Thread: It's #SunshineWeek, and a top DOJ official recently complained about requesters who ask courts to enforce the public's legal rights under FOIA when agencies fail to meet their legal transparency obligations. 1/
But the real problem is that some federal agencies woefully underfund their FOIA operations. Rather than treat their legal obligations under FOIA as primary responsibilities, they instead act as though FOIA creates burdensome work to be placed on the back burner. 2/
Consequently, agencies have growing backlogs of FOIA requests waiting for a response, but they often don’t allocate more resources to address that problem.
Whether by accident or by intentional design, backlogs thwart meaningful accountability for current officials. 3/
Whether by accident or by intentional design, backlogs thwart meaningful accountability for current officials. 3/
DOJ itself illustrates this problem right now. A request for emails on a timely topic from a DOJ leadership office routinely sits for a year or more before anyone even conducts a search, and then for months or years longer before production of responsive records is completed. 4/
As the D.C. Circuit recognized in a FOIA case, “stale information is of little value” when FOIA’s purpose is to ensure an informed public and democratic accountability. 5/
Crticizing requesters for suing when agencies fail to meet their obligations has the problem backwards. Growing delays in agency responses increase the incentives for litigation, not vice versa. If litigation is the only way to get a timely response, requesters must sue more. 6/
The answer isn’t for agencies to complain about having to meet their legal obligations. It’s for the agencies to actually allocate the resources necessary to meet their FOIA obligations in a more timely manner. 7/
americanoversight.org/the-increase-i…
americanoversight.org/the-increase-i…
Rather than trying to portray FOIA requests as a zero-sum competition between requesters, agencies should recognize that in a democratic society, transparency about government operations is a primary programmatic responsibility, not a burden to be placed on the back burner. 8/
Agencies and even courts sometimes complain that if Congress wanted agencies to do better in responding to FOIA requests, it would appropriate more money. This is a misconception — agency heads, not Congress, decide how much of an agency's budget is spent on FOIA processing. 9/
In FY2019, DOJ allocated about 0.3% of its overall budget to FOIA processing. If top officials were serious about addressing these issues, rather giving speeches complaining about FOIA, they would be working to correct that deficiency and get DOJ’s backlogs under control. 10/
And as to DOJ's purported concern about too many FOIA lawsuits? The data doesn't back up that claim. @foiaproject's analysis shows FOIA requesters are actually waiting much LONGER before suing during the Trump administration. 11/ foiaproject.org/2019/12/15/foi…
@foiaproject Our legal team broke down the issues, the causes of the backlogs, and the importance of transparency in a democratic society in a #SunshineWeek post. 12/12 americanoversight.org/the-increase-i…
