Update 1/31/06
Update 1/31/06
The BARDA Bill
The staff director for the House Bioterrorism Subcommittee sent along a copy of the modified FOIA exemption language – and it’s better. But it’s still too broad to discourage an agency that wants to withhold less-than-sensitive information or have private discussions with industry “advisors” from doing so. The original bill simply excluded the proposed new Bioterrorism Advanced Research and Development Agency from both FOIA and FACA, the open meetings law. This replaces that exclusion with language creating a statutory exemption from FOIA and it retains a FACA exclusion for advisory boards.
I’m attaching a pdf copy (poor in quality but it’s all I have) and some observations for those who want to read more. Over the next week or so, I’ll be working with a number of people here to come up with modifications we can recommend. Your suggestions are encouraged.
The Executive Order
It’s become even more clear that the Executive Order on FOIA signed by the President in mid-December was designed to head off reform legislation that was slowly getting a bit of moment in Congress. The Sunshine in Government Initiative has pulled together a useful point by point comparison of the OPEN Government Act and the Executive Order to show how the latter fails to deal, or deals less effectively, with FOIA issues. (Attached). I’m also attaching a Federal Times article on the executive order, not because of the brilliant comments of a certain CJOG coordinator, but because of the admission by an unnamed official that the administration considers the order a more than adequate substitute for the reform legislation.
And if you have any doubts, go to the Justice Department’s web-listing of the new Chief FOIA Officers. http://www.justice.gov/04foia/chieffoiaofficers.html A cursory look at their positions in the departments and agencies suggests the oversight has been put in the hands of political appointees. In an administration with a strong record on transparency, they might be a positive.
Defense Intelligence Agency
Congress passed the Defense funding bill that included a provision excluding the Defense Intelligence Agency’s “operational files” from FOIA. It’s now the fifth intelligence-related agency with that kind of an exclusion, and the fourth that won an exclusion without any congressional hearings. Indeed, there hasn’t been a hearing on the need to exclude operational files since the CIA got the first such exemption in 1984.
Importantly, a two-year-sunset provision was added in conference committee after we reemphasized our concerns about the exclusion. We hope there will be both aggressive oversight by Congress in the next two years and public hearings when the exclusion comes up for review.
Sunshine Week
It’s six weeks away – and more important than ever that this national effort to generate dialogue about and support for open government be successful. It’s a discussion public officials not just here in Washington but all across the country need to see and hear.
Within a few days, a “Best Ideas” book -- examples of top coverage from a year ago – will be posted on the Sunshine Week website: http://www.sunshineweek.org/ We hope it will spark even better ideas this year. One I particularly liked, both as a way to reemphasize FOI importance within the newsroom and to generate creative ideas was the scheduling of everyone’s welcome brainstorming sessions to develop coverage ideas. The several newsrooms I know that did this produced some of the most thoughtful coverage. And they haven’t let up..
Please take a look at “Best Ideas” and please encourage your members to do the same and, more importantly, to challenge themselves and their newsrooms to do some creative reporting or commentary on open government. The wonderful – and discouraging – thing about this topic is that there are more than enough really good stories out there for everyone.
We’ve got to raise the volume if we hope to slow the secrecy surge.
Pete Weitzel
