WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley today issued the following statement after President Obama signed into law the FOIA Improvement Act, which Grassley led through the Judiciary Committee last year.
“Early in his tenure, President Obama boasted that his administration would be the most transparent in our nation’s history. Unfortunately, under his leadership, the government has fallen woefully short of this promise. To make matters worse, when members of the press and other Americans try to compel the government to hand over public records, federal agencies often come up with any number of excuses not to comply. Well, the public’s work ought to be public, and the government’s default should always be in favor of transparency unless it can demonstrate a sound reason, backed up by law, to withhold information.
“With only about 200 days left in office, the president today finally took an important step toward making good on his promise by signing the bipartisan FOIA Improvement Act. This bill, which was the first bill I moved out of the Judiciary Committee, requires the bureaucracy to adopt a presumption of openness when processing Freedom of Information Act requests,” Grassley said.
The FOIA Improvement Act clarifies that the government’s presumed response to Freedom of Information Act requests should be to provide rather than withhold government information. It places a 25-year sunset on the government’s ability to withhold certain documents that demonstrate how the government reaches decisions, which currently can be withheld indefinitely from the public. The bill requires agencies to publicly release documents that have been previously released three or more times under FOIA, and empowers the office of Government Information Services to better address FOIA issues through additional independence. The bill also uses technology to improve the information requesting process.
Grassley will convene a Judiciary Committee oversight hearing in July examining the trends in the government’s compliance with FOIA laws 50 years after enactment as well as what else can be done to ensure a culture of openness in government.
The FOIA Improvement Act is the 10th bill reported out of the Judiciary Committee to be signed into law under Grassley’s leadership.
-30-