New FOIA is overdue
Thursday, December 20, 2007 8:37 AM PST
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E-mail this articleA long-awaited update of the federal Freedom of Information Act is nearing completion. On Tuesday, Congress gave final approval to legislation that promises to make this 40-year-old law an even more effective tool for citizens seeking access to government records. President Bush is expected to either sign the legislation or allow it to become law in 10 days without his signature.
The improvements this makeover will bring to FOIA are welcome and, to our way of thinking, years overdue. The law's effectiveness has diminished in recent years. Government compliance with FOIA requests has worsened significantly in the more secretive, post-9/11 climate.
Indeed, it was just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that the Justice Department reversed a long-standing policy that instructed federal agencies to err on the side of public access in resolving FOIA requests. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered agencies err on the side of secrecy -- to withhold information when there was any uncertainty as to how the release of that information might affect national security or whether exemptions to the law might apply.
That policy reversal was compounded by an informal change in the way government dealt with citizen efforts to gain access to public documents. Soon after 9/11 the government began requiring citizens to file formal FOIA requests for documents that previously had been made available without invoking the public-access law. Additionally, government agencies began ignoring the law's 20-day deadline for responding to FOIA requests -- without consequences. A National Security Archive study found that median response times are as long as 905 working days at the Department of Agriculture and 1,113 working days at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Under the FOIA makeover approved this week, federal agencies will face consequences for any such footdragging. The legislation establishes penalties for noncompliance with the law's 20-day deadline. Agencies also will be held accountable for any redaction in documents provided under the law; they'll have to cite the specific FOIA exemption for the redacted information. Most important, the bill explicitly reverses Ashcroft's order to err on the side of secrecy. Once again, the policy will be err on the side of openness.
FOIA is an important news-gathering tool for The Daily News and other media. But it's also available to every citizen. Indeed, a survey of more than 6,400 FOIA requests in September 2005 by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government found that media requests accounted for just 6 percent of the total. Clearly, all citizens have a considerable stake in making this law work as intended.
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