What’s That Saying: Feed a Bureaucracy, Starve a FOIA Request?
How dedicated is this administration to transparency and open government? Well, shortly after his election the President issued forth a memorandum to all his department and agency heads that said our government was henceforth “committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government”. Not long after that he issued another memeorandum to those same executives that left no doubt how important the issue was to him.
A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which encourages accountability through transparency, is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government. At the heart of that commitment is the idea that accountability is in the interest of the Government and the citizenry alike.
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. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. 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.
Impressive, no? So why is the Treasury Department openly defying his order? J.P. Freire has an article in which he details how the folks at Treasury have hired several contractors from a company whose owners donate exclusively to Democrats. Worse, Treasury has gone to a “four corners” defense in the face of several FOIA requests from Bloomberg News related to the government bailouts that have put us on the hook for a couple trillion dollars once you toss in the interest.
In one instance, Treasury waited to respond to a Freedom of Information request for 20 months despite saying at least five times that a response was imminent. Bloomberg had requested that officials identify $301 billion of securities owned by Citigroup Inc. that the government had agreed to guarantee. When a response finally came, it was in the form of 560 pages of printed-out and heavily redacted emails, none of which had been requested. It is not certain whether Phacil was involved in redacting the emails, but the incomplete response was considered sufficient by the department to fulfill the requirements of a “partial response.”
In another, Treasury cited a “trade-secrets exemption” when responding to another of Bloomberg’s FOIA requests about Citigroup’s segregated bad assets.
That does not look like Treasury has moved “promptly and in a spirit of cooperation” nor is it living up to the President’s “In the face of doubt, openness prevails” rule. In fact, the administration is doing just the opposite — looking for every possible reason, no matter how flimsy, to deny Bloomberg’s requests.
I know. I’m just grousing, right? Leaping to a partisan conclusion because I want to put the car in reverse and drink a Slurpee or something? Well, take a look at a couple qualifications this company wants in a FOIA specialist. This, by the way, comes from a Google cache of the job announcement on a popular Washington, DC area web site. The job announcement itself seems to have disappeared since Freire’s article hit the internet. Curious, that. Ah, well. Let’s look at what was there.
Under the section for “Scope” is this: “Supports the client’s litigation efforts by crafting Vaughn indices, declarations, affidavits, answers to complaints and supplemental releases….Redacting or withholding agency records citing appropriate exemptions and generating response letters; and Responding to requestors concerning the agency’s disclosure determination by generating response letters. [Emphasis mine]“.
Wha…litigation? Redacting? Withholding? Why that’s not acting as “servants of the public” at all! That’s obstruction and delay and bureaucracy and telling a media outlet, which also serves the public, that it’ll get right on its request almost two years after it first received the request.
It gets worse. Under “Qualifications”, we find: “…8 years general experience 4 of which is specialized in FOIA Reviewing agency records in response to FOIA or PA requests; Applying the FOIA/PA statutes to requests for agency records; Use of FOIA/PA exemptions to withhold information from release to the public.…Knowledge of FOIA law with in-depth knowledge of the applications for FOIA/PA exemptions in particular 1,2,4,5,6 and 7c-e [Emphasis mine]”
Hmm…was I going too easy on the Treasury Department? That’s not a job description; it’s a work order for a nuclear-powered FOIA request-denying super android! It’s like they and their partners in partisan politics, the owners of Phacil, were hiring people based on their ability to slam filing cabinets shut on our fingers. Maybe the President needs to look in on the Treasury Department, sicne they have their hands on a couple or three trillion dollars of our money, and see if they’ve managed to actually read his memoranda.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Congressional Bailout Corruption Strikes Again
- So When Do They Start Calling for Chris Dodd’s Head?
- What the Heck, It’s Only A Few Billion Dollars, Right?
Category: Our New Democratic Overlords
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jimmie, Shaun McDonnell. Shaun McDonnell said: RT @jimmiebjr: New Post: What's That Saying: Feed a Bureaucracy, Starve a FOIA Request? http://bit.ly/9QlXKO [...]
Thanks for the link! But it's "Freire" not "Frere"!
Sorry! Let me correct that right away. Did you see where the job description seems to have changed?
[...] Sundries Shack: What’s That Saying: Feed a Bureaucracy, Starve a FOIA Request? [...]
[...] Sundries Shack: What’s That Saying: Feed a Bureaucracy, Starve a FOIA Request? [...]
1. Founder is a registered Republican who voted for Bush twice!
So much for being partisan.
2. Contract was awarded during the Bush Administration (that wasn't mentioned)
So much for being partisan.
3. Currently not the prime contractor for FOIA at Treasury.
4. Job posting changed to make it clearer that the job entails implementing the FOIA law.
But go ahead and select facts that create a partisan picture when people are just doing their job…protecting the privacy of individuals and companies that submit information to the Government.
The facts of my piece remain. The Obama administration has reneged on its promise of openness and nothing you're provided dispute that very evident truth.
Your fourth "fact", I note, is not actually a fact. It is obvious the company changed the job description. It is not at all obvious that they did so for the motives you suggest. Indeed, the job description changed after Friere brought its obvious FOIA-defeating intent to light. I'd say your suggestion is not at all the simplest answer.
You are correct that the fourth item is not a fact.
It's is more of an observation that undermines the Freire article's contention of democrat partisanship. The work began under the Bush Administration (btw you can confirm this if you truly wish to be fair) and the job description was the earlier ambiguous one. So go figure!
I guess my issue is with the partisan (and false) conclusion ….that the people at the company in question…who work on FOIA projects are doing their jobs to support Obama or the Democrat Party. The job description in question was for a contract that was awarded during the Bush Administration. (Again I invite you to check the facts) If you can explain how you guys come to the conclusion that you did about Democrat Party favoritism I salute you.
You might want to consider the number of stories about how the current administration has dragged its feet on FOIA requests despite specific orders otherwise. It suggests that the administration was less than honest about its commitment to transparency and openness. That is, you'll notice, the point of my post.
Notwithstanding, the job description didn't change until after Friere's article, which means that since the memo, this was the standing order from Treasury. As well, Bush is not the issue here. He's no longer President and the old, lame "but the other guy was bad" excuse doesn't fly here.
I wasn't giving you an excuse because none is needed.
The job description was changed because it was incomplete and I believe that they thanked Friere for pointing that out.
Just as you have your point about "foot dragging" (which may not be valid)…let me re-state my point. You stated:
"It’s like they and their partners in partisan politics, the owners of Phacil, were hiring people based on their ability to slam filing cabinets shut on our fingers."
If you want to make a case that FOIA should be handled differently…it is your right…no argument from me.
But it is illogical to assert that an organization is acting with partisan intent when it started the job under the opposite party. This isn't an excuse…its just a fact that flies in the face of the partisan argument. Unless what you're saying is that the Bush administration was hiring Democrat partisans to execute a "standing order" to hide things.
If that's what you are saying…then OK.
It doesn't make sense that Bush would do that…but if that's what you believe…there's nothing else to say.
Again, not an excuse…because none is needed…people were just doing their jobs. It's the accusations without merit or basis in fact that I'm concerned with.
I'm saying that the administration hired a firm whose founders gave exclusively to Democrats to hire people whose job description was built so that they would do exactly the opposite of what the President promised his administration would do.
That the company also worked under the Bush administration doesn't matter because, as I'm sure you know, the new administration can hire the companies they please. This happens all the time and was one of the left's chief complaints about Haliburton and Blackwater (both of which, by the way, now work for the Obama administration). One can still make the case, absent any other evidence, that those companies were hired for partisan reasons even though they now work for an administration of a different party without arguing that they were retained for partisan reasons.
I simply applied Occam's Razor to the situation, along with the rather plain tendency of the current administration toward rank partisanship.