Proposed Interior Dept. regulations could make FOIA requests more difficult and expensive - Entrepreneur Generations

Frank LoMonte

Newly proposed regulations could make it more difficult and expensive for journalists to obtain documents from the Interior Department using Freedom of Information Act requests.

The changes, proposed in a notice published Dec. 28, "would allow the Interior Department to enforce caps on how many requests it will process from frequent FOIA users, make it more difficult for news organizations to justify having their FOIA fees waived, and relax internal deadlines for the agency to act on requests," Frank D. LoMonte writes on the blogging platform Medium. LoMonte is a professor of media law at the University of Florida and director of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, a think-tank focused on improving the public’s access to civically useful information.

The department reports that FOIA requests have increased 30 percent since President Trump took office, with 128 cases in active litigation as of September 2018. That's partly because journalists, archivists and historians worried that Obama-era documents about topics like climate change might be destroyed if not preserved, LoMonte writes. 

It's possible the proposed changes also stem from a desire for less scrutiny from journalists. Reporters used documents obtained through FOIA requests to document the actions of former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who recently resigned because of accusations that he used his position for personal benefit, LoMonte writes.

"The Interior Department is taking public comments on the FOIA regulation through Jan. 28. They can be filed electronically by referencing Docket No. DOI-2018–0017," LoMonte writes. "By law, federal agencies must show that they took account of public input before they can finalize enacting or amending a regulation."

from The Rural Blog http://bit.ly/2SDL9eD Proposed Interior Dept. regulations could make FOIA requests more difficult and expensive - Entrepreneur Generations

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