by Brad Peck
On his very first full day in office, President Obama sent a memorandum to his executive agencies extolling the virtues of transparency and open government and directing them to facilitate public access to information. To further that directive, Obama issued a second memorandum encouraging agencies to “adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure” when responding to public requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA):
“The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. …In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public. All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”
In light of this unprecedented call to openness, we were truly astounded when, in response to the Chamber’s FOIA request to the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) relating to agency records on climate change, we were told that CEQ had identified 87 documents totaling 759 pages that were responsive to our request. HOWEVER, they could not release most of the documents because they “originated” with another agency -- we have issued a FOIA request to them, no response yet -- what they could release to us* looked like this:
It would seem hard to encourage collaboration and participation when transparency involves buying Sharpies by the case.
* Note: The CEQ did also send us a partial copy of last year’s Waxman- Markey bill, and two sets of Congressional testimony from 2009 -- which were publically available anyway.