen's reasonable expectation of privacy, which the Legislature has declared shall be safeguarded from public access. N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1." You don't get it, do you. She was conducting school library business using that account. Your making another excuse not to provide public records in the fashion you have would ensure that public business was permanently conducted via private accounts so the claim could be made just as you made it. The public would lose access to the very information critical to the public given you allow and people like Martha Hickson go out of their way to use their private accounts to evade public open government laws. Yes, "the account is a private, individual/personal account, that is kept protected," but that does not excuse it from open government laws if it is conducting public business. As to "infring[ing] upon a citizen's reasonable expectation of privacy," there's no reasonable expectation of privacy when public business is being conducted on the private account precisely to keep the public from obtaining the records under open government laws. You people really have no limit on how deep you will dive into the muck to avoid providing public records obtainable under the open public records act. Zero limit. I'm doing you a favor by submitting this request a second time instead of going to the GRC after your first refusal or going to court. You are going to comply this time.
8) "The Board further objects to the extent that the request seeks information and/or documents that are subject to any and all other applicable privileges and/or exemptions from production under OPRA." You're kidding, right? An employee gets to conduct public business on a private account and there's no way the public will ever see those records? You're kidding, yes? You think OPRA protects that? Do you think you're clever, you found a way to circumvent the law?
9) "Subject to and without waiving the above objections, as explained above, the Board is not in possession of any documents responsive to this request; the identified account is a private, personal and protected account, not maintained or utilized by the Board to conduct its official business." I'm happy you said that. You just made an admission against interest. First off, the OPRA request is for public records, not specifically records of the Board. I don't even expect the Board to have such records. More importantly, you admitted you don't have possession of the documents. They are public documents and you don't have possession of them. You just admitted you have likely violated records retention laws. The are public records and you are required to manage them under the law, let alone make them available to the public. You admitted you don't have the records. I strongly suggest you get the records, especially as this matter will continue to escalate if you continue to obstruct the open government laws, let alone the records retention laws. You know I've brought an ethics complaint against certain members of the board for breaking ethics laws. When does breaking three laws, strike three, you're out, apply? Depending on how you respond to this second OPRA request, your response may affect whether there's a need to file an additional ethics complaint and against different members of the board. Looking now I see 18A:12-24.1 Code of Ethics for School Board Members; A school board member shall abide by the following Code of Ethics for School Board Members: a. I will uphold and enforce all laws, rules and regulations of the State Board of Education, and court orders pertaining to schools. I have to wonder if that's the case where OPRA and records retention laws are tossed aside. You'll need to get those records not only for release to me under OPRA, but to comply with records retention laws. Continued gamesmanship by you risks escalating consequences. "d. I will carry out my responsibility, not to administer the schools, but, together with my fellow board members, to see that they are well run." Is defying various laws seeing that things are run well? Interesting question under the circumstances.
10) Now to the key to it all. Let's set aside for now that you openly lied by claiming the records I seek are private records and not public records. The records are public records. Martha Hickson conducted the business of the school library on that account. Previously I gave you circumstantial evidence of that, but you didn't care. Now I'm going to provide you direct evidence you better care about and you're going to care about. The evidence will prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the former school librarian Martha Hickson was using her @sassy_librarian account solely to conduct public school library business. Beyond the shadow of a doubt. It will become immediately obvious Martha Hickson was conducting public business on @sassy_librarian, that they are public records, that you must provide them to me under OPRA, and that you better make your own copies to come into compliance with records retention laws and ethics laws requiring compliance with the law.
From where does this direct evidence come? You could have seen this yourselves but you chose instead to lie and say her personal account has no public business. You see, after you denied my first request for the records I did a little search. Didn't take me long to find the evidence and it wouldn't have taken you long either. You just didn't care. You were protecting something or someone. I personally feel you are protecting school children getting obscene books in the school library, but I digress.
The evidence comes from none other than Martha Hickson herself. Better yet, it's in a video on the Internet anyone can see. It's a video of Martha Hickson being interviewed by another librarian for the purpose of making a training video for school librarians about the business of being a school librarian. Where did Martha make this video? Right from the school itself. She's sitting in the school, possibly and likely the library itself, conducting school library business. She says so in the video. What does she discuss? She discusses the @sassy_librarian account on Twitter (now X) and how she uses it for school library business. The video itself shows the @sassy_librarian name very prominently. Martha describes how she uses the account to conduct business with other school librarians and library associations using her "PLN" meaning "personal learning network." She then spells out the name of how she does it. Literally "s a s s y underscore librarian," she says. She then urges people to contact her there on her Twitter account. That's her primary contact. Her secondary one she gives is her school email address. So it's a school librarian training video she is making, from the school itself, and she's touting her sassy_librarian account as the means to conduct school library business with her. It's right there on video. She's conducting public business using sassy_librarian. No way OPRA doesn't reach those records given such an open admission. Watch this spectacle for yourselves: https://youtu.be/tCjOag3KIyQ?feature=shared&t=1464 and she admits she's talking from the school itself towards the beginning of when she starts to speak. It's called, "Surviving Censorship; Leading From the Library Season 4," by Future Ready Schools, 28 March 2022. There's "@sassy_librarian" right there bottom center of the training video. She even admitted she only switched the account to private because of "the trolls," which likely means the parents. Then she'll only "let you in" if you "look legit" because she's keeping the account available only for public business--that's the "look legit" part. So the account used to be unprotected. You do realize if it remained unprotected there would be not need for me to file this OPRA/FOIA request, yes? You would still be in violation of records retention laws and more ethical codes, but I wouldn't have noticed if you didn't already obstruct my first OPRA request.
Okay, let me spell it out for you. During her introduction on the video, Martha Hickson says, "Thank you, Shannon. I'm glad somebody's excited to talk to me, I was working with some high school students all day today, not quite the same level of excitement as your preschool. Um, ha. But I am talking to you from North Hunterdon High School in Annandale, New Jersey, where I am a high school librarian. I've been in this school for, this is my seventeenth school year. And I imagine we want to talk today about this school year in particular which has been, um, eventful, let's call it."
So she starts out the training video being introduced by Shannon McClintock Miller by making it clear she's all business. She's excited to be interviewed, showing she knows she's being interviewed and is willingly contributing. She brags about working with high school students all day, so she's bragging about her job as a public school librarian. Then she reveals that she is broadcasting from inside the school itself. She's likely in the school library. She is on the job at the job site working, she admits this herself, and the public is paying for her to be on the job at the job site working. She then describes her job is being the high school librarian. She's on her job conducting the business of her job as a high school librarian. She says she's had the job for seventeen years, so she knows what the job requires and no one can argue she made any mistake in working accidentally from her work location and contributing accidentally to someone's training video for use outside the school district. She then goes on so say that what they will talk about today is "this school year" and how "eventful" it was. So she's admitting that she is speaking about school business and what has been happening that's so eventful. She is not talking about anything personal. She's not talking about her holdings in Bitcoin or MicroStrategy and NVIDIA stock. She's not talking about family visiting and what soup she will be cooking for them and how she will season it. She's not talking about her using Mounjaro for her personal weight loss journey and how it has made her so much happier to lose so much weight and how her health has improved. Nothing personal is being discussed. This is 100% school business being discussed right from inside the school itself, all paid for by taxpayers. This is school business. This is public information available under OPRA.
At 24:24 she says, "Fortunately I don't participate in a lot of social media, other than Twitter as a PLN. So um, you know, what I don't know doesn't hurt me. But I know that they're out there and they're having a hay day, um, with Ol' Martha. Um, in terms of a how you can get in touch with me I am on Twitter, um, it's sassy s a s s y underscore librarian. Um, if you haven't figured out why sassy yet, uh, there is a story that goes with it, but most people once they listen to me for five minutes they get the whole sassy part. Um, but there's a story there I'll tell you some time if you want to hear. Uh, so it's sassy underscore librarian. It is a private Twitter account, I switched it to private once all this started because of the trolls, um, but those who seek to follow me I'll kind of check ya' out and if things look legit I'll let chya in. Um, so that's a good way to get in touch with me. Or you can email me at my school email address, uh, I'm at North Hunterdon High School, uh, in New Jersey and you can look me up there."
Right there she admits that she uses her private, "protected" social media account, specifically @sassy_librarian now at X, she actually spells it out letter by letter, as her primary means for communication about conducting school business. Email is her secondary means, and for that she sends you to the school web site for information, she doesn't provide it here as she does with her @sassy_librarian account. She even explains that she switched the account to private to keep out the "trolls," meaning mainly the parents of the school. So she's talking from the school about school business for some YouTube video not part of the school, and she's telling people the means of contacting her is via her @sassy_librarian account on X/Twitter, the very account I said was public business. And now I've proved that beyond the shadow of a doubt, and you'll need to comply with my OPRA request and get the records anyway for yourselves because you're likely in violation of records retention laws and ethics laws if you do not have those records and you allowed a former employee to be the sole custodian of those records about which you admitted you now have no access.
So there you go. Incontrovertible direct evidence that the @sassy_librarian account on Twitter, now X, has been used to conduct public business. Beyond the shadow of a doubt. She admits it. While sitting in the school, likely the school library itself. Doing school business. So just obtain access you'll need anyway for your own records retention and ethics code needs, make me a copy of that web page as I described above, and send it to me. GRC and/or the courts aren't going to like if you continue to obstruct after they view the evidence I just presented. And your taxpayers aren't going to approve if you continue to drag this out, something that could take just five minutes to complete and zero minutes to research.
Now, are you going to spend a ton of the public's money on a lawyer again to keep me a second time from getting a single document available in just five minutes, or are you going to provide the document as required by law?
Sincerely,
Dan Kleinman
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