BC-FOI-FOIA-COMMENTARY:MCT — op-ed (780 words)
Now is the time to strengthen commitment to openness
(ARCHIVE PHOTOS)
FOCUS ON FREEDOM OF INFORMATION
(MCT)
This week, America observes the first-ever national Sunshine Week — a celebration of our nation's founding principles and commitment to freedom of information and openness in government. With these ideals fresh in mind, earlier this week we convened a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to examine the need for reforms to strengthen our commitment to those fundamental principles.
Our founders firmly believed that a free society cannot exist without an informed citizenry and an open and accessible government. As James Madison, the father of our Constitution, once famously wrote, "a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
Openness in government is not a Republican or a Democratic issue. Any party in power is always reluctant to share information, out of an understandable — albeit ultimately unpersuasive — fear of arming its enemies and critics. Whatever our differences may be on the various policy controversies of the day, we should all agree that those policy differences deserve as full and complete a debate before the American people as possible.
Openness in government is an issue for all three branches of government. In the last Congress, a group of senators joined forces to pursue improvements to the THOMAS Web site (www.congress.gov), to ensure that congressional information is more accessible to the public.
To encourage greater openness and public access to our nation's courts, the Senate Judiciary Committee has approved bipartisan legislation to expand media coverage of and access to federal courtroom proceedings. We hope that Congress will approve such legislation this year.
Greater openness is needed in the Executive Branch as well. Just last year, acting on a bipartisan recognition that the Executive Branch historically overclassifies documents, the Senate adopted the Independent National Security Classification Board Act of 2004. And just last month, we introduced the OPEN Government Act of 2005, to strengthen and enhance our federal open government laws.
The legislation we introduced contains important congressional findings to reiterate and reinforce our belief that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) establishes a presumption of openness, and that our government is based not on the need to know, but upon the fundamental right to know. Our bill contains over a dozen substantive provisions, designed to strengthen FOIA and close loopholes, help FOIA requestors obtain timely responses to their requests, ensure that agencies have strong incentives to act on FOIA requests in a timely fashion, and provide FOIA officials with all of the tools they need to ensure that our government remains open and accessible.
Our legislation is not just pro-openness, pro-accountability, and pro-accessibility — it is also pro-Internet. It requires government agencies to establish a hotline to enable citizens to track their FOIA requests, including Internet tracking, and it grants the same privileged FOIA fee status currently enjoyed by traditional media outlets to bloggers and others who publish reports on the Internet.
The OPEN Government Act is the product of months of extensive discussions with various members of the requestor community. We are pleased that the bill is supported by a broad coalition of open government advocates and organizations across the ideological spectrum — from the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way on the left, to the Free Congress Foundation's Center for Privacy & Technology Policy, the Heritage Foundation's Center for Media and Public Policy, and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott on the right.
It has been nearly a decade since Congress has approved major reforms to the Freedom of Information Act. Our hearing was the first Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing to monitor compliance with FOIA since 1992. National Sunshine Week is the perfect time to restore and strengthen our commitment to openness in government and freedom of information.
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ABOUT THE WRITERS
Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is the panel's ranking Democratic member. They are the co-sponsors of the Open Government Act. Readers may write to Sen. Cornyn at 517 Hart Senate Office Bldg., Washington, DC 20510; readers may write to Sen. Leahy at 433 Russell Senate Office Bldg., Washington, DC 20510.
This essay is available to McClatchy-Tribune News Service
subscribers. McClatchy-Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this
column; the opinions are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent
the views of McClatchy-Tribune or its editors.
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(c) 2005, John Cornyn and Patrick Leahy
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
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ARCHIVE PHOTOS on MCT Direct (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): John Cornyn, Patrick Leahy