Thursday, August 23, 2007

White House FOIA-Free?

Thursday, August 23, 2007

The White House Office of Administration claimed in court filings this week that it's not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, according to an article by the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/22/AR2007082202441.html). The legal motion is based on a civil lawsuit that is "seeking the release of internal documents about a large number of e-mails missing from White House servers," the article notes.

Hilariously, the article reports that the filing is at odds with the own White House Web site, which at the time of publishing listed the Office of Administration as subject to FOIA.

It comes as no surprise, as the current administration hasn't exactly been considered FOIA-friendly. According to an early August report by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, the FOIA backlog at 30 federal agencies with the most requests has reached record highs at 39 percent. That means nearly two of five requests didn't get processed within a year, CJOG notes. You can view "Still Waiting After All These Years - An In-Depth Analysis of FOIA Performance from 1998-2006" by visiting:
http://www.cjog.net/documents/Still_Waiting_Narrative_and_Charts.pdf.

0 Responses to “White House FOIA-Free?”

Post a Comment