'War on transparency': US agency plans crackdown on information requests
Source: The Guardian
'War on transparency': US agency plans crackdown on information requests
Trump administration criticized for trying to make it harderto obtain records of interior department dealings
Jimmy Tobi
Sat 29 Dec 2018 08.00 GMT Last modified on Sat 29 Dec 2018 08.01 GMT
Trump administration officials took steps on Friday to crack down on transparency at one of the largest US federal agencies, proposing a slew of changes that could make it harder for the public and media to obtain records of agency dealings.
The proposal is part of an effort to grapple with what the interior department describes as an “unprecedented surge” in requests under the Freedom of Information Act (Foia), the United States’ pre-eminent open government law, since 2016 when Donald Trump took office.
Among other wide-ranging revisions to its Foia regulations, the interior department’s proposal would enable the agency to reject Foia requests that it considers “unreasonably burdensome” or too large, and it would allow the agency to impose limits on the amount of records it processes for individual requesters each month.
The department oversees hundreds of millions of acres of public land, including national parks, as well as the country’s endangered species programs. Under the Trump administration, the department has embarked on a aggressive agenda of opening these lands to oil and gas drilling and mining while rolling back a wide variety of environmental regulations.
Records uncovered using the Freedom of Information Act in recent months have revealed the department’s close ties with energy industry groups as well as several apparent ethics violations among top political officials.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/29/trump-administration-interior-department-foia-changes