Faster FOIA Act Proposed with Bipartisan Cooperation

Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced the Faster FOIA Act last week to create a bipartisan commission to investigate why federal agencies have delayed responses to information requests and to suggest ways to speed up responses.

Agencies are supposed to answer requests within 20 business days, but often they take much longer. The Department of Homeland Security had a backlog of 18,918 FOIA requests at the end of 2009, and the Justice Department had nearly 5,000.

Senators Leahy and Cornyn previously teamed up to enact the Open FOIA Act, designed to end the use of overly broad interpretations of the act's exemptions to deny requests.

Read more about this display of bipartisan cooperation here.

Agency Demands $111,930 for Database Description

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) filed a protest with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), objecting to a demand that the university-based data research organization pay $111,930 for a description of the information in one of its databases. TRAC seeks a description of the agency's processing of requests for naturalization that it receives. The FOIA request had been pending without a response for nearly 4 years - 1,316 days.

Read more about it here and here.

Recalcitrant Officials Stymie Public Records Requests in Massachusetts

The Boston Globe brings us this story of the frustrations of dealing with obfuscatory officials who evade public records laws by charging exorbitant fees or by unreasonable delay.

Here is an excerpt, showing how the state's laws make it easy it is for Massachusetts officials to evade the open records laws:

Jon Albano, a First Amendment lawyer with Bingham McCutchen who frequently represents the Globe in battles for public records, said the lack of an enforcement mechanism in Massachusetts allows officials to virtually ignore Galvin’s demands.

“They don’t have to comply with his orders, so they treat them like advisory opinions,’’ Albano said. “Across the state, government officials really and truly do not take the public records law as seriously as they take their other responsibilities.’’

Albano said enforcement of the law would be enhanced by a streamlined process for hearing public records disputes in the courts.

Indeed, with no power to fine or otherwise discipline uncooperative officials, Galvin must rely on the attorney general’s office, which is often reluctant to take action against state agencies in public records cases, perhaps because the office represents those same agencies in other legal matters.

And if the attorney general declines to act, those stymied in their request for public records must rely on the courts, where the cost of filing a lawsuit may be prohibitive and the time it takes to obtain a decision may render the value of the information moot.

FOI Delays and the Webs They Weave...

An intriguing tale of why FOI delays hurt us all. I enjoy the tone, as it is soooooo deserved:

If anyone is still wondering about the safety of a circus that came through Norfolk more than six years ago, we now have the answer.

A computer file of nearly decade-old federal inspections of a business that no longer exists, addressed to a reporter who no longer works at The Pilot, arrived this week.

The records show that Sterling & Reid Brothers Circus, which was investigated after a worker beat an elephant at the Scope, had problems ranging from poor care to inexperienced staff to animals getting loose.

If only we had known that, oh, six years ago, when then-Pilot reporter Lou Misselhorn requested the documents under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

More here.