House and Senate pass FOIA Reform Legislation
Legislation to reform the Freedom of Information Act has finally passed both Houses of Congress. CREW is a strong supporter of these much needed reforms. Today's Washington Post has the details:
The bill would encourage faster compliance with FOIA requests. By law, agencies must respond within 20 days, but in practice the process can take months or years. Delays lengthened in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as agencies began to favor nondisclosure in the name of national security.
Under the measure, requests would be assigned public tracking numbers. Agencies that exceed the 20-day deadline for responses would be denied the right to charge requesters for research or copying costs.
The bill would strengthen the ability of people who sue over their FOIA requests to collect attorneys' fees and would establish an office at the National Archives to accept citizen complaints about unfulfilled FOIA requests, issue opinions and foster best practices.
"In an era of increased government secrecy, we cannot postpone reforming the very act that keeps our government open to the people whose government this is," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). "FOIA helps make government accountable and responsive to the people."
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Open Government
This is great news for America and will end government agencies ability to hide from the public. At the Thomas Jackson Centers we have our fingers crossed that the President will sign this bill into law under his own signature. His name on the law would be an open endorsement that Open Government is good government. Without his name, the bill will ride out the congressional recess and become law absent the Presidents signature. The new law will also go a long way in answering the question “Are bloggers journalist?” Good question and here is my answer. I am one of three bloggers (correspondents, writers, etc.) on the three blogs of the Thomas Jackson Center. If you visit our site, you’ll see that ClustrMaps has tracked visitors from all over the world who read our blogs. The government may not like to call us journalist even though bloggers have broken some of the biggest stories in recent history. But and the Big But is - that blogs often have more readers than small town newspapers.