Obama signs open records bill

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama signed an open-records bill into law late Thursday, handing Congress a rare bipartisan success in a contentious election year.

The FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 updates the Freedom of Information Act to make more records available and codifies a presumption of openness for documents in question.

“I am very proud of all the work we’ve done to try to make government more open and responsive, but I know that people haven’t always been satisfied with the speed with which they’re getting responses and requests,” Obama said. “Hopefully this is going to help and be an important initiative for us to continue on the reform path.”

When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed FOIA into law in 1966, he made many government documents and information publicly available for the first time. Subsequent administrations issued their own guidelines for how government employees should comply with FOIA.

The Obama administration re-instituted a presumption of disclosure in 2009, but it has since come under criticism as FOIA backlogs have reached record levels at numerous federal agencies. A recent Associated Press analysis of government data found FOIA requesters received partial files or none at all 77 percent of the time—up from 65 percent the first full year of Obama’s presidency.

The new bill won’t immediately change the backlogs—which the administration attributes to increased demand—but it’s a step in the right direction, according to government transparency advocates.

“Strengthening FOIA and limiting the government’s ability to abuse or plain ignore it is a fitting birthday present to the American people as we celebrate the Fourth of July and FOIA’s 50th birthday,” said Rick Blum, director of the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a coalition of media associations that promotes FOIA implementation.

Among other provisions, the law sets a 25-year limit on how long agencies can withhold certain documents and strengthens the FOIA ombudsman position to ensure it is independent of influence from government agencies.

The legislation also creates a single FOIA portal for agencies to receive requests, an effort to make the system more user-friendly and speed up the process.

The successful effort is the result of years of work from a bipartisan group of lawmakers who settled for modest changes to ensure passage. Still, Obama signed the bill into law over the objections of the Justice Department, which reportedly “strongly opposed” several provisions of the bill—opposition that came to light because of documents obtained under FOIA.

Despite uneven implementation, journalists and other citizens have used FOIA to help break hundreds of major stories, including the recent Veterans Health Administration scandal and the Flint water crisis.

Government transparency advocates say they will soon begin work on the next round of needed FOIA reforms. While trumpeting the just-completed effort, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced a hearing this month to continue FOIA oversight and examine potential next steps to “ensure a culture of openness.”

“The public’s work ought to be public,” Grassley said.