After HNTB Corp. earned the highest score on a bid to perform engineering services on a complex and lucrative contract for the long-awaited Route 17 widening project in several Bergen County towns, the state Department of Transportation announced the firm won the award in March.
However, within an hour, the awardee was switched to Michael Baker International, the second highest scorer, according to the DOT’s procurement website.
Details explaining the change in award have been minimal and attempts by NorthJersey.com to understand what — if anything — agency officials discussed behind the scenes have been thwarted by the DOT, despite multiple requests using the state Open Public Records Act process…
Records were not provided citing changes to OPRA
Numerous other documents were also denied and withheld by the DOT.
NorthJersey.com filed public information requests for:
- a list of email logs related to the Route 17 project over a two-and-a-half month period around the time the contract was awarded
- a list of those who signed in and swiped in and out of the state’s DOT headquarters in Trenton on March 26, 2025, the day the award was announced and then changed.
Both were denied.
In its explanation for the latter denial, the DOT said “key card swipe attendance reports for NJDOT employees are personnel records” and therefore exempt from public disclosure. In denying the request for email logs, the DOT’s OPRA custodian cited the changes in the 2024 state law that narrowed the law’s language despite outcry from members of the press, residents and good government advocates.
Asked why the agency denied the request for email logs, Schapiro said, “Email logs are exempt under OPRA.”
Julia Sass Rubin, an associate dean of academic programs for the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, said the degradation of transparency goes beyond the OPRA changes from 2024.
Murphy and the legislature also reduced the powers of the Election Law Enforcement Commission in 2023, which, among other things, weakened pay-to-play laws. And now, during lame duck, there is a bill to consolidate the comptroller’s office and the State Commission of Investigation, which would reduce the number of watchdogs on state government.
“We are a political machine state. Our citizens pay a corruption tax because when there is a lack of transparency and accountability it encourages, it opens the path to potential corruption and that is expensive for people,” Sass Rubin said.
“Our political machine to control government is bad for small ‘d’ democracy and making it less transparent isn’t inexcusable,” she said.
No comments were provided from Gov. Phil Murphy, Senate President Nicholas Scutari, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin and Senate Budget Chair Paul Sarlo — who led, signed or sponsored the changes in laws to tighten public access to government records and whether they intended the OPRA law changes to exempt email logs.