Think You've Waited a While for your FOI Request?

As the Reporters Committee explains, TRAC waited THIRTY YEARS....

A federal judge ruled Friday that the Internal Revenue Service has flouted three court orders dating back to 1976, requiring it to regularly provide requested information to a Syracuse

University professor. Judge Marsha Pechman, of the Western District of Washington in Seattle, ordered the IRS to produce unredacted copies of the requested audit reports within 30 days.

In addition, the IRS must comply with future requests and send the documents electronically to Syracuse School of Management Professor Susan B. Long within 30 days of her inquiries.

Long co-directs Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data-research organization through the school that compiles government statistics for the public. She filed a motion in February for compliance with the three previous orders.

The FOIA saga that spanned four decades began in 1974 when Long, then a graduate student at The University of Washington, filed her original request for statistics from the IRS. She received a court order to enforce the request two years later.