Not what we do, but how we do it
Issues come and go, and how well we deal with them is a function of the availability of quality information and the openness of debate. These process issues concern me more than even the sensational issues like Iraq and National Health Care. My personal interest is in promoting open-minded deliberative debate of how to manage our society to optimize health, freedom and security. In particular how to make our elections more competitive and less dependent on special interest influence. And how to make our government operations more transparent so we can determine what is, or is not working, and why. The Democrats are taking on this last issue this week.
Democrats push open government agenda
Pushing back at what they say has been one of the most secretive administrations in decades, congressional Democrats are marking “Sunshine Week” with bills to increase public access to government activities and protect whistle-blowers who expose wrongdoing.
The House on Wednesday was to vote on four open government bills, including one aimed at government foot-dragging in answering the millions of Freedom of Information Act requests it receives every year.
Another, sparking a veto threat from the White House, would reverse a Bush administration decision making it easier for presidents to withhold their own records from public scrutiny.
Senate Judiciary Committee, meanwhile was holding a hearing on a parallel FOIA bill promoted by Sens. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., and John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas.
In prepared statements, media representatives stressed the importance of public access to timely information on government decisions that affect their lives.
Tom Curley, president and CEO of The Associated Press and a member of the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a media coalition, related how it took a year for an AP reporter to get lab reports on lead levels in lunch boxes that the Consumer Product Safety Commission had deemed safe. The tests revealed that one lunch box in five contained lead levels that some medical experts considered unsafe.
“Why did it take a year for the commission to respond to a relatively simple request that FOIA says it was supposed to answer in 20 working days?” Curley said.
Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archives, a private research institute, offered data showing that seven agencies have unanswered FOIA requests dating back more than 10 years.
The House and Senate bills would impose penalties and incentives to ensure that agencies abide by the 20-business-day deadline for responses and give requesters a means to track the status of their requests.
The House bill goes a step further in restoring a “presumption of disclosure” standard that obliges agencies to release requested information unless there is a finding that such a disclosure could do harm.
That would overturn a memo issued by former Attorney General John Ashcroft after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks advising against the release of information when there was uncertainty over security or law enforcement exemptions.
Sabina Haskell, editor of the Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer, told the Senate panel in her prepared remarks about a case in which a weekly newspaper in Vermont asked for an architect’s drawing to illustrate a story on a new handicapped-accessible ramp outside the town hall. The newspaper was denied because of Homeland Security concerns, she said.
“It’s hard to understand how a wooden ramp and railings, built of pressure-treated lumber, could be viewed as a security risk,” she said.
The 40-year-old FOIA law was a promise that people could find out what their government was doing “in all but a few kinds of highly sensitive or confidential matters,” Curley said. “The law does back them. But in many cases the government doesn’t back the law.”
Democrats claimed that situation has worsened under the Bush administration.
“For the past six years, we have had an administration that has tried to operate in secrecy, without transparency, without the public having knowledge about their action,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and sponsor of the legislation. “Well, this week, Congress is finally pushing back.”
As part of its Sunshine Week, House Democrats also are bringing up a bill that would rescind a Bush executive order in 2001 giving current presidents and vice presidents authority to withhold presidential records or delay their release indefinitely.
Other bills would require that presidential libraries disclose the source of their funding, improve protections to whistle-blowers and increase transparency in federal contracting.
The administration, in a statement, said Bush would be advised to veto the presidential records bill because it would “invite unnecessary litigation, is misguided and would improperly impinge on the president’s constitutional authority.”
The White House also issued a veto threat on the whistle-blower bill, saying it was unconstitutional and could compromise national security.
Sunshine Week, March 11-17, is a three-year-old national initiative led by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. It is intended to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and others.
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The House bills are: H.R. 1309 (FOIA), H.R. 1254 and H.R. 1255 (presidential libraries), H.R. 1362 (contracting) and H.R. 985 (whistle-blowers).
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On the Net:
Information on the bills may be found at:
http://oversight.house.gov/investigations.asp
?IssueOpen+Government
and texts of the bills at:
http://thomas.loc.gov
The Senate bill is S. 849
5 Responses to “Not what we do, but how we do it”
Bravo!
The issue of government secrecy has been a festering sore in our democratic system.
A democracy can not exist without a goodly amount of trust in the government. Secrecy begets suspicion, and that leads to conspiracy theories and civil unrest.
Thnks for this post.
While some of the bills are good, the presidential libraries bill is pure BDS.
Why is Bush the first president in history to have to reveal who is funding his presidential library? The timing of this bill…during the period in which 2nd term presidents routinely begin trolling for bucks for their library…suggests that the sole purpose of this is to damage the fundraising of Bush’s library.
The GOP did not do this in Clinton’s second term…yet it is a burning issue now apparently.
The Dims are going overboard — and how ironic that it is the Democrats who want transparency now. They go too far with things like the presidential library as we have seen, and were nowhere to be found when the Clintons never produced required documents (only to “discover” them later, maybe on a table, say).
The Bush administration secrecy is excessive, but it’s interesting that I heard from a family member about this when discussing Dean’s book (“Worse Than Watergate”) and how the Bush people were acting like Russians in a Kremlin walling themselves off from the Mongols, for whom information was simply being used as intelligence to help with attacks on the Russians at a later date. The rseponse I got was similar to what other normal Americans say — the secrecy is understandable, and in fact I was entreated to sympathy for Bush and Cheney, because the Dims and especially all the liberal activist crusading journalists are typically a bunch of Mongols, simply trying too often to simply be destructive or make trouble rather than be constructive or high-minded. The opposition, in other words, has in fact behaved for far too long as Mongols.
That’s the risk of an open government. But I am willing to err on the side of more information available to those concerned with fairness and opportunity at the risk that some might use it for selfish or political purposes.
I am comfortable that an open debate in Congress can craft rules that identify and restrict the more dangerous information that might be of interest to predators.
This is not a Dem/Rep issue. If transparency became the rule, it would be binding on all future presidents, of any party.
I do wish we could get away from the paranoia of thinking that if the ‘other’ party likes it, then there must be dark and evil motives behind it.